My husband has never ordered off amazon.
But he did order off eastbay the other day...
I got a call on our home phone in australia from a private number.
I wondered how they knew his name and number, since we have a private number and rarely get marketing calls.
I just called at talked to the FTC - and gave them a list of these numbers that have been calling. We'll have to see just how effective this Government agency is - but I won't go there with this line of thought. I have decided that if I get another call from these scarf heads, I'm going to tell them the person they are calling for no longer lives here, but I know a person who is interested. Then I plan on giving them the name and phone number of the Chairman of the FTC.
CHM FTC - Jon Leibowitz - Home phone: 301-320-3666 Office: (202) 326-3400
Found this on a web site - FED up USA - don't know if the numbers are active, but I'd sure like them to all be on these idiots calling list!!!
Might want to include you Senators and Congressmen, with their home phone and office numbers. Bet if they start getting harassed with these people something will be done!!!!
Telling them they have the wrong number seems to get them off your back for a while...also i have tried screaming at them and cursing them out...not only does it feel better, they stop calling for a while!
@Krystal: I agree 100%. These calls started back in April 2010 or so; I'd get 4-5 calls a day for about a week, then they abruptly stop. Then about a month later it starts up again, from a different area code. 206, 919, 414, 509, and the latest is this (201) number. I believe they are an Indian call center that's using/abusing a newly-discovered lenient SIP/VoIP (ie. telephone over Internet) gateway/trunk until they get shut down, then they find another gateway/trunk.
One dead giveaway that it's a SIP caller is, there's 2 seconds of silence as soon as you answer, as all the internet-side stuff finishes connecting. Sometimes that's my cue to just hang up immediately. However, usually I try to drag things out a bit to learn more, or to expose them.
Here's a synopsis of today's scintillating conversation:
Caller: Hello, can I speak with ______ please?
Me: Just a moment, may I ask who's calling?
Caller: I'm calling from the pharmacy. I'm calling regarding your prior order of Viagra.
Me: "The pharmacy?" I didn't know there was just one, how about that! LOL What's the name of your pharmacy?
Caller: I'm calling on behalf of U.S. (Residence?) Pharmacy, in Spokane, WA. I'd like you to consider ordering more Viagra.
Me: Gee, that's funny, 201 is NOT a valid area code for Spokane.. that's an area code for somewhere on the east coast.. you know, in the U.S... How is that possible?
Caller: We're just calling through the dialing system, I'm not sure how it works, but we're in Spokane.
Me: I'm wondering whether you're really in an Indian call center, e-calling people through a SIP gateway in order to *appear* that you're calling from the U.S. You can be honest with me.. After all, if I'm going to give you my money, I need to first trust you. So what's really going on?
Caller: (hangs up)
Me: (smiles)
I haven't surfed around enough yet to figure out how to dig deeper & pursue a complaint..
The most I've found (for this AC 201 episode) is,
http://reversephoneslookup.net/201-311-xxxx-find-out-who-is-calling (gives vague info of their phone endpoint), and
http://www.mycallbot.com/numbers/2013114546 (shows time-based graph of spamming activity for that phone#.)
If anyone has additional info on back-tracking or reporting the call, please post & share!
Wow, I'm dismayed at how difficult it is to track this info down. There are various websites that will do Intelius-style lookups if you pay them $$, but who knows whether that would yield anything useful, I doubt it.
I *was* able to find a shred more info about the SIP trunk that the Indian call-center spammer used.. Now I just need to figure out how to use this to contact the trunk/switch's owner..
http://www.telcodata.us/search-area-code-exchange-detail?npa=201&exchange=311
I also saw a blog thread in which someone suggested you can hang up on the spammer, dial *57 to initiate a "customer originated trace" (?) (if your phone provider supports it), and this will give you a way to access the AIN for the SIP trunk. I will look into this further as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_identification
I have contacted the FCC several times and even provided them with directions to the several websites like this one where numerous people have complained about these callers and where they have have also indicated they have contacted the FCC. As far as I can tell, that agency has done nothing and has not even responded with an explanation for doing nothing. Until it appears otherwise, you can probably assume that the agency is going to be both incompetent and unresponsive to "no call" enforcement matters.