Friday, June 19, 2009

Quieting the Cold Calls

I can almost sympathize with the individuals mentioned in the media who received so many pestering calls they eventually relented, and refinanced or took out equity. I have heard that when there is a NOD, owners receive a flood of calls and offers of services.

In the last week or so, we have received numerous calls fishing for loan or credit card problems. We don't have trouble with either, hence I assume they are fishing. But if they are fishing, then that means they are violating the Do Not Call registry rules, since they aren't calling related to a company we do business with.

One time I humored them and got connected to a series of people offering to help. Of course they wanted all kinds of personal information. It's hard to believe people would actually give this type of information to a cold caller, but I supposed when you are desperate, emotion tends to win out over reason.

If you resent getting telemarketing calls at 6am the way I do, you can sign up for the do not call registry here. To be fair, we disconnected our number and reconnected the same number at the new house, so it could be our number was taken off the registry.

4 comments:

Paul said...

I seriously doubt the scammers and predators worry too much about violating the laws regarding the do not call list.

PeonInChief said...

Two things may be happening. The first is that someone is in hot pursuit of your personal information, and they're looking for people who will give up their Social Security numbers to total strangers who call on the phone.

The second scheme that's going around is that some real bottom-feeder debt collectors have purchased really old defaulted accounts and are trying to hunt down the collectee. This involves calling the people who now live at their phone numbers/addresses--phone numbers and addresses that the debtor hasn't had for about ten years.

Anonymous said...

Last week I had one call me and they slipped up and said I was on the 'do not call' list instead of saying I was on a list of expired listings.

I thought it was pretty funny and tried to be nice...everyone is just trying to make a living.

Buying Time said...

Most of them are robo-calls, that then ask you to press a number to be connected to a live human.