What Hal said.
When you tell them the model of your copier, then they have familiarity with your office machines. They have your name. So the type up an invoice with your name, saying you ordered toner for X model copier.
You get a free toner cartridge, sure. And a dozen more for 300% more than you can buy them for at any any office supply house, and an invoice with your name and the model number of your copier. Some people catch this and send them back. They are only out shipping. Some people keep the toner and don’t pay, they are out a few $$ in toner. Some pay the invoice since it’s the correct toner and never bother to check prices. They make some good profit.
We get calls about magazine subscriptions for trade magazines. 3 free copies, then a bill for $495/year for the other 3 copies.
Flourescent light bulbs. Toner. Fax machines, typewriter ribbons, packing tape or other shipping supplies, you name it. It’s becoming a real PITA. The girls in the office just transfer the calls to me (I do some purchasing, but none of what the scammers are selling). They don’t call back after visiting with Duke.
Ah, so it’s not diabolically clever at all, just taking advantage of beaurocracy. Thanks, I can now go back to being confused by The Spanish Prisoner.
On preview, what Duke of Rat says. Also check out the ftc link I posted (this one) - it explains it fairly well, and tells you what to do about it if you get hit.
I just signed up for a free magazine subscription…Should I be concerened? If so, should I be happy that I gave them the company the name of another staff person?
I have two cousins in law enforcement in Maine (different branches). They both told me that none of these schemes are legitimate. If the police want to raise money, they do it themselves where they are highly visible; they don’t farm it out to private groups. The litmus test is to ask them to send you something through the mail. They can’t commit lies to print or they will be prosecuted for mail fraud, so they offer to pick up the check in person. That’s really the red flag.
If they do send you something, the dirty secret of their enormous percentage is in fine print on the back of their literature. Hitting spouses of cancer victims seems to be one place where this occurs; my father donated money to one of these groups. Later he read the fine print; about $1 of his $100 contribution actually benefitted cancer research.
My dad loves the office suppy scammers. He can usually keep them on the phone for about 3 or 4 mins before they hangup
Sir, do you need any ribbons?
Ribbons? Like for my hair?
No, cash register ribbons?
We don’t use cash registers? We use calculators?
Oh, well then how about some batteries for them?
For what?
For the calculators?
What Calculators
.
.
.
.
and on and on it goes
But I always loved the “Ribbons, like for my hair” line.
I have heard that some police organizations have supported these (in the past). The scammer would go to them and tell them they’ll raise money for them. After the time is up, the cops get a few thousand dollars and are thrilled – it’s money for nothing.
However, people have donated 10-20 times that money, which goes to the “fundraisers.”
I think police are wise to it now.
It’s not just the police, but even charities that do contract out for their fundraising don’t get most of what you donate. A friend of mine worked for a company that did telemarketing for charity and told me what happens. The charity and the company setup a contract that they will raise X dollars for that charity. So the company raises 8-10 times that amount, sends them the contracted amount and the rest is profit (after expenses). Legal and all, but still not cool in my book.
The last time I received a call to donate for the local sheriff’s association, I asked about the breakdown of the expenditures. When they said that only 15% goes to the sheriff’s association (the rest is kept by the fundraising company), I said I’d stop by the sheriff’s office and drop off a check.
Uh oh,
I remember a few years back someone selling magazine subscriptions by phone that were dirt cheap. Of course they like to gloss over the monthly processing and mailing fees they like to tack on. Something like $6-$10 a month.
The other one of this ilk is when you own a domain name. In my last company, my accountant got a very posh and governmental-looking invoice from an organization called something like “The Federal Domain Name Registry of America Inc.”. It was on heavy, watermarked paper, and had a big crest with an eagle and a stars and stripes, and had some (presumably genuine) legal stuff on it about federal crimes for non-declaration of certain details about domain name ownership. I had a quick look and found that it was actually a form to re-register your domain with the commercial enterprise called TFDNROA, Inc. for $150 instead of the $12 we were already paying to our registrar. If we hadn’t been located in Ireland, and therefore immune from the hammer of US federal legislation, we might have fallen for it.
My husband runs a one-man business. I used to answer his phone, and various toner scam people called several times a week. I soon got tired of talking to them, so I would just hang up as soon as anyone called asking about anything related to toner, copiers, or fax machines.
One of the people I hung up on got really mad about my having been rude to him. He called back and demanded to speak to “the manager.” I hung up on him again. He called back a third time and shouted “I f*cked your daughter!” :rolleyes:
And here I thought it was just me.
The first time such a rep called, she immediately asked, “Are you near your company printer? Can you tell me the model number?”
Now, we are in the middle of an IT consolidation / systems upgrade, so I get a lot of legitimate calls like these from our headquarters for the past few weeks. Hence, I didn’t think much of her lack of pleasantries or introductions. I tell her the model number of our network printer. She replies, “We have an overstock of toner cartridges for your model printer. Would you like to purchase some at a discount?”
I thought to myself, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? This isn’t the IT department. I basically said, “No, we’re not interested” many different ways before she hung up.
The next day, I get another call. Same woman, freakin’ same line: “Are you near your company printer? Can you tell me the model number?”
I almost explozzuled. “You already called yesterday. We don’t wany any.” She hung up.
Can’t believe that this scam is so prevalent …
Shh, I’m trying to keep a low profile. 
Ha! I used to work for a Canon copier dealer, so I was extremely aware of how common this scam is. We actually used to bundle leaflets with every supply order warning people about it.
Still, we’d frequently get calls from purchasers who were upset about “us” calling them to sell them consumables that were covered by their service contract. Some of the people who do this went so far as to send out counterfeit supplies for their “orders” – any old toner repackaged in empty tubes that would fit in the specified model, but was incompatible. (Differences in expected granularity and electrostatic charge make it a huge hassle if you put the wrong toner in the machine – it won’t work, and you’ll need an expensive service call before you can get up and running again.) Sometimes this would come to our attention because people would realize that something wasn’t right about it when they were looking at it, but more often we’d just get frustrated people saying that their machine was broken and the tech would figure it out when he got there.
We’d also get people calling and complaining about over- and double-billing, because we were the only commercial Canon dealer in the area and if the scammer needed product to send to their marks, they could only get it from us. All of the toner we sold had our branded packing tape on it, so our number was usually still on the package when they received it.
I can fill you in a little further on that. As a legit dealer, we required a serial number to initiate an order. This is because supplies were supplied (or discounted) by contract with many machines. To add insult to injury, the scammers would very frequently misrepresent themselves as our clients. The contact name, company name, and serial number they got from the mark? To get the toner, they’d turn around and use the same information to place a pick-up order with us – so the order would either be marked on the victim’s contract usage record or they’d receive an invoice from us as well.
We spent a huge amount of time dealing with problems from this scam and its variants. Discreetly marking packages from all pick-ups and cash sales with sales order numbers so we could identify supplies that ended up in hinky situations, order verification procedures when caller ID wasn’t available, flags in the system when a customer’s usage apparently spiked, stuff like that.
People are dicks.
I wish we could mess with phone scammers like this, but my bosses are way too uptight. All vendor calls have to be transferred to the receptionist. They never let us have fun. :: pouts ::
I used to tell the telemarketers that called to convince me to switch phone companies that I didn’t have a phone.
Barbara
I can’t believe you’d hang up on your son-in-law like that.
A real magazine or a trade rag? The trade rags are legit. But they sometimes get desperate. My old title had the abbreviation DFT in it, which got expanded, incorrectly, into Drafting. So I get calls all the time from Industrial design rags, no matter how much I tell them I don’t do that. They sell ads based on circulation - though they do qualify subscribers they don’t try very hard.