scantrontb wrote:oh, yeah... i get those A LOT... and i can't just block ONE number because they use a DIFFERENT NUMBER EACH TIME!!! ARGGGHH!!!.... and if you listen thru the automated crap to get to the real person, then as soon as you say anything contrary to the script, THEY hang up real quick, so that they never have to actually hear you tell them to NOT call anymore... therefore legally they can still call you because you haven't told then NOT TO!>
If you've put your phone number on the Federal "Do Not Call" list, they aren't supposed to be making commercial calls to you at all. Commercial callers are required to check the DNC list, and filter out all of the numbers that are listed on it.
Not that this will stop them. Nor will telling them not to call, or to put your name on their own do-not-call list, or cussing at them when they do call. They simply don't care.
These are scammers. They're criminals. They're liars and thieves. Many of them operate from outside the U.S., making them largely immune to U.S. law and law enforcement.
Reportedly, the "Rachel, from Card Services" mass-caller isn't just one outfit. There's a "turn-key" package of software that can be bought which runs the bulk-calling part of this scam, and a whole bunch of different scam-gangs have bought copies and run this scam (using different call-back numbers).
From what I've heard, a lot of the actual humans you might speak with during these scams are poor and ill-educated... they've been hired to sit in "boiler rooms" and make these sorts of calls. One posting I read, said that these people are often hired on a "quota and commission" basis... with the quotas for "successful calls" set so high that the callers almost never get quota, and often don't get paid. They quit, the gang-heads hire another batch of ignorant suckers to make the next few weeks' worth of calls... lather, rinse, repeat.
The "sales slime" calls come in at home so frequently that they drive my wife into a serious state of annoyance - she often turns off the phone ringer during the day because she's getting multiple "ring, no answer" calls from scammers every hour.
The only defense I've found that helps, is an active-denial offense. Her business line comes in over VoIP, to an Asterisk PBX server I run. I've scripted it so that any calls from outside our local area codes goes to a "holding pen" and the caller has to sit there for 20 seconds or so before the server will start ringing her office phone. Most of the nuisance callers hang up before the timer expires.
I wish I could do that for our land-line as well, but I want to keep it on a standard hard-copper land line rather than switching to VoIP - it'll still work during a power outage or a bad storm, while Internet-based calling is more fragile.