Telephone scams

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If I have time and am bored I quite like uninvited calls, acting dumb or putting them on hold for ages. Had the PC one once, was told to 'open windows' I was like the kitchen one or the bedroom one? Pretending I've never heard of PPI and asking for explanations of it, pretending to be partly deaf and repeating words wrongly, seeing how loud they will go, Saying things like for Mr. Bobs Beard please press 1, for Mrs. Bobs Beard press 2.......... etc Anything really to get a rise out of them or see how long it takes for them to hang up.
 
gonetomorrow said:
I've got a theory about these calls. There are so many companies outsourcing their call centres to India now. I suspect a "rogue" cell of operators within one or more of these vast places is making these scam calls. I've answered my phone several times to them and the background sounds exactly like a big call centre.
Do you think this theory makes any sense? The authorities clearly haven't a clue how to stop the business anyway because it's been going on for ten years at least.
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It's actually worse than that, there's actually entire call centres in India that employ people just to scam westerners as if it were no different from tech support. What you're hearing in the background is about 100 or so other people all reading from the same script. Worst thing is is that the Indian authorities don't really seem to mind so these call centres continue to operate which is quite surprising considering how much it must be damaging relations with the West.

I used to work in a bank and it was gutting how clever these people are about scamming people because they request payment by bank transfer usually meaning it's nearly impossible to get your money back once you transfer it. You'd get an older person ringing up every now and then and they'd be distraught by the time you tell them there's not much that can be done since the money had been transferred out of the country and in the eyes of the law it can't really be proven they didn't want to transfer the money anyway (even though anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew what had happened and what should be done to fix it). Because of this it's why you should try to use a card whenever you might be dealing with someone a bit dodgy because if worst comes to worst there's a lot more avenues of getting your money back if you use a card, doubly so for a credit card because when you use a credit card it's the bank's money you're dealing with so they have a lot more power over that.
 
It's scary. When I bought a printer from HP I had the inevitable problems setting it up. So I rang the help number and an operator in India answered it.
He sorted the problem by "taking control of the computer". Now I'm sure HP employ only the best types but it got me thinking.
 
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SpeedEFC said:
It's actually worse than that, there's actually entire call centres in India that employ people just to scam westerners as if it were no different from tech support. What you're hearing in the background is about 100 or so other people all reading from the same script. Worst thing is is that the Indian authorities don't really seem to mind so these call centres continue to operate which is quite surprising considering how much it must be damaging relations with the West.

I used to work in a bank and it was gutting how clever these people are about scamming people because they request payment by bank transfer usually meaning it's nearly impossible to get your money back once you transfer it. You'd get an older person ringing up every now and then and they'd be distraught by the time you tell them there's not much that can be done since the money had been transferred out of the country and in the eyes of the law it can't really be proven they didn't want to transfer the money anyway (even though anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew what had happened and what should be done to fix it). Because of this it's why you should try to use a card whenever you might be dealing with someone a bit dodgy because if worst comes to worst there's a lot more avenues of getting your money back if you use a card, doubly so for a credit card because when you use a credit card it's the bank's money you're dealing with so they have a lot more power over that.
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When I got caught the first time, they actually paid money into my account. It came from someone else's account who had been scammed. Then they asked me to go to my bank and transfer the money back to a Western Union account in Abu Dhabi. When I subsequently went to my bank to report the scam, they called me back and asked.me if I had made the transfer yet. I told them I was reported them as scammers and they threatened me with bailiffs and all sorts. The upshot was, after cutting them off, I had the money paid back into the account it came from - not to them. If it wasn't for the fact that I had indeed been having problems with my laptop I would have smelt the rat sooner. I think it's a money-laundering thing.
 
I know there is the phone line one that used to be popular where they would threaten to cut you off and then just not hang up after you did. Would make it seem like your phone had indeed been disconnected so more likely to believe them
 
I enjoy the Microsoft IT scam. If I've nothing better to do then I just play along but pretend to take everything they say literally so I'll actually type "forward slash" instead of /.Ended up getting threatened and warned "Not to play silly games with Microsoft" which led to a longer conversation where I was begging for Bill Gates' forgiveness and promising to behave.
 

TyphooToffee said:
When I got caught the first time, they actually paid money into my account. It came from someone else's account who had been scammed. Then they asked me to go to my bank and transfer the money back to a Western Union account in Abu Dhabi. When I subsequently went to my bank to report the scam, they called me back and asked.me if I had made the transfer yet. I told them I was reported them as scammers and they threatened me with bailiffs and all sorts. The upshot was, after cutting them off, I had the money paid back into the account it came from - not to them. If it wasn't for the fact that I had indeed been having problems with my laptop I would have smelt the rat sooner. I think it's a money-laundering thing.
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Yeah you also get the ones where they make you log in to a fake version of your bank's internet banking where it will show "mistaken" transfer in that has an extra zero on the end than the scammer was originally going to send. They'll play up the "I'm going to be sacked" angle because they "transferred too much" so they try to guilt you into transferring the difference. As you can imagine though all you're doing is just paying money to them that was in your account anyway and there's not much recourse if the money doesn't get stopped by the fraud department. Luckily when I was working there the Fraud department tended to get on top of a lot of these transfers before they left but you always got one or two that slipped through because they tended to transfer large amounts regularly so it didn't initially seem out of the ordinary.
 
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