I keep having a number with called ID from Washington DC call constantly, every single day, sometimes multiple times.

It finally left me a voicemail and was some prerecorded message about rates and some spam. Amazed how blatantly they blow off the do not call list.

Dat boy gone off into the deep end. Someone call the funny farm on him...

Maybe just a friend playing a trick? I would totally pull this off on someone if I could hold it together long enough.

Or maybe some kid just hated his job and is out to make the world a weirder place.

I approve.

That beats the random fly-by-night construction supply spam that called here at my work last week - he asked for our field Superintendent's name. I said we were all set, thank you. He asked again. I asked why (ok, didn't like his tone, I should have hung up). That's when he said "Because I'm going to go break his legs" and hung up.

I would have preferred "I love you" and fried food.

Don't have sex if you're a teenager and you should be okay.

I get it now... Its The Vast Consumerist Conspriacy to reduce teenage pregnancy rates, and to increase teenage suicide rates.

I've had a few odd conversations with CSRs that know they're pitching crap. I've also been in cussing matches with a few, somehow a polite request of "remove me from your call list" provokes them as if I just said I was planning to violate their sister AND their mother at the same time. I guess knowing there's no way for the call answering citizen to find out who you are, let alone the company you work for, means if they ain't buying you may as well have a little fun with them. It's annoying, but happens.

I actually have a good friend who basically initiates phone sex every single time an unsolicited CSR phone call comes in. It starts totally normal and descends into the dirtiness of dirty.

I've been getting calls from "card services" at work for sure and maybe at home for over a year now. I'm pretty sure it's a scam to get credit card numbers, but a slick and labor-hour efficient one. When I've gotten past voice mail to a person and pressed the issue about what company they actually represent, I've been told "Visa" (an obvious lie), or that that's just the name of their company, or some confabulation of Chase and other banks that don't actually exist. A Google on "card services scam" indicates that they've been getting around--here's a sample post: [www.city-data.com]

@Trulymadlyme:

Do the people calling usually participate?

@Nighthawke: Maybe, but anyone who likes crispy Spam with a little mayo can't be all crazy.

Maybe there is just an error in the recording and pressing 9 goes to a wrong number, like some innocent civilian's cell phone? I would enjoy messing with people like this if that happened to me.

I switched over to Comcast Voice and now almost all spam calls show "Telemarketing Call" on the callerid which I can see in various places throughout the house. I don't remember seeing calls tagged that way before, so I assume that Comcast is doing that. It works great, because I can ignore the calls or better yet, pick up and mess with the CSRs if I don't have anything better to do.

@Saboth:

I seek the answer to this question as well...

I had been getting calls from this scammer outfit. One time I said, I'm on the do not call list........etc.... The gal started screaming at me that they will call as often and they still call and haven't been shut down. If I hadn't been at work in a cubicle I'd have let loose.

Recently, when they called, I acted interested for a minute, asked what card and what company it was for, they hung up.

Then they continued to call but as soon as I pressed 9 and got through, they hung up, and it has now stopped. I recall that one of those last times, something I heard on their end about taking off the call list.

@Saboth: If so I'm taking my number off the do not call list....

About a year ago we kept getting calls from a random number that we wouldn't answer. When my husband finally did answer, the woman on the other end tried to get a donation from us and when that didn't work she asked if he was a transsexual.

The next time that number came up I answered, waited for the person calling to say something, and then called her a cunt.

Problem solved.

I think most of us who have worked as CSRs have been close to going off the deep end, if not already made the leap

@Saboth:Only if you pay.

@GavinEstecado: Legally, you are entitled, via the 1991 TCPA, to have the telemarketer send you a copy of their policy and a confirmation that you were acknowledged.

It's hilarious when informing them of this and just how many evaporate.

Also: There is an option for junk mail as well: If you avail yourself of the opt-out feature of your three credit rating agencies, they cannot sell your information to other companies. (You thought they "protected" you private info, didn't you?)

My junk mail dropped to near zero when I did this.

junkbusters.com has other info.

I switched to OOMA and now I get no calls like this. Universal spam list is a beautiful thing.

I don't have a land line and haven't received an unsolicited call in years.

But I used to love fucking with them.

I'd be a little spooked if a telemarketer called me and said weird stuff like that. Probably just some bored asshole, but if (s)he calls back I'd get as much info as I can then report it.

@ReginaPhalange: Nice. I usually try to keep it civil with "C U Next Tuesday!"

Of all the nasty words in the world, that one is probably the filthiest. Sort of the biological weapon of the swears.

@Trulymadlyme: I must know if someone participated. That would be brilliant.

I got a call yesterday on my work phone from someone who claimed to be from Wachovia, and wanted to sell me Life Insurance. He spoke in a belabored english, and had a very obvious accent that i could not quite place. He tried to do hide the accent, but the poor guy was trying too hard. He also was probably a noobie. He apologized and hung up the moment I said "not interested".

@Saboth: @trujunglist: @Porcelina: She's claims to have gotten a few of the guys (it's always dudes, she claims) to participate. I've only seen her pull this off once. When I watched her do it, we had the CSR on speaker phone, it was hilarious to see the call transition from "do you want a credit reporting service" to "do you want to XXXX"

@MostlyHarmless: You missed the punchline from the alt text, the best part of this comic: "You can do this one in every 30 times and still have 97% positive feedback."

@formatc: I didnt "miss" it. I was just too lazy to type it. I was actually giggling on the inside as I posted the pic, when I thought of the alt text.

@Trulymadlyme: To insure call quality this conversation may be recorded.

@floraposte: Scam. You should search Google for what ever fake number they are using for their caller ID and you will see reports on these companies at various "who called" websites like whocalledme, 800notes, call ferret, call wiki, pissed consumer, complaints board, etc.

Then add your report for free about time date that they called.

Alot of these are autodialers and dial every number in an exchange and area code without discrimination of type- voice, fax, celluar, modem, disconnected.

@MostlyHarmless: xkcd? yuck.

@The Cheat: I perfer to mention "bovine anal mucus" which I think is the most disgusting and worst sounding clean-words phrase that you can use...

@The Cheat:

Desperate times, my friend.

@aloria: You look like you could use this:

[explainxkcd.com]

Or are you just a liberal arts major?

@MostlyHarmless: I'm a computer science major, math minor, videogame and sci-fi geek, and apparently one of the few of my kind who hates xkcd despite understanding it. Mostly because of the snarky "lol, liberal arts majors are dumb" attitude you just demonstrated ;)

@bizeesheri: I had a call on my cell phone on Tuesday from one of the scam 866- numbers (supposedly a collections agency) that dumped me into a hold line that played "Ode to Joy" over and over again. As I have unlimited cell minutes I just put the phone down and went back to work, checking it every so often for the music. The call stayed connected for an HOUR!!!! when they or my cell company disconnected it. I figured while my # was parked on one of their voip phone lines, I was saving others from being spam called...

@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: Ha! I know, right! Somewhere, in some archive, there is hours of my friend being like "spank me, spank me!" Ha. But she usually gets hung up on 95 percent of the time, supposedly.

@MostlyHarmless: No need to type it, at least not in Firefox. If you right click on the image and select Properties, you can highlight and copy it. Other browsers probably have something similar available, but I'm too lazy to experiment.

@MostlyHarmless: I do like the Douglas Adams reference in your username, though. :3

@formatc: Still more trouble than not doing it at all, actually. :P

@aloria: Yeah hes awesome. People who rap on xkcd and Douglas Adams feel my wrath :P

@bizeesheri: If you begin to recognize the number, just start answering your phone with "Thank you for calling the FTC Consumer Protection [Insert your city name here] area office, this is bizeesheri, how may I help you?"

If they are smart, they will immediately place you on their do not call list. :-)

@MostlyHarmless: Bobcats are tailless. xkcd fail.

This company has been calling for about 2 years now. I listen to their pitch every so often for laughs. Their own claims are internally contradictory but the reps apparently don't have anything in their call script to deal with what happens when a caller points that out.

My recent call with them (a week ago) went like this: They claimed they wanted to "help me lower my interest rates" on ALL of my cards, whether or not they were in good standing, and asked what rates I was paying. I told them 9% and 12%.

Then they asked if i had at least one card with current payments and open credit. I said yes. They then asked me for that card number. I asked why they needed the card number, and was told "so they can call the card issuer and verify there is at least one card in good standing." I said "Why does it matter if there's a card in good standing? Is that the only card you're going to get the interest rate lowered on?" and they said "Oh, no we just have to make sure you have some good credit." And I said "Well, all of my cards are current and the fact that they're at good interest rates should tell you that my credit is good."

The rep kept insisting on asking for a card number, I said I'd be delighted to, if she could explain why she needed to verify that I have "one good account" if they were going to work with all my accounts.

I was transferred to a supervisor who basically repeated the same pitch. I said "Look, I'm really interested in this, I just want to understand how it works, and why it is you need to have a credit card number right at this point, why can't we talk about how you're going to lower my rates, and what the rates might be, and how you can get default interest rates changed to reasonable ones. That's all I'm asking and then I'll be happy to give you my card number. She asked for my card number again, and I said, "Please work with me, I just need to understand your program" and she hung up on me without saying another word.

I called the number back and it said "If you'd like to be removed from our calling list press 1" I pressed 1, and it gave me a busy signal and hung up on me.

@HurtsSoGood: Not from what I am seeing

[en.wikipedia.org]

@aloria: Could it be because the difficulty index of liberal arts degrees is so low? Sure, you could get a hell of an education at a liberal arts school. Or you can take cake courses, party all night, and still graduate with honors. Depends on the school and the attitude of the student.

@The Cheat: I call that one the "ultimate weapon of last resort" If someone makes me go as far as to use that word, I probably just watched them kick a puppy while driving a propane truck into a bus full of nuns.

@econobiker: I don't have caller ID, and I don't think the problem in stopping these people is that there's a shortage of reports. Of course they're autodialers, that's the point--they want to weed out the skeptics without wasting valuable human time on them. To clarify, I've no doubt it's a scam--what I'm not entirely sure of is whether it's to get credit card numbers or something else, because I don't ever get to a point where they ask for anything.

@The Cheat: I think that's worse than "cunt." It's acting above the insult even as you're offering the insult.

Not getting how Regina's punishment fit the crime, though, since she almost certainly wasn't speaking to the same person as the one who called her initially.

@calchip: Heh. At least you kept them from stealing from anybody else during that time. But they really are so focused on efficiency that they pretty much hang up the moment you emit "not a good mark" sign.