Called -- my first gift card one!!.. decided to have some fun.. when a person came to the phone I repeated what their line to me saying thank you for calling and you won a target gift card. .. she hung up..
So I got another call from the scammers today. Same gig “you’ve been selected for a $100 gift card, just press 1”
This time the lady was feisty. I told her my name was George Bush and that I lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I didn’t show my hand right away by telling her my full birth year of 1776, just “76”. I gave her my fake credit card number and then kept mixing up the numbers on it. Credit cards have a built in check sum that if you add certain parts of the card up it will give you the same number regardless of the actual numbers… think IBM invented it. I asked her where they were located and she said San Francisco and I told her that I was too, and then I asked what she thought of all the snow! She said it was cold. Multiple times I told her that I was worried that someone would steal my card numbers and use it, but she assured me that I was safe. I told her that I trusted her because I knew how terrible she would feel if someone did it to her. After over 13 minutes she passed me to her supervisor. She thanked me, George Bush, and wished me a nice day.
He was an American, at least no accent. He called me George Bush and then confirmed my address. I asked him to read it back to me again so I was sure he had it. And then he was like “so I know you’re not the real George Bush, but we are legit. We’re based out of Florida.” I asked him how many people actually give their credit card information over the phone and he said he’s talked to 1000 people today so far and everyone does it. I asked if he would mind sharing their contact details with me. He asked why. I said because it seems to be a pretty good scam and to please take me off of their list. I shared my enjoyment of seeing how long I could keep people on the phone like that. After that he said “well, I’m not going to share our great services and products with you, George Bush.” And then hung up.
In some way, I feel that I did my part to make the world a kinder, gentler, place today.