It seems to me that they are completely fraudulent. I also suspect they are hijacking or spoofing legitimate telephone numbers. Can the government trace them and go after these jerks? If not, why not?
The call centers aren’t in the US. I’ve also had some who ask for a different person so they can pretend they misdialed.
Robo sales calls are illegal in the States unless you’ve already authorized the company to contact you in that manner.
NY Times Magazine Story on Call Centers. That has a lot of good information on how they work.
BTW, what is the scam here? I’ve never responded to one of these, though I notice that they don’t say who they are or what connection they have to your car (presumably none.)
During the call – which often begins automated or pre-recorded – you may be instructed to press a certain number or stay on the line, then asked to provide personal information, which potentially can be used to defraud you.
What makes it particularly hard to discern if this type of call is fraudulent is that the scammer may have specific information about your particular car and warranty that they use to deceive you into thinking they are a legitimate caller.
That link also includes information on filing a complaint:
You can file a complaint with the FCC about suspected scam calls. In addition to being fraudulent in nature, these calls likely violate telemarketing and robocall rules. (See our guide on Stopping Unwanted Calls.)
While the FCC does not award individual damages to consumers, your complaint may help us identify scammers and take appropriate action. In some cases, the FCC can issue warning citations and impose fines against companies who are violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
Or are aware if you even have one. Saying you don’t – which is true for us – gets rid of individual calls right quick.
Legally, it’s not a warranty. That comes from the manufacturer. They’re actually selling a service contract which either is next to impossible to collect on or it doesn’t exist. Since they’re likely outside of the US, you have no recourse and likely your credit card gets maxed out.
The ones I’ve dealt (scambaited) with require a payment up front with the contract needing 3-5 days to be emailed or up to 14 days by snail mail.
One of the giveaways is I give them a fake name and non-existant car and yet they find my “file” within seconds.
They will claim to provide a payment plan yet rather than taking your bank info for a monthly auto-payment, they want a credit card number.
I pressed the number to talk to the rep the other day. They asked for the make, model and year of my car. I told them that it was a 1959 Renault Dauphine. They hung up.
Heh. I may do that and say 1928 Porter.
I can identify these calls by the first sentence, so I just hang up: “This is a call for the vehicle owner” Yeah, right, you don’t even know my name.
I might start reporting the calls to the FCC now that I’ve been reminded that option exists. It might be a waste of time, but I’d like to think I’d be contributing to moving “make changes that could crush these a-holes” up the priority lists of the FCC and congress.
Let’s not start with the “Yo Momma” jokes.
I was getting all sorts of scam calls. Car warranty, Social Security, you name it.
I fucked with those people something horrific. Wasted their time, asked extremely vulgar questions, you name it. And I had a lot of fun doing it.
After about a week all of the calls stopped. All of them. I haven’t gotten a single scam call in a long time.
This is more IMHO, but the only extended warranties worth buying are from the manufacturers themselves. And be sure you know exactly what the warranty covers and that you can take your vehicle to any one of their dealers to get it serviced.
As mentioned before, the warranties the telemarketers are selling are either nonexistent and you just lose your payment, or are based in foreign countries and you have no legal recourse when they refuse to pay your claim, ergo you also lose your payment.
The legit warranties are usually a service contract or insurance policy. But unless it’s an extension of the original warranty and provided by the cars manufacturer I’d avoid them. I had one on a car I had and it was an absolute pain in the nuts to get them to pay anything even though it was specifically covered. There were a zillion hoops to jump through. They demanded you get preauthorization before any repairs were made. One time the car broke down on a Friday night and I was hundreds of miles from home. Their offices weren’t open to get authorization until Monday. I got the car fixed on Saturday morning at a dealer that was covered by the warranty but they refused to pay for it because they didn’t pre-approve it. They’d rather I be stranded for 3 days. Or they would demand all this weird paperwork and duplicate forms and any part had to be exact with certain part numbers and such. Whoever repaired your car got pissed because you kept calling them for more information that the warranty service insisted on. I’m guessing that they hoped you would give up and just pay it yourself.
Agree they’re generally ripoffs at best and outright frauds at worst. And any one sold by a telemarketer especially so. OTOH, I bought a non-factory warrantee/service contract on my last vehicle after it ran out of the new car / factory warrantee.
That deal has paid off handsomely for me. The company pays and pays promptly. My 3rd party shop deals with them directly so I don’t need to. I would definitely buy that product again. If they had a brain they wouldn’t sell me one except at a much higher price; they’ve definitely lost money on me.
I’d be afraid to do that. Now, yeah, they’re only after money, but there are HELLISH ways to hurt someone in the information age. Post your phone number to one of those revenge groups, and your phone will not stop ringing for entire weeks. I know someone who got targeted that way. They even got a visit from an FBI agent to try to help, but the situation was beyond help. So, yeah, fun to fuck with 'em, but I’d always be afraid of what they might do in revenge.
To be clear- the only extended warranties MAYBE worth buying are from the manufacturers themselves. CU sez not worth it, but ymmv.
I’ve been getting these calls that go straight to my voicemail even when my phone is on. I suspect they somehow found a way to circumvent my call block which is what I do whenever one calls me.
Meh. They had no idea who I was. The number was just randomly generated and they routinely asked for some name I never heard of when they asked for a name at all. And my personal information is very guarded. I’m both a public employee and a business owner and it’s extremely difficult to find anything about me anywhere on the web. Even my vehicles and properties I own are set up under a trust with my name nowhere to be found on their titles. I have a Facebook page that I almost never post to and 99% of my friends are relatives who live in Europe. That page is the only thing I can find online that has any personal information on me.
And the phone they were calling was a cheap Straight Talk flip phone, not my home number or business line. It wouldn’t affect me much to change the number on it if things got out of hand.
So I am going to continue to mess with them if they call back. The pleasuring doing so is worth the risk.
I myself sometimes mess with telemarketers/scammers. I never begin with vulger stuff, but they frequently do. The other day I got one of these “you have a charge at Amazon.com” scam calls. I went through a lot about how it might be legit for all I know (“I’m a very wealthy guy and $349.99 is not an amount I would necessarily remember”) and what exactly did I buy (“iPhone 6? I want to upgrade to an iPhone 11”) etc. etc.
After a while, the guy got the idea that I was messing with him. The following ensued:
Him: Do you want my dick?
Me: Can you repeat that? (The guy’s accent was bad, so I wasn’t sure he had said that.)
Him: Do you want my dick in your mouth?
Me: Not sure. How big is it?
Him: Very big. Much bigger than your dick.
Me: OK, why don’t you come over and I’ll check it out?
Him: Once you have my dick in your mouth, you’ll never forget it.
Me: OK, so come over and we’ll see.
A bit more of that involving my mother, but I continued playing along and he hung up.
But I don’t think I’ll get off the list of scammees. This type of thing has happened many times before and nothing changes. These people don’t keep lists of targets. It’s not worth their while.
I recently started getting these several times a week on my smartphone and they curiously all use the same exchange, which makes them really easy to spot.