Fuck "Online Pharmacy." Rectally. Sans Lube. Repeatedly. (or: rant about annoying scammers with me)

The BBQ Pit
1

Every single goddamned day, our office gets no less than 5 calls from “Online Pharmacy.” Yes, that’s what they call themselves. I hate to be this guy, but the call center is clearly somewhere deep within India, because all of the telemarketers who call are heavily accented (“You want Val-ee-um?”) and while I can understand them, they can’t seem to understand me very well.

A random telemarketing call here or there I can deal with, but these people call over and over and over. And if you ask to be taken off their calling list, they literally laugh at you. They’ll pretend you’ve placed orders with them before. If you insist they remove you from the list, they’ll get their “manager” who will then laugh at you and call you a bitch. Literally.

I know what you’re thinking: “Diosa, you dumb ass, why don’t you just not answer when they call?” I can’t do that, this is my office line and we do sometimes get legitimate calls from 800 lines. “Fine, Diosa, that’s all well and good, but why don’t you hang up the minute you realize it’s your friends at the Online Pharmacy?” I’ve done that. They just call back 10 minutes later. And an hour later. And an hour after that. All day. “Get on the Do Not Call list then, duh.” Businesses can’t do that. “Ok, I get it now, Diosa. Why don’t you just use your Jedi mind powers to blow them up through the phone?” Because I don’t have Jedi mind powers, Doper. What a stupid thing to suggest. Someday. Someday.

I’ve tried blocking them, but they use some sort of 800 number spoofer, so it changes every goddamned, taint licking time. The caller ID just says “800 Services” when they call, too. I’ve reported them to all the relevent agencies, but nothing changes. The calls never, ever fucking stop.

Today, I messed with the girl for a minute, so I could get a new phone number from her to report.

Her: Hi. This is Martha from the Online Pharmacy. I need to talk to [random name not associated with anyone here].
Me: What’s your website again?
Her: We have no website. Not calling from website, calling from phone.
Me: But you’re from the Online Pharmacy?
Her: Yes!
Me: Online like, the place with websites?
Her: Yes!
Me: So, what’s your website address?
Her: We have no website. Not calling from website, calling from phone.
Me: Ok. Fine. What’s your phone number?
Her: (asking someone next to her) 877-688-9376. We are running a special promotion for holidays, miss! We can offer you Oxy or Valium, whatever it is you happen to like, miss.
Me: I don’t take drugs.
Her: These are not drugs, they are pills! You don’t want Valium?

About this time, I hung up. I reported them to various agencies again, but I know that’ll do no good. So, here I am whining to you guys.

So, go ahead and whine about your grievances, too. Let us fester our hate and send it to that Indian call center telepathically. Jedi-ily.

2

Just tell them that you’re getting the person they’re looking for and put them on hold. The goal should be to try to waste more of their time than they do of yours. (Unless they’re calling an 800 number, which would cost you money. In that case, your best bet is to overwhelm them with mind boggling profanity).

3

When did they stop making police whistles and air horns?

4

All fantastic ideas, but I’m in an office and this is our main business line. So, tying it up by putting them on hold indefinitely means our real clients might have trouble getting through. Cursing and air horns may work from time to time, but usually someone else in the office is on the phone with the IRS, so they probably don’t need to hear me hate speeching in the next room :wink:

5

There’s been a resurgence of calls from those fuckheads – also from call centers in India – claiming to be calling from Microsoft Technical support hitting my workplace. Instant hang-up; not even worth the time to mess with. The only good thing about them is that they tend to get verbally abusive when frustrated, so hopefully that keeps their scamming success rate low. (I know, wishful thinking.)

6

Yeah and if you do happen to order anything from just about ANY “online pharmacy”, your credit card will get charged for the most unbelievable things. Even the seemingly legit (if any of them can be considered to be) ones in Canada have been a nightmare for me: $400 charged from Russia once and my CC was frozen while that sorted out.

7

Heck, tell them you’re thinking about placing a big order but you’d like some free sample packs first.

8

“Canadian Pharmacy” is the #1 brand amongst scammers and spammers.

9

Get a copy of PhoneTray Free. When they call, block their number (and anyone else you don’t want to here from). From then on (with the free version) only one ring will get through and then your modem will pickup and hang up on the call, that’s the end of it.
Of course if they use a different number each time it’s a little trickier, but I’ve found that even people that do that, eventually get around to using the same batch of numbers.

Eventually they may stop if the think your number is dead.

11

Reported.