Question:
Dear Steve,
These same asshole jerkoffs call my cell and home phone daily. They even call at 2:00 in the a/m. My boyfriend called some of the numbers, and finally, someone answered.
She had a like Vietnamese accent, and he couldn’t understand her. When she told him they were not at liberty to give their address, she hung up.
Who the hell are these people. I wish the scam gods would come down and wipe them all out, kind of like a DELETE.
How can we get them?
Jackie
Answer:
Dear Jackie,
I’m not sure what I can tell you about hit and run scammers. There isn’t much you can really do to protect yourself from a potentially fraudulent entity that won’t play by the rules.
Call centers and telemarketing boiler rooms pop up as quickly as they start to generate people’s anger and regulator attention.
The likely answer to who they are is either a scammer trying to extract money out of you or a legitimate collector that doesn’t appear to know how to operate professionally.
I’m leaning towards the scam side of the scale here.
As consumers, we are left to fend for ourselves. The solutions rank from easy to implement to really hard.
On the easy side, you can just don’t answer the calls and let them all go to voicemail. Or you can leave your phone in do not disturb while letting favorites or people in your contacts to get through. I agree it is an inconvenience because it changes your normal habits.
On the opposite end of the scale is the effort to chase down exactly who it is that is calling when they won’t tell you. They are probably using a spoofed number, and that number will regularly change. They may also be located outside of the United States and calling over the internet.
A reasonable solution would be to at least check your credit report here and see if there is any account that might be in default that would be a legitimate reason for someone to call.
However, the fact they are calling at 2 AM indicates that the caller is a scammer and may be operating in a foreign timezone.
And if you feel motivated to implement some sort of more medium level solution, you could always change your telephone number, give that one only to friends and people you trust, and then get a Google Voice or burner telephone number to use for every other situation. That way when scammers start pounding the burner number you can change it as often as you need to.
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Question asked.
Jackie. I agree. It is very annoying.