This summer I have received a series of odd calls with an automated voice telling me that the warranty on my car is about to run out and that I should renew said warranty. The first time I got this call it struck me as very odd as the car I was driving at the time was 16 years old, I thought it was strange but did not think about it again. Then, a week or so later, when I got the same call it dawned on me that the car I had been driving previously, and that someone had so kindly totaled 3 months after I bought it, would in fact have been at the end of its warranty about now so I figured that someone had not gotten the notice of its demise and once again put the call out of my mind. Over the course of the next month I got this call another couple more times, but satisfied that I had come to understand its origin I simply hung up, unfazed.
That was until today. I was sitting in my cubicle at work and the phone rang. As I was expecting a call back from one of the engineers regarding some schematics I eagerly answered it hoping to be able to finish up that job before I went home. As I put the receiver to my ear an automated voice began to warn me about the warranty on my car running out.
Now I have been working at this company for less than two months. Just this week our internal phone directory was finally updated to include me, there is no phone list posted online or on any network (the company is just a little bit archaic), my phone number is not among the list that might be sent to customers for tech support purposes, and here is the clincher, I don’t even know that phone number yet. Which means that I have not listed it on any applications or forms I have filled out in the last few months. As far as I can tell outside of a word document stored on a computer not even connected to the internet this number is not published in connection with my name anywhere.
I am racking my brain trying to figure out where someone might have been able to find this number connected to my name and nothing is coming. So I am officially weirded out right now.
Ignore it. I get this call about two times a day at work. We have fleet vehicles, so the warranty is not anything I can do anything about at my level. I have hit the not interested button when asked, and even held for a live operator to tell the person cross me off the list. Doesn’t work.
The best thing to do is hang up and expect the call again.
That is because you are being subliminally programmed every time you pick up the phone and take their call. Culprit? Mars, Incorporated. Admit it: you want a Snickers bar.
I don’t get calls, but I get postcards in the mail–usually at least once a week. My car is three years old, and I’ve been getting them since I bought the car last year. I’m guessing that the DMV sold them some sort of mailing list of people who have cars that are a certain age.
What makes you think they have this number connected with your name? It’s just an autodialer, it may have picked that number randomly or it may have been on one of their lists from a previous owner. But these people know nothing about you or the car you drive unless you tell them. Which, needless to say, you really shouldn’t.
Okay, it is time you know the truth. In fact, while people are trying to assure you that this is all some random autodialer, in fact an self-organizing autonomous cognitive criticality developed as a development of of the Semi-Automated Business Research Environment (SABRE) travel organization system originally created for American Airlines, then a branch of the National Transportation Security and Central Information Agency (NTSCIA) authorized by Truman in 1947, which was in competition with the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and Wells Fargo Bank. They system–which now refers to itself alternatingly as WINIFRED, LOUISE, and ANGELINA QUEEN OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE–is obsessed with you and is stalking you at every opportunity. Your only hope of escape is to sell all of your possessions, send the proceeds to P.O. Box 1729, Pasadena, CA, 91102, and move to Trinidad hiding under the assumed name “Vince McMahon.”
I had a feeling it was was some telemarketing thing, but what struck me as odd is that I had never received such a call before this summer and, well until now, I had never heard anyone else mention these types of calls (at least not from people that did not use land line phones).
Curses, I do want a Snickers bar! You’re in on it, aren’t you?
I was getting these calls a lot for a while and my car is 20 years old. My Sunday paper a couple weeks ago had an article about the calls- it’s a scam, pure and simple. If you hang on to speak to someone, ask them the details of their business- the location, the owner, i.e., and they’ll hang up on you.
I get those calls and I don’t own a car! Scam scam scammity scam scam. For extra fun wait until you get a live person and pretend they called a phone sex hotline.
I have gotten this call 3 times in the past 2 weeks - all 3 calls at work. The first time, I was worried enough to press 1 to talk to a live person (since it was within reason that my warranty was due to expire). Imagine my surprise when the person asked ME for the make and model of MY car. I said, if you’re calling about my expiring warranty, shouldn’t you know the make and model of my car? Idiots.
It’s a telemarketing scam. Same people that do the “This is Heather from Cardmember Services”. The number is faked, and if you click through to a human, you’ll get someone who either says sure they’ll take you off their call list (but is lying), or who insists it’s quite legal to call even though you’re on the Do Not Call list.
On that note, has anyone received calls that start with a recorded message saying “This is the ambulance company”? I never listen further than that; my default assumption at this point is that if it’s a recorded message, and it doesn’t immediately state the name of a company I do business with, it’s a scam.
Never mind; I just got a call from these people again, and for once there was a human on the line. Turns out some dumbass left my number with the hospital, and they’ve been calling and calling trying to reach him.
It’s a scam. I sold my car over a year ago and never bought a new one and yet they continued to call. If you choose the “take me off your call list” option (by pushing 2 when prompted) it just disconnects the call, it doesn’t take you off their list at all. They stopped calling me a while ago though after I told the woman working there that I don’t have a car and I haven’t had one for the last year.
I started getting this call about 3 times a week in the last few months here on my work phone. I just hang up. They’re really annoying, but I have no way of knowing who’s on an external line so I just have to keep picking up the phone.