These calls have been widespread for years. They’ve largely ruined an entire system of infrastructure. It is now more common for a lot of people to get scam calls than real calls. Why isn’t anything being done about it? Why don’t we execute these people, or block them from using the system? Why can’t the phone companies simply block a line from making calls once they know it’s being used for scams and spam?
Why are they able to put out fake caller ID numbers? Shouldn’t the phone company tell us what number a call is from, rather than letting the caller send the info and lie? This is a major technical failure and it seems they’re never going to fix it.
That’s a work of art. I watched a few of them - is it exactly the same long Lenny recording every time (it seemed like maybe it was), or is it someone operating a Lenny soundboard?
I suddenly started getting 3-5 of these calls every day on my cell phone, coincidently a couple of days after contacting a national roofing company and giving them my cell phone number which I had just started giving to non-personal friends. We just stopped using the house phone. There is zero doubt in my mind that this company and the suddenly calls are related.
Half the calls are a dead line. Half the rest are from “Helen at cardholder services.” Rachael, who used to call the house a lot, seems to have retired. There are computers pretending to be humans. They laugh then lie if you ask if they are human and they hang up if you press the point and they are getting good.
I go out of my way to attempt to get a human on the line. On probably 80% of the calls there is no possibility of even reaching whatever point the caller wanted. I press 1 to talk to a representative and most of the time they hang up before I get another choice. I call back and the line is disconnected. Very rarely I get a hit, usually with a very strong accent. They always want information before they will supply more than a vague company name, like ‘cardholder services’ and hang up at the least resistance.
A collection of phrases that apart from the start,
“Helloo, this is Lenny.”
“Sorry, I can barely hear you there.”
are somewhat (?) arbitrarily strung in different sequences.
The files are/were available on this Reddit thread and one chap cut them into mp3s and put them on a, as you say, soundboard for people to freely use.
*Want to talk to Lenny, or transfer/conference a telemarketer in with him? If you use VoIP and can call a SIP URI, he can be reached at sip:13475147296@in.callcentric.com. Or you can call him at 1-347-514-7296. (Prank calls to this number are not allowed. Lenny is for incoming, telemarketing calls only - not for annoying innocent people.)
* Lenny, the bot that tricks telemarketers
I wouldn’t mind rolling my own, since I only have a landline for broadband and virtually never answer it, but lack the tech skills. Auto-transfer is something offered by most phone providers.
In one way it’s wrong, cos they are people; but it’s like advertising: most of them degrade the common experience without malicious intent.
And I’m sure the people who say those who use ad-blockers, or don’t watch TV commercials, are thieves will come up with reason we should hear all calls out as the price of the system.
I don’t know anyone who has actually agreed to purchase vacation rentals…lower c.f. interest…go on acruise…etc. how do these companies actually profit from scam calling if no one buys what they are selling? I just hang up!
If your return from suckers is only .01%, you need to make *a lot *of calls. Apparently, that is exactly what is being done.
If my phones are being called every day by the some source, sometimes more than once, the scammer must be making thousands of calls per hour. One of those must bite, or they wouldn’t be in business.
The British government has just made it illegal for people to cold-call pensioners offering to invest the latters’ pensions. Which led to some of them losing their pensions. It being the nature of risk to have the caveat that giving your money to complete strangers means assets can go down as well as up.
So cold-calling is a vital part of the economy for crooks.
A few years back, with enormous self-congratulation from themselves and the admiration of the thatcherite financial pages, the British government deregulated the management of pensions to allow pensioners to decide their own investments, since who knows better than individuals how to look after their own affairs ?