When they do not get the response they want, they fax spam...

C Montgomery Burns is a canary, and he has moved to the Canary Islands.

I filed a complaint with the BBB on these jokers. Once the complaint was received by them, they stopped calling. They were calling morning, noon, and night--usually the same person's voice. I even got into a screaming match with them and just kept saying NO, NO, NO over and over again. I suggest filing a complaint to end the harassment.

having this same issue with people trying to sell my company "really great toner and printer cartridges."

Yes, I got one of these calls forwarded to my phone at work (I'm in Indiana). The caller had a very thick and difficult to understand Indian accent (sorry if that's a stereotype, but it's the truth). He asked me to verify the company's address for their YP listing, which I thought was odd, since the local Yellow Pages had just come out literally a day or two before, so I knew it was a scam of some kind.

The address he had on file for our company was wrong, as was the phone #. He then started asking my title, and if he could put me down as the manager or supervisor. When I said neither of those is my title, he said it didn't matter and he'd list me that way anyway. Then he asked my date of birth. When I said, "Why do you need my birth date for a Yellow Page ad?" he thanked me and quickly hung up.

I knew it had to be a scam, but I couldn't figure out their angle.

I work an internal helpdesk and sometimes these people stumble on our direct dial number. We always mess with them a bit since it lets us mess with the caller.

And when they do ask for someone by name their call always ends up in voicemail since we give the person fair warning what's coming.

Yeah, we got suckered into something similar. The person was calling to verify our business address and phone number. We then started getting billed $300/month on our phone bill for website hosting.

I'm not sure what I was more mad about...being tricked, or that the phone company allows random companies to add stuff to my phone bill without authorization.

That was hella crazy to cancel.

@Nout Boctor: That happened to me a few years ago. They wanted our company credit card # and tried to sell me a toner cartridge for $400.

I get this one about once a month. I am in a small, non-public part of non-profit pediatric hospital, and they do not want to advertise the whole hospital, just us. And every time I say "no", they blather, and I get to respond "Won't someone think of the children!"

They seem to call in bursts, they make the mistake of asking for someone that hasn't worked here in a long time. I've gotten pretty good at shutting them down... some of them even hang up once they hear it is me.

Someone needs to make a recording of the Al Pacino soundboard being used on these guys. Imagine the response when Richie Roma tells them, "You just cost me $6,000. What are you gonna do about it, asshole?"

I have a relative who is an information operator for one of the large phone companies that puts out the real yellow pages. There are lots of problems with the info contained within their listings.

If you own a business you might want to call information to make sure that your company is listed and can be found by 411 operators.

I've been getting calls like that... Me (M) Telemarketer (T)

(M) I answer the phone by saying the name of my business.

(T)Yes, is this (XYZ Company)?

(M) (groan) Yes it is.

(T) Yes I'm calling from the yellow pages to confirm your address... Is the name of your business (XYZ Company), and your phone # (xxx-xxx-xxx)?

(M) As I've confirmed 3 times now, that is name of my business and isn't that the same # you called me on? Yes? So yes, it's correct...

(T) OK, I'm just going put you through to our confirmation prompts. You're going to hear some tones but you don't need to don anything...

(M) I hear an automated voice start to talk and touch tones pushed very quickly followed by another tone...

(T) This is where I just need you to speak your #.

(M) What the HELL is this? I don't have time for this crap - CLICK.

We get these, and similar calls, all the time at our home-based business (with a separate business telephone line). They are either updating the yellow pages or our "business listing". Since we don't pay for advertising anywhere, in any form, it's always obvious they're fishing for information.

A common scenario goes like this:

scammer: "Hi, may I have your fax #?"
me: "Sure, whose fax # do you want?"
scammer: "The person in charge."
me: "The person in charge of what?"
scammer: "The person in charge of what you do"
me: "In which department?"
scammer: "The one that makes decisions."
me: "Decisions about what?"

Followed by silence and a click as I get hung up on.

Same deal with the photocopier repair and printer supplies:

scammer: "Hi, may I have the serial number off your photocopier/printer?"
me: "Sure, which one do you want?"
scammer: "The main one you use."
me: "In which department?"
scammer: "The one with the Xerox machine."
me: "Can you be more specific? We have lots of machines."

Click again. Problem solved until next time.

Bottom line, good luck getting any information out of me about any products we use, who provides our phone service, what our fax number is, etc...

If you have a legitimate plan to do business with us, then you got our information from our web page or as a referral from someone else - so you don't need to fish for information.

We've gotten these too... I'm just more curious, does anyone know what you eventually get billed/switched to??

I get solicted at my office all the time from "Yellow Page Directories". They send an invoice, but its not really an invoice since it says so in small print on the bottom. It simply asks to check this box to verify your information. Oh and in small print it says by checking this box you give us permission to bill you $70 a month for an advertisement.

I can see how this works. In a busy office where the receptionist pays all the bills, she could just assume its an invoice (like the other dozen legit ones she gets every week) and sends it back.

I received a call recently from these "yellow pages" guys. They outright lied to me by specifically telling me that there was nothing to pay for, and nothing to opt out of. I was suspicious so I've been checking the mail closely, and what do you know... today I get a letter from some company with a name similar to 'Better Business Bureau.' The letter stated that we were allowed a free trial of their internet service. It mentioned nothing about cost of this service, but it gave me an 888-number I could call to cancel. I was on top of that right away because you know that after the "trial period" expires, they would start billing you for some nonsense. I wonder how many unsuspecting administrators and the like across the country are getting in trouble with their bosses for accidentally signing the company up for something they didn't want. It's infuriating.

These people used to call all the time and my office manager would duck the phone calls, but then would yell at us if we messed with the callers and/or hung up on them. She'd also yell if we talked to them. It was very bizarre.

My office got that. They actually sent out a company e-mail telling people to hang up on those calls.

I used to get this a few times a week. One time they called as I was walking out to lunch. When they asked for the business owner I put them on hold and left. They still call but not nearly as often. Also, (and I don't know how true this is) I was told by an AT&T sales rep. that the "walking fingers" and the term "yellow pages" were never trademarked, so basically anyone can use them.

If you ever need some phone numbers to give out, the Pay Phone Directory is a good place to get them, especially since many of those pay phones don't accept incoming calls.

@drkev1976: OMG. I just got one of those faxed over before lunch today. Ours said about $85 a month that had to be a 2-year prepaid amount. What got me smiling before I tossed that into the recycle bin was the logo at the top. It was basically the little walking fingers of the actual Yellow pages (without the book they are "walking" on) but the fingers were pointing up instead of down.

We're not allowed to answer the phones with our names at my place of business anymore for this exact reason. Now, we just state the name of the business and the department.
We used to do that, followed with, "This is ___ speaking, how may I help you?" But a colleague got a pallet of paper and toner shipped here by answering with his name in the greeting. That's all the person on the other end of the line needed to slap a semi-legit looking invoice on the pallet and send it here. It took him days to convince the higher-ups that he really didn't order the stuff; they finally heard about the scam and believed him.

@chatterboxwriting: I thought they were trying to the model of printer you have so they can send you a box of toner and try to bill you later.

@SybilDisobedience: If you got something you never ordered, it's considered a gift and you can keep it.

Ugh, bad flashbacks to one of the most embarrassing days at my job ever. When I had just started working here, I got a call from one of the fake online yellow pages, asking if we wanted to renew our advertising. Like all of them, the person calling blatantly lied and said we were already subscribed, but our subscription was expiring.

Well, duh, we were never subscribed and they billed us for something no one wanted. When I called back to cancel, the woman claimed that my having authorized the order on tape meant it was legit, never mind the lying. Thankfully I have kind, understanding bosses. The one who had been victimized by a similar scam (lightbulbs) at her first job called up said online yellow pages company, ripped them a new one, and they went away.

@dragonfire81: We get those: "Hi, I'm calling from customer service. I need the model number of your copier." Asking "customer service of what company?" never fails to make them hang up the phone.

These f*****s call our office 1-2 times a day. I just tell them we're not interested, but after reading some of the posts here, I'm going to be more creative in the future.

@undefined: @dragonfire81: My memory is a little fuzzy on some of the details, but I do remember that they tried to tell me (a new employee) that my company always bought our toner from them and they just needed to make sure they had the right CC # on file. When I told them our toner cartridges cost like $20 and not $400, they hung up on me.

@NatalieErin:

I get those all the time. I usually hang up on them, but one day I decided to have some fun, so I told the woman we don't have any copiers; we use carbon paper. She said, "Oh, okay" and hung up.

I giggled off and on for thirty minutes.

@ScarletsWalk: Za? You couldn't talk to them, but you couldn't hang up on them? How did she expect you to handle them?

@dragonfire81: Yep, we had a bunch of unsolicited paper delivered to an office I worked at once. Nobody even called to try and scam us; they just shipped it. We kept it, and refused payment. They did try aggressively to collect, but they backed off once the business owner suggested he get his lawyer involved.

@Nout Boctor: Lightbulbs too if you worked in factory management.

Atmy prior employer, one vice president related a story in which he was hired to revamp a plant/warehouse and when he went to the warehouse he found about 1/4 of the top racks in the whole warehouse were filled with cases and cases of lightbulbs- many of which they didn't even use in the plant. He knew right away that the purchasing and accounting reconciliation process had to be kicked into shaped big time. He said he also knew to have the next few weeks of phone calls monitored through a new phone screener to boot the idiot salespeople out...

@Brian Berger: I don't get the faxes but YES (!!!), they call almost every day! They go through the info, state multiple times that it's free, then ask for my full name and an ok that they list me as as an administrator or management. When I say "absolutely not" multiple times, they hang up and call again later. A temp receptionist ok'd the "free listing" last year, and we got a $395 invoice in the mail. Needless to say, we refused to pay it.
The funniest part is that it's for a branch of the business that doesn't even exist anymore. it's been absorbed.
I'm so glad that this is on here, because it's WAY too common. I know of other businesses in downtown Chicago that deal with these people on a daily basis as well.

@redskull: YES! Exactly the same thing for me. Asking if they can put me down as a manager or administrator, and stating that it doesn't matter if it's true, "it's only recorded on a piece of paper".
The angle is that they bill you $395 for the service. A temp made this mistake previously. Apparently, it's the phone book itself that's free, not the listing. I guess I'll have to listen more carefully to the tricky wording next time.

My business line is my cell, so I get all of these calls when they come in. Any calls that aren't from my area code, I answer with "Hello?"
I used to be more creative, but now I just tell them that this is not a business line and they need to stop calling my personal cell. It seems to work.

Profanity them.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt to prove it.

My solution?

"please mail the information to me so it can be properly confirmed"

"need my name and address?"

"just mail it to the name and address you have on file, it will get to the business so it can be corrected"

But I never get anything in the mail. Wonder why.

When I ran the rehab department at a nursing home, several times a year the accounts payable person would ask me to initial an invoice for positions advertised in the local paper. Only thing was that it was some out of state company just sending out "invoices" that authorized reprinting the ads in some non-existant BS trade paper. The authorizing part was in a faint tiny yellow print & said "by paying this you request & authorize us to...". The rest of the "invoice" was in bold bright colors. I wonder how much that place lost on that kind of scamming. She always looked at me like I was crazy when I told her to throw them out & tried to explain, she probably paid them behind my back.

Well call me a sucker. This just happened yesterday. I've gotten these calls before and could not understand a word the person said. Finally someone I COULD understand, contacted me. Told me it was FREE. I had to go through a recording and answer yes to questions, but the operator kept talking over the recorded message. YES I KNOW THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MY SIGN !!!! So I'm guessing I was scammed. Any suggestions on how to get out of this?

@redskull: That's not a stereotype. That's a fact. The person you talked to had a very thick Indian accent. Maybe you could say middle eastern, because you don't know he's from India.

What you didn't say was that "Everyone at this company is from india because of this one guy's accent" or "I got called from a call center in India and I know this because the guy I talked to had an Indian accent." Those are stereotypes.

And if you added "and because of that he was stupid" then it would have been prejudice.

Going even further, if you'd have said "and because I'm white, I'm better than him" it would have been racist.

@Easton21: I wonder if its possible for them to sell this "uncollected debt" to a collection agency.

@redskull: They ask for your name to blame it on you. When your boss flips out at the unauthorized bill they will say "but so-and-so authorized it, I have his name right here, and you are now legally obligated to pay because a representative from your company authorized this order/charge."

Also when people call always say "correct" or "that's right" instead of "yes." Some will try to record you saying "yes" to use against you later as you saying "yes" to their charges. This is for home telemarketers as well as at the office.

You know, there was a HIT on Amazon's Mechanical Turk site...oh, about a year ago, where the requestor wanted to pay you a couple of pennies per company name to go to their website and then report back in the HIT response the names of the CEO, CFO, and other higher-ups like that.

I didn't do any of them (seemed shady, though I couldn't figure out why, and even I'm not bored enough to do that much work for 2 cents per) but I wondered at the time how that information would be useful to anyone for any reason.

I think we can all see now what sort of thing it is being used for. Hmmm.

@winshape: Don't blame the phone company, blame your congresscritters. In a fit of "lets prevent phone monopolies better than the FCC does", they mandated that the phone company has to add the stuff to your phone bill on behalf of 3rd party service providers.

You may wonder, what kind of idiot didn't see this unintended consequence coming? And the answer, or course, is the average congresscritter.

Whenever I get one of these, I just ask the person how they sleep at night. It may not bother them, but it leaves me feeling better.

@HogwartsAlum: Hey! Cool! I like that. Usually they ask us about printers, and i tell them we don't have any printers. Paperless office, see? Yep, we never print anything. Heh.

Or if I'm feeling extra silly sometimes I'll say we don't have any printers because we don't use computers at all. We just write everything down in longhand.

One time somebody called trying to tell us some kind of scam long distance service...and I told him sorry, but we don't have any phones. He said "ok" and let me go. HAHAHAHA.

@inadequatewife: Do they then mention that you remind them of the babe?

@topgun: wait for the bill, then call them immediately and dispute it.

The major issue with these scams, is that the majority of people who answer phones are not authorized to spend companies money, and the contract is voided by that, you just have to then spend the time fighting it.

@kathyl: That info is HIGHLY valuable.

One of the easiest ways to scam a company is call somone low in the company and claim to be friends with somone high in the company, they will almost always want to help you and you can typically get good info out of them.