Just a week ago. I listen to a news radio station at work. Repeated story of a particular phone scam all day long. One day later… I start getting that same scam. Went on three days two to four times a day. Seems they were targeting an area during a time frame. Trying to get social insurance number as well as other info.
90% or more are car warranty scams, but one day we got repeated Amazon calls - one every 10 minutes or so.
I finally got so pissed off that I connected to one and started cursing out “Sam” with a heavy Indian accent. He immediately responded in kind. I suspect he was getting cursed out a lot that day.
NoMoRobo seems to be catching them now, haven’t gotten one in a while.
What Scam Phone Calls Do I Get? I’ll have to ask my call blocker.
I told a car warranty caller I owned a 1976 Lincoln Town Car, and he hung up on me. If it’s a scam, why would they care how old my car is?
I have a call blocker as well (through Spectrum), but many still get through.
I don’t get very many scam calls - maybe one a week (I get a ton of advance fee scam emails, but I sort of seek those out for scambaiting), but I do get quite a variety. On the phone, I think I’ve had:
- Your IP address has been stolen by hackers
- The Microsoft Department Of Fixing Computers, to tell me about some malware on my computer
- Your amazon prime will be renewed, are you scared about that and want to cancel it?
- You ordered something on Amazon for a large amount of money, do you want to cancel it?
- (A robot saying) your tax return is invalid and you will be immediately arrested “if unless you don’t press 1”
- A person asking me about loft insulation, but when I ask specific questions, it is clearly a robot as the answers don’t fit
^^I scambait a lot the advance fee scam emails, as well. 
I don’t get the car warranty ones much anymore. I do get:
- Police or firefighter’s bogus charities.
- “Thank you for using Visa, Mastercard, and Discover.” yeah sure, these guys team up ALL the time.
- (I assume they’re speaking in) Mandarin
- “This is your television provider…” Yeah, why don’t you fucking say who the provider is
- Offers to switch my natural gas supplier
“I supply my own natural gas.”
I get very few calls despite answering every one.
The most frequent were the hotel/travel scams. Got those regularly for a few months then they stopped. Recently, I got “swamped” by car warranty calls for my “2014 Jeep Compass with 80,000 miles” (which is my bait car). That went on for a few weeks then abruptly stopped.
I’ve only have had one IRS call, a handful of SSN, no Amazon and a few tech support calls. This over the past couple of years.
< wails > What am I doing wrong? </ wails >
That’s pretty clever. Calls offering to buy my house have surged to about half of all my junk calls.
Too bad putting an “I’m not interested in selling my house” sign on my mailbox wouldn’t be effective at all at curtailing the barrage of mail I get along the same lines.
My phone is bombarded with them, but I answer nary a one. Now, every once in a great while, a scammer will actually leave a message. The last one was the “IRS” telling me that, if I didn’t send in a ton of money, I was going to jail. LOL
The sad thing is that while you and I and everyone here in this thread can spot a scam like that a mile away, it must work enough of the time to be worthwhile for the scammers to keep doing it.
They can probably make 100 such calls in an hour, 800 in an eight-hour shift. If even one dupe falls for it, then it’s a successful business model.
What’s the scam? They offer some a ridiculous amount of money and then try to hook you for a “deposit” or something?
From what I understand they offer you cash for your house, an amount almost too good to be true, but require you to sign/enter in to a contract. They get you on the needed repairs, from what I’m told.
I get a recorded message from the “Department of Energy saving” about 2-3 times a week.
My guess is that many of the people who fall these are elderly people whose mental faculties may not be as sharp as they once were.
While not a phone call, another deceptive business practice was for companies to send out “order forms” that were formatted to look like a bill. IIRC the government started cracking down on that practice because many elderly people were getting them and blindly mailing back a check because they assumed it was a bill for something they’d bought, and winding up with a subscription for some magazine they didn’t want. I still get junk mail like that from time to time, but at least the legit ones will have something like “this is not a bill” in bold type.
I sometimes get junk mail from the “Energy Savings Department” with something like “2022 Efficiency Rebate Information” printed on the envelope in the the exact same colors and font as the PG&E logo. It’s always some flyer trying to sell me a new HVAC system under the guise of being part of some PG&E program (Rebates for energy efficiency improvements are a legit thing, of course, but they only thing the company sending out these mailings has to do with them is that they’re products might be eligible for them). There is always some fine print stating that they’re not affiliated with PG&E.
Like most here, I don’t answer many calls from unknown numbers, and Verizon blocks a bunch anyway. But I do get the occasional political text. Maybe 1-2 week. Always directed to “Hey, Elizabeth.” (I’m a dude). Give money to this Democrat or another. Stop the GOP. Sign up for the progressive rally. Etc. etc. etc. Last year I got a TON of e-mails from some Florida politician “Val Demings.”
I live in Virginia. I’m a Republican. I wouldn’t contribute money to a Florida Republican, much less a Democrat. Let Floridians vote their own damn representatives and leave me out of their business. I’ve gotten so fed up with these texts that I’ve responded a few times that for every text I get from this number, I’m donating $25 to the RNC. I don’t actually do that, but at least I’m trying to make a point. And I swear if I ever saw Val Demings in person, I’d punch him in the face. That’s 90% of my text spam right there.
Only got 3 so far today, 'til 4:30 PM, 9 yesterday. They know I’m often home after 4:30 so I’ve recently been getting a bunch, 4:30 - 6. So, I just got the first one in person, so I picked up (my wired phone) and said nothing. They hung up. Then I laid the handpiece down “off the hook” for about a half hour and that seems to break their cycle. Worked the last couple of days. YMMV