The phone rings and in answering I learn I'm speaking with a telephone solicitor raising money for THE fire department.

I remembered reading recently, here I believe - thank you RFM, about several of the least scrupulous telemarketing fundraisers in America being owned by even less scrupulous Mormons taking generous Americans for a ride by taking advantage of our collective good will. But, not today.

So this extremely well spoken man starts in on his pitch about raising money for THE fire department and I'm thinking, "aren't most fire departments on their own budgets? Do they split what little they actually give after expenses equally between the thousands of firehouses across America? Or do they just choose one or two fire houses and give them the pittance? I really didn't want to hear it because listening to lies makes me very edgy.

So I interrupted his spiel and said, "hey look, I just don't support organizations like yours that take in money for good and decent things like the fire departments and then actually give them almost nothing, keeping most of the money for themselves."

It was fascinating. He immediately went from Mr. Concerned Niceguy to Mr. I-Expect-You-To-Do-As-I-Say-Anyway A$$hole. He literally raised his voice to shouting level and yelled at me, "a LOT OF GOOD IS DONE WITH THE MONEY WE GIVE THOSE GUYS!"

He then immediately regained his composure and said, "So! Can we don't on you for just fifteen dollars?"

I responded that he couldn't count on me to give him ten cents. And with that I couldn't take any more and hung up the phone on this Jekll and Hyde telemarketing scammer.

So, once again, thanks to the good folks at RFM I was aware of yet another group of Mormon scammers which prevented me from becoming prey - at least for today.

Typo - "So, can we COUNT on you for just fifteen dollars?"

It's amazing to see the true nature of those people when you call them on their bluff. Sorry you were treated like that in your own home.

What's the odds of this being a scam??? It's been done before....

When my oldest son was finishing his growing up years in Provo, he worked for one of these outfits. I think he got a pretty healthy percentage of each donation he could con out of the phone mark. He liked the money but hated the job. And of course the owner was mormon.

My advice is to get a call blocker. At the first sign that the call isn't legit (or just isn't someone or group you want to talk to) hit the call blocker and poof, the call is hung up on and the number is blocked. Don't waste your time talking to them.

They claim to be police or firefighters but they're likely lying.

Some local areas don't use taxes for this purpose, so the caller should be glad to mail you proof of this. I suspect any fast talking stranger who phone me asking for money.

An elderly lady I know got conned for months by a similar group claiming to work for the police department. She had been giving money out of her meager Social Security because she was afraid the police would pull her over and ticket her, or worse, if she didn't, as if they had some sort of list of people who refused to give.

When she finally asked one of the callers where he was located and a few other questions at my urging, he admitted they were in another state, but then did the same thing as your "fire department" scammers--yelled and belittled her, and made veiled threats. It took a lot of talking to convince her that they had no real connection to her local police and that nothing bad would happen if she just hung up on him. I bet these scumbags make a lot of their money intimidating older people.

I work at a place that captions telephone calls for the deaf and hard of hearing. A great many of the clients are elderly. These types of scams are a good percentage of the calls we caption.

We can't legally add anything to the conversation so I try to send a mental message that the call is a scam and always cheer when the clients hang up on the scammers.

Abigail Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I work at a place that captions telephone calls
> for the deaf and hard of hearing. A great many of
> the clients are elderly. These types of scams are
> a good percentage of the calls we caption.
>
> We can't legally add anything to the conversation
> so I try to send a mental message that the call is
> a scam and always cheer when the clients hang up
> on the scammers.

This is a very interesting insight on some situations encountered by captioning operators. Thank you for sharing this.

I use CAPTEL and CAPTION CALL captioning services with captioned phones for work/home, but I'm not one of the elderly people yet, though.

Thank you for your services for us!

I won't say which one I work for, but I hope we serve you well. We very much try to caption correctly and are tested weekly to make sure we are doing a good job. It isn't always easy with accents, bad connections, or fast talkers.

There's one thing to remember- you are holding a telephone in your hand, and not a person. You can drop it, hang it up, leave it on the table while they spew their line, or ignore it.

Your experience is typical, however. They get really angry if you try to say no to them. At the same time, you won't be the first person that has hung up on them so there is no reason to put up with an unwelcome phone call. It's just a piece of plastic with an annoying noise coming out of it.

One of the people I knew used to answer all calls they were home to hear the ringing bell. Their response to anyone who either wouldn't identify or asked for someone (in their home or not) was to put the receiver down, yell, "(person being asked for) the Phone's for you!" Then they'd walk away. Only once was somebody still on the line 15 minutes later.

We get a number of calls around supper time from charities associated with fire departments in Alberta soliciting money for a variety of causes...and I interrupt the caller and tell him/her to please take us off their phone list and hang up. We never donate to a phone solicited cause.

Ron Burr

+++++

We no longer have a landline, so I just hang up when they call my cell. My stock answer always (without exception) was:

"I'm sorry, we NEVER respond to telephone solicitations. Have a nice day." Hangup.

They might squeeze in "This isn't a solicitation." and I always just gave them the broken record repeat of the "I'm sorry, we never.... Occasionally I might add, "Please don't call again."

If you don't engage at all, it works really well.

I got a phone call saying that I was to be arrested in the morning. He asked if I had a good lawyer. I proceeded giving him a list of lawyer names and what they specialize in. I even gave him the name of the state attorney general as my boss. I then asked him what I was being arrested for so I know which one to call. He hung up for some reason.

Now, that's different? Did you tell your boss? The call sounded like a threat.

RB

My response would be, "Well, hell! C'mon over! I'll wait."

They stoop so low as to use any "yes" or "yeah" to make it sound like you agreed to subscribe or donate.

The only way to make them stop is to hang up.

When the dopes call us, we do not pick up the phone in the first place. Then, I block it. End of story.

Unsolicited phone calls from charity organizations here in Britain is something that's on the increase, and I have received more than my fair share of these calls. I don't consider myself an uncharitable person, but I couldn't possibly afford to donate to all the charities that have been calling me at home.

What makes it worse is that if you agree on a certain sum of money to be debited from your bank account, they will more than likely contact you again at a later date and ask you to increase that amount. If you decline, they seem to have extreme difficulty understanding the word "no".

At work, no less.

I had a lot of fun playing with him. He said that he was from Microsoft. "MICROSOFT?!" I exclaimed. "Those dirty rotten CROOKS!" And off I went. I was very proud of my diatribe. I sure do wish I'd recorded it. I started out with Windows 8 and managed to drag in a whole pile of conspiracy theories to prove beyond a doubt that Microsoft was the tool of Satan. I was just getting ready to ask the fellow if he was saaaasyyyyyyved when...

When...

He hung up on me.

Yeesh. How rude.

Love it!

I got a funny one last night. I picked up my land line, saying, "Hello" only to hear nothing on the other end. Nine times out of ten this means it is a scam, but I waited patiently to see. Finally on the other end, I heard a mechanical voice say, "Goodbye." lol

Careful! Read NPRs article on this

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/24/434313813/why-phone-fraud-starts-with-a-silent-call

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I got a funny one last night. I picked up my land
> line, saying, "Hello" only to hear nothing on the
> other end. Nine times out of ten this means it is
> a scam, but I waited patiently to see. Finally on
> the other end, I heard a mechanical voice say,
> "Goodbye." lol

This happenes to me a lot. The reason for this, so I've been told, is that the call centre worker can make simultaneous calls to several numbers at a time, and they speak to whomever picks up first. If somebody answers before you do, you get the silent treatment, sometimes (but not always) followed by the automated "goodbye" message.

But I'm the only one that enjoys jerking them around! Everyone else gets mad. I figure I have enough to be angry about at work.

I have caller id. If I don't recognize it, I don't answer. I have a machine for that.

I am baffled by people who seem to think they have a duty to pick up the phone and talk to strangers.

My latest scam is someone calling my cell weekly using a calling number made up of my area code, my prefix, and four random numbers.

Caller id and number are simple to fake, they can be anything the scammer thinks will get your attention.

When a call comes in pretending to be from a LOCAL charity (could be any organization) I just ask for the LOCAL address so I can donate in person. This usually results in a disconnection.

I N-E-V-E-R give personal information or make payments via phone unless I initiated the call.

Any call that comes in where there is that initial silence is disconnected and then blocked.

ETA: Oh, just now I got a call from
.
.
.
.
.
.
ME!

Yep, caller ID showed my name and number! That's called spoofing.

I have been known to talk to myself but never by phone!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2015 03:13PM by Bruce A Holt.

You can add it in to several sites (Google them) that list them as scam and fraud numbers, with a description of their tacttics.

I will just belch or fart as loud as I can into the phone and then hang up. It works every time without fail because they never call me back again.