This has happened now three times. The phone rings, a voice says, “This is a recorded message. Your Visa card was used this morning for two purchases of $400 and $1300. We think there is something suspicious about these purchases. To accept these charges, press 1, to deny them press 2.” So I press 2 and the voice says, “Please stay on the line for further questions.” The first time I hung up and called the bank. They told me it was a scam and there were no charges. The next two times I stayed on the line and they immediately hung up.
What is going on here. I was prepared to give my name as Alfred E. Neumann and date of birth as April 1, 2020 and a totally random CC number, but they hung up.
Their war dialers probably had more people waiting to talk to them than they had to answer the phones. If they have 10 people in their call center and suddenly have 15 live calls, 5 are going to get dropped.
That’s also my guess. The time of a human call centre operator is by far the most expensive cost item in the whole scheme, compared to the calls themselves and the robot that places umpteen calls simultaneously, which cost close to zero. So the “press 1, press 2, wait for further questions” routine was simply a way to buy time and keep you on the line while the robot is waiting for a human operator to become available to take over the call. When this didn’t happen, they simply hung up.