A recording from " Tom, of Card Services" congratulating me on having a good credit history and offerring me the chance to lower my credit card interest rate further. when I was connected to a customer representative I politely asked him to repeat the name of his company. He hung up on me at that point.
I get calls from this number several times each day, today I followed the prompts and a guy named "FRANK" answered when I asked why he was calling he said to lower my interest rates on my current credit card, when I asked him what card he could not answer that....imagine that!!!! He then cursed at me and hung up, so I tried calling back and it gave me a voicemail of Michael but is said it was not accepting messages at this point. I am on a no call list, why do these keep coming in?
I got a call from this number this morning at 9:11. The caller ID read Michael Lewi. When I answered, it was one of those Card Holder Services prerecorded messages. The message told me to press 1 to speak with a "representative". When I did, the message kept playing and, at the end of the message, it disconnected the call.
The short answer is that the criminals couldn't care less about the do-not-call list. They're operating a fraudulent enterprise, so the idea that a d-n-c list might slow them down just isn't practical.
I work from the quiet of my home, so I have time to engage the criminals when they call. I used to be able to string them along for 10, 15, 20 minutes, on the idea that 20 minutes with me was 20 minutes they couldn't call somebody's elderly parents or a retired neighbor and scam them. But lately they've learned to just stop talking to me and disconnect the call when I ask them really hard questions like, "What's the name of your company? Where are you based? Why does my CID reflect a disconnected mobile number instead of an actual business listing?" I guess I have to get better at stringing them alone and not ask any third-rail questions.
And.. for anyone reading who thinks these poor people on the other end of the phone are only working the scam to feed their hungry kids, sorry. If the call lasts long enough, I remind each of them they they're employed by a criminal enterprise, and that doing this is no different than selling drugs to support themselves. I further remind them that when the heat gets turned up, the thugs that run these companies will skip to the next place with their profits and start the scam all over again - and it's the lowly telemarketers' checks that are going to bounce all over town.