A terrible thing just happened. A nice gentleman called to tell me that the warranty on the car I bought eight years ago from a used car dealer (a nice used Toyota with 195,000 miles) was ABOUT TO EXPIRE! And here I didn’t even realize I had a warranty. Well, when I heard this unwelcome news I could feel my blood freeze in my veins. Oh no, what could I possibly do to avoid this awful fate from befalling me? But like I was saying, this gentleman was very nice. He even offered to help me solve this problem and only required a little basic information from me. Well I was just about to tell him my social security number, checking account number, mother’s maiden name, place of birth, and first pet’s name, as well as recording me saying the words “yes” and “you have my permission”….when I accidently dropped the phone and got disconnected!!! I quickly checked the caller i.d. so I could call back immediately but unfortunately it said “number blocked.” Now it appears that my vehicle’s warranty is going to expire any day now and I don’t know what I can do about it. What should I do?
Sell it quick!
When the guy calls back tell him to suck eggs 
(It’s not a Highlander, is it?)
Dear Christian friend -
I am feeling of great sorrow for your sad and loss. It is of great fortune that I am in possession of USD$1000000 dollars which I must be exporting of my country soonest.
If you respond in dispatch with all necessary detail, such as banking information and email address, I can assure you of happy news when you are receiving much large 10% of this said amount.
Seeing forward to our both satisfaction.
Regards,
Boofoomee Yoomanyoo
Sadly these criminal calls keep happening.
Here in the UK, I’ve regularly had:
- ‘Microsoft’ calling to tell me I have a computer virus
- ‘Insurance company’ calling about my recent car accident
- ‘Credit card company’ calling about suspicious activity on my card
At first I simply hung up.
They kept coming.
So I said “Please hang on, I’ll be right back.” Then left the (landline) phone off the hook and got on with stuff. They usually hung up after 15-20 minutes.
Still they kept coming.
What finally worked quite well was a combination of a ‘do not call’ list and being dramatic to the bstrds:
- I told ‘Microsoft’ I didn’t have a computer, then added “I don’t have a phone either - how are you talking to me?”
- I asked the ‘Insurance company’ if the accident was the one my spouse got beheaded in :eek:
- I play-acted with the ‘Credit card company’ by ringing my front doorbell, asking them to hold on then pretending to answer the door and be loudly murdered by the caller - who then replaced the phone :smack:
AARP has been courting me for 20 years or so. When I’m old enough you wait and see, they’ll be no where. I’ll be ghosted.
Life is tough. I got a call yesterday from a robot featuring a very bad robotic voice. It was some sort of warning about my social security number mumble mumble back taxes mumble mumble legal action being taken against me. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the widely publicized scams about which there was a whole radio documentary recently. But I accidentally dropped the phone, just like you did, and got disconnected. Too bad, I was looking forward to the opportunity to send the government vast sums of money via Bitcoin or possibly Apple gift cards, the two forms of payment widely favored by government tax collectors.
bwahahahahahaha!!!
This morning I had a call from a robotic voice which said it had Urgent Information about My Account. My Account was about to be charged $299 —
At that point I figured I’d given them more than long enough to say what account, exactly, if in fact they had any idea; and I hung up the phone. So I don’t know what they’d have wanted me to do in order to (theoretically) avoid being charged $299; but I did think that odd number was a nice touch.
(Yes, I answer the phone. Somebody I’ve never heard of before might be calling the farm for a legitimate purpose – a would-be customer, for instance.)
No such luck. Judging by my experience, AARP will send you repeated large quantities of junk mail starting when you’re about 40 or 45; they will not stop just because you hit 65, and I very much doubt they’ll stop if I hit 85. I doubt they’d stop if I joined them, either.
One making the rounds today (if you Google the numbers, got two this afternoon) is an IRS scam, lady {allegedly an “government agent”} makes threats about you going to jail (since you ostensibly ignored all of the previous {nonexistent} correspondence) unless you make a payment RIGHT NOW.
I’m sure it will involve gift cards of some sort.
I have a situation very much like the OP’s, and this vehicle warranty expiring that these nice people keep calling me about sounds dreadful. But I was somewhat perplexed because I haven’t owned a car in over five years.
They keep calling me, and I was so confused as to the reason why, and then I realized. They refer to it as a “vehicle warranty”, not a “car warranty”. Therefore, this must concern one of the CTA buses I ride when traveling around Chicago.
But which one?
I ride so many of them. Is it perhaps a Devon 155, or a Broadway 36, or an Outer Drive 147? I would think a 155 would be the most likely answer, since I use it the most, but still it could be that King Drive Number 3 that was making those funny noises when I was on it. But I was only on it for three stops to go to the Wrigley Tower Walgreens. They wouldn’t be calling me about that one, not for three little blocks.
No, wait, it was six blocks because the stops are on alternating blocks.
Should I call the CTA about this? I doubt they would be pleased about this warranty thing, but really, I don’t think I’m responsible for this matter.
I got one of those calls today as well, it showed up as a local number (which I didn’t recognize) so I let it go to voice mail, apparently my “vehicle warranty” is about to expire, I blocked the number and deleted the voice mail
my car is a '12 VW Golf TDI Certified Preowned, 2 year unlimited mileage bumper-to-bumper warranty and 4/140K powertrain/emissions warranty, and I’ve owned it for less than 6 months, so it’s clearly a scam call
these scumbag scammers should be saturation bombed with high-yield thermonuclear devices.
I’ve just now gone and realized that in my last post I called the Wrigley Building the Wrigley Tower. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Do you think I mixed it up with the Trump Tower which looms ominously behind the Wrigley Building? I’d hate to think so.
I’ve just been so preoccupied with this whole bus warranty expiring issue, that I can’t even think straight. Should I ask the bus driver when I get on whether the warranty on his or her bus is up to date? Would they know about that? Would they yell at me for bringing it up? I doubt they would throw me off the bus for asking, but what if they do? It’s been cold outside for weeks, and my coat zipper doesn’t work.
I don’t know what to do…
This has been popular in Australia for a couple of years. They even manage to spoof actual Australian Taxation Office phone numbers as outlined here : Scammers impersonate ATO phone numbers.
And, as you say, ““If the scammers do make contact, they will request payment of a tax debt – usually through unusual methods like bitcoin, gift cards and vouchers. Legitimate ways to pay your tax debt are listed on our website.”
I got two calls this week claiming that my social insurance number was about to be retired due to “fraud money laundering excessive loans”. The robotic lady spoke English with a heavy British accent. I was told that I could prevent my number from being revoked by pressing 1 now, or by calling (long string of digits, spoken/one/by/one, with the word “repeat” somewhere in the middle but the two halves didn’t match, and neither of the resulting numbers was a valid North American number) .
I had a telemarketing call maybe a year ago when I was working in the kitchen and feeling whimsical. Sadly I don’t remember most of the details, but I had a portable phone and strung them along for nearly half an hour while I did some kitchen stuff. I was amazed that no matter how absurd or clueless my responses to their sales pitch, they just plowed right ahead. When they thought they had made the sale they asked for my date of birth so they could do a credit check. I said I didn’t know. They asked to speak to my wife, but I said she had walked out the door last night with two suitcases and I doubted that the bitch was coming back. I think that was finally the point that a little light went on in the brain of the telemarketing doofus. 
These days I usually just don’t answer unknown numbers.
My wife likes to toy with telemarketers, collection agencies, and scammers. Recently she got one of those overdue tax calls. I overheard part of the call when I dropped her off at the office. I drove down the block and got an egg mcmuffin and when I returned to her office 15 minutes later she was still on the phone toying with that schmuck. No one ever said being a scammer was a glamorous or easy profession. What I don’t get is why it takes the scammers so long to hang up. I mean it should be pretty evident in a minute or two that someone is yanking your chain, and yet these bozos stay on the line scrapping their hearts out on the vain hope they’re going to extract money from your wallet.
Hey, the going rate is a 50-50 split!
But wait! If your social insurance number is retired that means that the Straw Man Corporation Heracles that was formed when said social insurance number was first issued has been liquidated, and Teh Governments would no longer have any way of forcing you, HERA;CLES, a Natural Born Common Law Sovereign Human Being, to pay any taxes and you would no longer have to have a driver’s license or anything like that. (See The Magna Carta and the Uniform Commercial Code.)
So I would strongly advise that you not press 1 or call any number or do anything else to prevent this “social insurance number retirement” thing from going through.
Ohhhh…you’re goooood!
Another trick to add toyour repertoire:
Tell the caller you need to replace the battery in your hearing aid, then walk off and leave the phone!
~VOW
Over they years, I’ve tried to be upbeat about scam telephone calls. “Eventually,” I thought, “Everybody will recognize them and stop responding. They will taper off in frequency and we’ll all be happy again.”
Not so. I’ve just seen two recent news articles about the scam calls from “grandchildren” in trouble. The most recent was about a nice retired lady who got a call from someone claiming to be her grandson. He was heading to a doctor’s appointment. Ooops! It seems he hit a woman walking along the road. Now he needs $10K for a lawyer. Anyway, there were subsequent requests for money to settle, for money to get another lawyer, for money to get the car repaired, etc. Within ten days, she had sent $70K to the scammers by bank transfers.
I try to be a nice person and sympathize with the unfortunate, but the lady appeared to be relatively intelligent and not in the throes of ALZ or anything. How do people fall for this sort of thing?