Wednesday, February 20, 2019

An Odd Spammer

I was suddenly getting 6+ calls per day from a nearby local electrical company (so the phone display said) for several days.  I generlly ignore such calls.  But when they get too frequent, I like to play games with the callers.  And I was getting tired of deleting the "missed calls" manually.

So I picked up the phone.  The person I spoke to couldn't get my name right at all:

Hello, are you Nark Via"?

No.

Is Nark Via at home this day?

No.

Who am I speaking to?

Who are you?

I must talk to Nark Via!

Please check your list and get my name right.

Are you [my name]? 

Yes.

Why didn't you say so?

You didn't say my name

I said your name.  Are you deaf?

I hear you fine.  Can you speak English?

Drink poison and die!  

CLICK 

Later that day, same phone display name BG&E...

"Hello my name is Susan"  (female voice in same Indian accent)

Your name is "Susan"?  (laughing) 

Why do you complain at me like this"?

CLICK 

Which was disappointing becauae I had my headset on and was prepared to drag the caller along for as long as as I could by pretending to be interested.

It actually made sense that BG&E was marketing me, since they can offer me electrical service over my local co-op lines.  So I called  BG&E about the annoying calls.  Guess what?  Its a problem for them, too.  The calls are scammers.

I didn't even think about that, since I like my co-op and wasn't tempted to change providers.  They actually appreciated my calling them with details of the calls.  They apologized for the spam calls and assured me they weren't causing them (and had their security team trying to find the scammers).

Huh!  Sometimes it is worth calling about the "apparent" spammers.   *I* felt good about calling them about it, and THEY seemed pleased to get some general day/date/time data about the calls.

The same thing happened a few months ago.  I was getting calls from a local carpet-cleaning  company.  Except they weren't placing the calls.  Spoof display...

So don't get mad at the people you THINK are calling you all day.  Just let them know they are spoof-victims.  They want to know about that because they care about their reputations. 

But it WAS some weird calls...




6 comments:

Just Ducky said...

Get those all the time from supposedly local companies. I don't answer, and if it is legit, they would leave a message.

AnnDee said...

I love to mess with those guys. I figure the longer they have to deal with me, the less time they'll have to hassle someone else. I've actually gotten callers to swear at me. My favorite is the guy with the Indian accent telling me they've detected a virus on a computer that died years ago.

On the other hand, I'm very careful with the robo-calls that record you/me saying "yes" when they ask a question. I understand they use that as "proof" that you/I authorized some purchase (I never get far enough to find out what it is they're selling, but I know I never stayed at their resort).

AnnDee said...

Did you know much of your commentary is darkened? I read it by highlighing so it showed, but I just discovered I missed some the first time.

Mark's Mews (Marley, Lori, Taz, and Binq) said...

I just noticed the post is oddly darkened. I'll try to fix that.

Mark

Megan said...

I have an unlisted telephone number so it's quite rare for me to receive any spam calls.

Megan
Sydney, Austrslis

pilch92 said...

We get a lot of odd calls. I only answer the phone when it is my mom or my niece.

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