i have an old State Police whistle next to the phone for pesky callers...Finally, she went to Verizon, where they told her there was nothing they could do about it except after looking at the call log, they agreed to change her number for free, normally there's a charge for that.
I wanted to look up the S.O.B. responsible for it and choke him/her to death but had no way of finding the responsible party.
my buddy keeps a compressed air “boat horn” near his phone for calls like this
We can send a man to the moon but we can't stop those F%$#@G telemarketers. (Yes I'm on the do no call list)
I have em call looking for someone, and then tell my I was lying when I told them they had the wrong person.
Some threats to sue them got them to stop.
I only answer calls from people I know. Anyone else gets voice mail, which I can delete with a push of a button. If they want to waste their time calling me, I don’t really care. Not a big problem, but I do have one that continues to call looking for someone whose name I have never heard of.
When a real person finally called me I told the guy that I had this number for years and never heard of the other guy. The phone calls stopped. I was getting 2 robo call every week for months.
With the technology we have today they still can’t allow you to BLOCK numbers??
I usually tell them to hang on - then set the phone down and never come back
That’s why I never answer any restricted or unlisted phone number and just let it go to the message machine.
Research on this debt firm and the billing-firm shows that this is a common issue (fraud).
BTW, as much as I dislike lawyers under normal circumstances, we have used this insurance a couple of times just to understand what the law actually was and have more than recovered what we have paid in to them. Like the time we got an illegal threatening letter from the sheriff, threatening to throw me in jail if I didn't pay a fine that wasn't mine. Nice to get stuff like that out of the blue. Nice to see the clown back down when a law firm called him.
My BIL started getting these calls. After they announced the purpose of the call he would ask them if they were wearing underwear! It must have startled them as they stopped calling him. I swear he said he did this and it worked. LOL.
The worst for me has been recent when I got back to the states and had to get a phone number. The phone number they gave me happened to be a guy who disappeared off the face of the Earth and owes money to EVERYONE! I have gotten so frustrated hearing......please stay on the phone, this is a debt collector.....or whatever they are saying. I wanted to scream. Finally, after just hanging up millions of times, I decided to take the time to talk with all the folks who called and got them to take me off the list as the “loser” who owned this phone number before me is not here. It took some time but it was worth it. Some of those calls I was on hold for 20 minutes.....it was crazy. Now I only rarely get a call from someone asking about the dead beat.
i have an old State Police whistle next to the phone for pesky callers...Baloney.
And robo calls are illegal. Phone company and the government don't care & won't do anything about robo calls. How many of you get daily robo calls from the credit card scammers with spoofed exchange numbers? Like ???-000-????
Get caller ID and don't answer the phone if you don't know them. Turn off your ringer at night.
Another fun thing you can do with bill collectors ( I did it to one). Get their information & a supervisor's name (including a mailing address). Send a FedEx letter to the super stating that you charge $50 an hour consulting fee, billed in 1/2 hour increments. Each call will result in a $25 charge for which you will invoice them (again by FedEx letter). State that if the invoice is not paid in 30 days you will turn them over to collection.
I had one outfit threatening to trash my credit and sue me for a bill that they had no proof of (because I paid the doctor at the time of the visit). They mysteriously stopped sending me letters. I keep it all in a file waiting for them to try it again.
Some times they lied and i would turn it over to legal. Then were taken to court.
I never had to be mean or rude to poeple that were trying to do the right thing, only the peop;le that tried to get out of legitimate debts they didn't feel like paying.
The hones people always wanted to pay off the debts and would bend over backwards for you. So I bent over backwards for them.
There is always at least two sides to every story.
Guys there is an easy way to stop the robo calling.
Step one, get a recording device
Step two, call a disconnected number and record the tone that is played. You only need the tone and none of the rest of the message.
Step three, record a new voice mail greeting by first playing the tone back into the recording pause for a second and then leave your voice mail greeting.
Step four, let these calls go to voice mail
The tone that is played tell the robo call computer that this number is disconnected and is no longer in service. Rather than continue to make calls, the robo will make one more call at a later date and if they get the same tone, will automatically remove your number from the list.
Works every time.
I just moved out of Texas after living there for three years. I got collection agency calls all the time, for Deborah or Bobby Sanders (maybe Saunders). Sometimes, I would tell them that no one by that name lived there; usually, I just wouldn’t answer the phone.
Once, there was a bill for some service that I had not ordered included on my phone bill. I called AT&T about it; they couldn’t do anything about the charge, but they can block third party billing. I then called the company whose service I had not ordered and found out that Deborah Sa(u)nders had ordered the service. They removed the charge.
I highly suspect that Debbie Sa(u)nders had the phone number before I did.
I also received calls trying to collect from someone with my last name, but not nearly as often.
In any case, I’ll never again get a listed phone number.
They never get past my answering machine. If it’s someone that we know, they will leave a message. The only ones that do not leave a message are sales, bill collectors, poll takers, and relatives that want money.
I’ve been getting these calls about once a week for the last 6 months. I’m normally at work at the time and it’s a robo-call recording so there is no one to yell at anyhow. They are looking for my worthless step-brother and I have no idea where he is. I guess they flagged me as next of kin using lexis-nexis or similar. I’ve been meaning to have one of the lawyers I work with call them and tell them to stop but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I know a young man whose name is Mark A. Smith III.
His father’s name is Mark A. Smith II.
His father used Mark A. Smith III’s social security number and credit rating for all kinds of accounts and credit cards. When the father went into default on the loans, he didn’t care, because none of the debt would be tracked back to him, it would be put on the son’s credit rating.
Then the creditors started calling around, to anyone and everyone who knew the son, Mark A. Smith III.
When they called me, I was kind of confused. I knew the son probably hadn’t racked up bad credit or owed anything to anyone. I didn’t say much to the bill collectors. When I contacted Mark’s wife, she was greatly upset. She knew at once what her sleazy father-in-law had done.
They called me a few more times after that. I patiently explained to them that they were looking for the father, not the son. I told them what the father had done to the son.
I also told them to remove my name from their call list. I refused to answer any of their questions.
When I call the wife from time to time to let her know the calls are still happening, she is really embarrassed. I feel badly for her. It isn’t her fault.
It must really be painful to be the son and to know that your father is using your identity and destroying your credit rating at the same time. I feel badly for the son.
When I had a Dallas area code, I had the number of a Mr. Rigoberto Lopez. Mr. Lopez seemed never to pay a bill, and the collection calls would happen non-stop. I first tried to reason with them, then I would ask them to call Verizon and ask for the name on the account, the calls never stopped. When I had enough, and importantly, when I was alone, and a collection call came in I’d just say the most vile things I could think of to the person on the phone. It wasn’t nice, it wasn’t pretty, but the collection calls certainly came to a screeching halt.