When A Telemarketer Calls . . . . ( Archived) (11)

Say - Police message this call is logged Foxtrot Oscar

Over 20 years ago I made to decision to let the answering machine answer all the calls and I would monitor them. Scammers/telemarketers rarely leave messages. I don't know if this can still happen today, but about 15 years ago my mother in law was living at my house. I had told her to stop answering the phone because when she did, she wouldn't write my messages down so I never new who called.
So one day someone called, she answered and the person calling said one of her relatives got hurt in Tijuana and needed money. She didn't believe them and hung up the phone. They called back four more times and she kept answering the phone. I came home right after she hung up on the fifth call, and she told me about the calls, and I told her again to stop answering the phone.
A few weeks later I got my phone bill, and on there were the five calls from Tijuana, each was a $45 charge. Fortunately when I called the phone company they removed the charges. After I showed my mom in law the bill she stopped answering my phone.

What prompted me to make the decision to stop answering the phone was at the time I had a significant increase in phone solicitations, and mixed in with them was a collection agency claiming that my wife owed them for unpaid credit card debt. I knew it wasn't true because I was in charge of paying the bills. I was getting calls multiple times a day about the debt.
I finally asked what the middle name of the person was they were saying owed the money. It turned out it was a different middle name, so that was the end of the calls from them, but the other calls persisted. I tried everything, including wasting their time, to calling them names. But in end I just got tired answering the phone.
Once you're on a list, your # gets sold all over the place so it's really a lost cause to try and fight back. Better for me anyway to just ignore the calls. If it's important then the person calling will leave a message.
Nowadays some use computers to make random calls all day everyday. If you answer the phone sometimes it connects you with a person and other times just gives you a recording. So again just better to ignore.
You have to be very careful who you give your # or any of your information because selling it is big business.(Goggle/Fakebook) If I have to give out my # to a business, I give them my landline which I maintain mainly for that purpose.