Credit Card Telephone Scammers
June 11, 2009
These credit card scammers won’t leave me alone! Just over a month ago I wrote about an automated phone call I received regarding credit card interest rates and the same exact call came through again today.
A fembot named Jamie gave me the same spiel, this time I caught a few more details. Once again she referenced how credit card companies have been told to lower rates by the president, then claimed to be calling from the “interest rate reduction department” to help me lower my credit card interest rates.
This time when she said, “Press 1 to lower your interest rate”, I quickly pressed the button so I could see what it was all about. After a long pause, I was transferred to another automated message which started off by saying something along the lines of, if you don’t want to be called again hang up and your name will be taken off the list.
I hung on, curious to hear what scam they were running. Then the recorded message said if I wanted more information on lowering my interest rates to leave my name and phone number and someone would call me back as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, I blew my “investigation” right there by just hanging up. I didn’t want to give out my personal info to any scammers but looking back, they already have my phone number and I could have easily left a fake name just to get a call back.
Sorry I didn’t think faster on my feet, I would have liked to have gotten to the bottom of what exactly they’re after and shared it here, but I choked. Who knows, they’ll probably call back in another month and this time I’ll be ready with an alias : )
Interesting – I’m sure someone would have called you back if you had given the okay. In any case – you wouldn’t really want to waste your time with them though.
They probably purchased your phone number somewhere – you can always try to put your number on the no calling list
.