A man with a heavy accent said his name was Sam, asked for me by name and was calling about compound pharmacy prescriptions. Not the first time I've gotten this call but this time I decided to play along. He wanted to know if I had back/leg pain from arthritis and used a compound med for the pain. I don't but I said yes. Then he wanted to know if I had a doctor's presc for the compound med. I said yes. Due to the heavy accent I couldn't understand every word he said but something to do with filling the presc through them and getting my ins co to pay for it. Here's the scary part. He said are you still at this address - HE KNEW MY ADDRESS! Then he wanted to confirm my date of birth before passing me on to someone else and that's when I put a stop to it as I wasn't going to give him anymore information on me then he already had. I lied and told him my ins co was paying for my compound med. I'm wondering how he got my name & address. I do use a compound med (not for arthritis pain) and I did receive a letter from my ins carrier in January saying my ins will no longer pay for compound meds due to the high cost. What a joke! My compound med costs less then $30 for a 90 day supply.
You get called because they have robot-dialers.
1) The robot dials thousands of numbers, and there is no human involved. If you pick up the phone and there's no one on the line, they are just logging at what time of day a human voice answered.
2) You may receive another call and answer it and there's no one on the line. They are once again logging what time of day a human answered.
3) Now they are certain that at let's say 2:00 PM on a weekday that a human will answer the call and ONLY THEN will they have one of their scammers available to talk to you. They don't have to pay their people because the robot has eliminated the need to have scammers available.
The phone company is to blame when you try to block a number, say xxx-0001 that you know is a telemarketer but then you get a call six months later from xxx-0002 and it's the same telemarketer. You see, the phone company will sell a block of 10,000 numbers to a scamster in Hong Kong (these telemarketing schemes always start in Hong Kong) who then sells lots of 1,000 numbers each to various scammers. So, the scammers might use xxx-0001 for 5 weeks or 2 months, then when people have blocked that number they move on to xxx-0002, then after people block that number they move on to xxx-0003.
Ergo, don't ever answer your phone, and immediately block any number that you don't want.