What ticks me off today. Out of Area phone calls from my “Credit Card Management Company”…
Thursday, October 11th, 2007Ok, I keep getting these calls almost every single day from my “Credit Card Management Company”.
If you have not heard about it here is how it works…
You get a call offering to lower your credit card interest rate. The call has no caller-id number and is listed as “out of area”. If you are interested press a number. The number seems to be random and changes so I cannot set up a system to feed the operator “answer tone” reliably. When you get the marketing agent on the phone they start asking you questions regarding your credit balances etc… These people are not as fun as the normal annoying telemarketers as they will hang up on you the second you give an answer they don’t like, so you cannot torture them easily.
The biggest problem is that you cannot do anything at all about the call other than try to keep them on the phone as long as you can.
The federal do not call list requires a company name or phone number for a complaint, you don’t get either.
The local phone company claims that they cannot block the calls due to technical issues, unless you buy a service from them for an additional $5 per month. One would think, if the issue is technical it couldn’t be so easily overcome with a standard $5 per month offering. The phone company claims that they have absolutely no way to identify the abuses in any way. Not even the gateway being used to put these calls on their phone network can be identified. Well somebody call Al-Qaeda. I have found the magic method to prevent anyone from tracing the source of calls, it’s like the Matrix… Oh, the phone company also pointed out that anybody can call me if my number is listed. Surprisingly enough, they offer yet another service (for a small additional fee) that makes my number unlisted. Well I’m no rocket scientist, but I believe anyone can call you if your number is unlisted too…
So back to my torture tips:
Don’t ask them the name of the credit card they manage for you (they will hang up).
Tell them you over $4,000 in credit card debt.
Tell them you have cards near the limit.
Do not tell them you have an interest rate below ~ 20% (they will hang up).
Things I plan to try, but have not had time yet (not sure if any of it will work as they are VERY quick to hang up, which makes the torture sweeter as it means they are in a hurry):
Stuttering… Making it painfully slow to get out information.
Acting embarrassed, making them dig every detail out.
Telling them I have to get my last statements and putting the phone down.