For about a year now, I’ve been getting spam calls to my cell phone. This is more than annoying: I pay for my minutes, so this actually costs me money, directly.
A lot of these calls have a recorded voice telling me that this is the second notice of the warranty on my car expiring. Since I own a ten year old Volvo, I think maybe this call is not accurate.
Anyway, I got one of these calls today (the number of the robospammer is the title of this blog post), and I’ve learned not to pick up. So what a fun coincidence that LifeHacker had an article up about Caller Complaints, where you can look up phone numbers to see if others have complained as well. The site itself takes no action, but it’s rather handy if you got a missed call and you’re wondering whether to call it back.
So, 757-990-8980, got anything to say to me now?
May 15th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Another (similar) site to that that I’ve used in the past is http://whocalled.us
May 15th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
I almost thought that was Phil’s number. I was about to call and say, “WASSSSSSUUUUUUUUUPPPPPP!”
May 15th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Thanks Phil! A while back I was getting called twice a day (the 2nd call always around 11pm) for about 5 days from a toll free # that wouldn’t leave a message. I never answer from a number I don’t know. I finally called it back and all I got was a recording asking me to hold for the next available operator. I hung up.
I’ll be sending this link around to lots of folks. Every little bit of help in the War Against Telemarketers is appreciated.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I feel your pain, Phil. I’ve been getting some sort of calls from an 866-exchange (i.e., toll-free) number on my cell phone. I refuse to answer them, since it’s almost certainly a telemarketer (and my number is supposedly registered with the national Do Not Call list anyway). Besides, if it were anyone who actually knew me, they’d eventually email me to ask why I wasn’t answering my phone.
It’s possible, I suppose, that it’s a political poll or a charity organization, but I still consider the calls an unwarranted intrusion on my time and a definite waste of my phone minutes (whoever it is never calls during the evening or on the weekend, of course, when the minutes are free). But just having to deal with the distraction of getting these calls, even if I don’t answer them, is annoying.
It could be worse, though. At one point, my land line’s long-distance service was disabled because someone else with the same phone number, but a different area code, was delinquent on paying his long-distance bill! This went on for almost 6 months before I finally got the phone company to acknowledge the error, quit harassing me about paying a bill I didn’t owe, reinstate my full service, and credit my account for the service I had been denied during those months. I got things fixed eventually, but it was uphill all the way.
Good luck getting your situation fixed at some point.
~David D.G.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I get that stuff too, all day everyday. I don’t want to change my number because I like it, my friends all have it and I have a thousand business cards printed with it. I just called the number to see what it was and to vent on a nameless faceless company and it’s been disconnected
May 15th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Be careful. As I understand it, there are ways to fake caller-id information.
In this case, though, most or all of the Google hits for that number appear to refer to annoying calls like the one you received.
I’ve gotten a lot of these “second notice that your car warranty is about to expire” calls, several at home, and one on my (work-issued) cell phone. And yes, I’m on the do-no-call list (which means, what, a $500 fine for each call?). Last time, I followed the instructions to talk to a human and couldn’t reach anyone.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I’d love to know who designed the system that allows the caller to supply fake caller ID information.
We used to get telemarketer calls with “000-000-0000″ or “999-999-9999″ as the caller ID, which we knew immediately were fake. Now, they’ve taken to falsifying a phone number which is local to us
And I, too, use http://whocalled.us for these things. Sometimes, I have the information on-screen before my wife even picks up the phone.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I’m fairly sure that automated calls to cell phones are not legal under the current rules, do-not-call list or not. I get those car warranty spams too from time to time.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
My girlfriend has been getting mail about her warranty on her car. Its a 6 year old ford, so it definitely doesn’t have a warranty. Must be the same (or similar) corporation.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Having registered with the Do Not Call list, I love the reaction I get from clueless marketroids when I tell them they’re in violation of federal law. They suddenly get very polite and willing to end the call very quickly.
The exemption for political campaign calls ticks me off though. I now explain to any live people who call that I add up the number of calls for each politician and vote for the one who annoys me the least often.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
That’s scary, because that’s very close to my cell number. It’s an area code for the eastern part of Virginia, btw.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I have a different tactic for the “warranty is expiring” people
First I politely asked not to be called, didn’t work
Then I yelled and screamed at them, didn’t work either
So being in Sales and selling to call centers (Sorry I do software, not for outbound calling, I promise I am not evil) I know how they work. Time = Money period. The last thing they want is their time wasted. So when I had time and was sick of it, I tool the call asked for a bunch of quotes on cars I do not own and asked a ton of really stupid time consuming questions. All the while they are hard selling me like crazy. Finally I said. Actually I have just been wasting your time, by all means do not remove me from your call list as I will do this every time I can. The calls have dropped from 2 a day to around twice a month from this group. If you have the time, waste theirs
tell them you did it and the calls will drop dramatically.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I get the same “2nd notice” call about 4 times a week, on both my personal cell and my landline office phone. The number is almost always different each time.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
On the Do Not Call Registry web page, you can leave a complaint. However, you have to be registered there for at least 31 days. Personally, I don’t have my phone registered because it’s a cell phone and it’s illegal for telemarketers to call it anyway. I wonder if there’s another place where we can leave complaints… or does that have to go through the cell provider? It would be nice if AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. would automatically block known telemarketers.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I received these calls as well, to my cell phone. As my 2003 was just about to run out of warranty, I was a little interested, but I am very careful about giving out my cell, so I was quite concerned that it had landed on a “list”. I finally got a person at the national office of my car company, and they said that this is a scam, and that what the callers are trying to get is actually bank information. They told me that they have received many complaints, and even the informative employee I was talking to said that he had been receiving the calls as well. It was nice to get a real answer, and hopefully this helps others as well.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
If we had the same pay-as-you-go system as the UK, at least these nuisance calls would not cost anything. Only calls made from your mobile (cell) phone are charged against your account and the person calling you is usually charged more for calling a mobile. In addition, minutes don’t expire every few months — so long as you use your mobile once every six months to make a call, you get to keep all of your balance indefinitely.
(That was a little tricky for me as I only visit the UK a couple of times a year, but since I got an unlocked quad-band phone, I can send a text message using my UK SIM card to keep the account alive and my massive balance of 4.70UKP alive
May 15th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
The first time I got that “your warranty is about to expire” call, it was in *my father’s hospital room* as I was waiting for them to bring him from the surgical recovery room . . . .
May 15th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Man, I HATE those calls. Glad to know there’s a way to publicly shame the jerks. Except they have no shame…
May 15th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
This almost begs for a seperate post on how Bad Astronomy readers humourously deal with telemarketers…
May 15th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Hey, that’s the same number as my luggage!
On the plus side, at least you have a car. I get these calls all the time and don’t even have a car.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
I think that area code is for Virginia. Or at least the Norfolk area. I don’t remember the county.
That makes it doubly suspicious, don’t it?
Say Phil, I’m learning about Volvos in marine class. The engines are virtually identical to automotive engines. Need any advice?
May 15th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
You pay to receive calls? How odd.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
@ 6. It is possible to put different digits in the ANI then the number of the phone making the call.
This post is already #1 on google for that number. That didn’t take long
May 15th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Note that if you track down the actual organization behind these calls, there’s a pretty good chance you can take them to small claims and collect a few hundred bucks (Depends on state laws and exact circumstances. May not be worth your time and effort. This is not legal advice!)
https://www.donotcall.gov/ also takes complaints. While you wont necessarily get action from your specific complaint, the FTC does occasionally bust the worst offenders.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Here’s the whocalledus page on the number
http://whocalled.us/lookup/7579908980
It seems that sometimes it is ID’d as from “Warranty Activation Center” or “Center Voice” , and in one instance they called somebody too close and revealed that they’re from Temperance, VA
May 15th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Let me get this right. You have mobile phone plans where you pay to receive a call? That’s just crazy talk. The only time I’m aware of that happening here, in Oz, is if we turn on global roaming and take the phone overseas. The we have to pay to receive calls. IMO this is still dumb because the rate to receive a call is in the dollars per minute range.
When I’m going overseas I get around this by purchasing a cheap global SIM that can be used almost anywhere and it costs nothing to receive a call.
But paying to receive local calls with a local provider…. sheesh.
May 15th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
I’m glad they’re blocked in Canada otherwise I would be too afraid of canceling my home line.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Where I live there is a common phone scam where someone will let the phone ring once and hang up. When you call back you are automatically connected to a line with a very high per-minute charge. I wonder if this number is operating a similar scam… Anyone who’s called them back should check their bill for any strange charges related to this number or others around the time you called.
May 15th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
we can call it the :
the War On Terror-marketers
May 16th, 2008 at 4:21 am
I have been receiving the same auto warranty calls at home. I drive a 1993 Ford truck, so I know it’s a bogus call. The first time they called, I pretended to be interested in their service. The first question they guy asked was, “What is the make and model of your vehicle?” I responded, “You know my warranty is expiring, but you don’t know anything about me vehicle?” He hung up on me.
I received a second call about the same thing a week later. Again, I tried to play along. My first question was simply, “I am interested in learning more about the services your company provides.” The guy hung up on me.
I suspect it’s an attempt to trick people. It pisses me off to think about how many people are duped – the fearful, uneducated, elderly.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:47 am
The FCC is supposed to address such complaints, but in the last two years, they’ve actually prosecuted ONE person.
That after something like five million complaints.
The FCC also gets over 150,000 complaints ANNUALLY on Verizon alone (consumeradvocacy.org) and every year they “promise” to fix the problems. The overwhemling majority of the complaints are about billing errors (of course, they’re in Verizion’s favor) but then Verizon (and the rest of the industry) and the Telemarking Assoc makes $$$MILLIONS in “Campaign contributions” to Congressional members, so don’t expect any real enforcement soon.
May 16th, 2008 at 6:56 am
By coincidence, there was a story on CNN.com yesterday (Thursday) morning (http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/05/14/cell.phones.ap/index.html) which began with the statement:
“For nearly three in 10 households, don’t even bother trying to call them on a landline phone. They either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.”
and went on to say that a big reason for many people to do that is that they have learned to expect that any incoming call on their landline is from a telemarketer (in many cases a recorded message placed by an autodialer), so they never pick up. (They only have the landline to connect their computers.)
BTW, I’m pretty much one of the 30% in the article. My phone goes directly to an answering machine whether I am here or not, and I go through the accumulated calls quickly mostly deleting them as soon as I can tell from the quality of the sound that it’s a recording or computer-generated voice.
(In relation to a couple of points which others brought up, (1) the article mentions that using an autodialer to call cell phone numbers is illegal, but (2) pollsters want that changed because they want to be able to reach those who use their cell phones exclusively although some studies have apparently shown that the results do not seem to be substantially different whether the latter are included or not. Also (3) my vehicle is over 10 years old, and I’m at least the third owner, so clearly there’s no warranty to discuss . . . )
May 16th, 2008 at 8:26 am
I was getting these calls a couple of months ago. I didn’t realize it was telemarketers or phone spammers. It was right around the time I was turning in a leased car. I just assumed the car company wasn’t on the ball and hadn’t realized I had turned the car in.
I was receiving one or two calls every couple of days at work. Most of the time they called at night so they left voice mail messages. They finally just stopped.
Now I wish I had picked up the phone when they called and just left the phone off the hook to run up their time.
May 16th, 2008 at 8:42 am
What I want to know is when advertisers took over the reins of power in this country. They’re everywhere.
Email has effectively been rendered useless by spam. More and more companies I deal with don’t even have email addresses anymore, and have switched to web page forms for any sort of feedback from customers.
And I want to take the people who say it’s a “free speech” issue and toss them into a wood chipper.
I do recommend the Do Not Call list, though. I haven’t had a sales call since signing up.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:17 am
The Do Not Call list does help an awful lot. What also is good is to call up one of the big credit reporting agencies and tell them not to sell your address to marketers. It cuts the amount of junk (postal) mail dramatically.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I agree the best way to deal with them is by a little time wasting: I once told a telemarketer to “hold on” while I did the dishes. But indeed even better would be to string them along for a really long time by posing as an interested buyer. See how long it takes for them to hang up on you.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Quiet Desperation,
You’re right. Advertising isn’t about free speech. It’s about commerce, the buying and selling of a third party’s attention (that is, your and my mental space). Fortunately, commerce can (and should) be regulated much more easily than personal, political, and scientific expression.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
One of the results was a “Warranty activation service”. Would make sense, as you’re getting calls for your car warranty.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Thanks, BA and Ken B, you’ve done me a great service today. I’ve had some phonebot calling me every day for weeks, and now I know who it is! Next stop: block that number!
May 16th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Dude, I get that same recording every flippin’ day, but on my home phone. And so I went back through my Caller ID…and that same gorram number came up!
We don’t even OWN a car. And when we did own one, it was an ‘89 Dodge Colt. I think any question of warranty was academic…
May 16th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
We don’t even OWN a car.
That’s OK. I own two.
Hugs,
Quiet “Picking Up The Slack” Desperation
May 17th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Sir Eccles – nice Mel Brooks reference…
I get the same “car warranty about to expire” about once a month on my land line. I get the “Credit Card Services” spam a couple of times a week. I get one or two “Unknown Caller” hangup calls a day, on average. I’ve been on the “do not call” list for years. (Fortunately, I’ve only ever gotten one spam call on my cell phone.) Not to mention the “legitimate” charity/political/opinion poll calls, mostly from groups or candidates I’ve contributed to in the past. I’ve taken to telling those groups that if they don’t take me off their call list, I won’t contribute to them any more. Seems to mostly work, i.e. they stop calling.
Last time the “Credit Card Services” crook called, I tried to ask them why they were wasting time calling me when I had told them many times to go away? Did they think I might change my mind if they annoyed me enough? When I asked them if they were stupid, they hung up. Oh, well. Usually they hang up as soon as I mention the FTC, the dnc list, ask to speak to a supervisor, etc. One time I got into an argument with one of them when I told her what she was doing was illegal and she ought to be in jail! She insisted it wasn’t illegal to call me, and kept arguing!
I used to just pick up and immediately hang up on any call without a caller ID (to stop the ringing), but then my brother in Australia sent me an email asking why I kept hanging up on him. Turns out his calls looked exactly like a blocked caller ID spam call, so I had to start answering them, or at least let them go to voicemail.
Last time the “car warranty” spammer called, I asked him why he didn’t already know what kind of car I have, and he claimed he did know, but he was asking me for security ID purposes. As if… He called me, I didn’t call him, he should know who he called, it’s me as the recipient who should need to confirm the identity of the caller. At that point I lost it, called him a liar and hung up.
My theory about hang calls… The spammer has a big room full of telemarketers, waiting to talk to victims, and time is money. They don’t want them sitting around waiting for someone to answer the phone, so they set up their automatic calling machine to do speculative dialing (much like speculative execution on a high-end CPU.) The dial a whole bunch of numbers and when some one answers, they put the calls in a queue and if none of their telemarketers becomes available in a second or two, they drop the oldest call from the queue. This way there is always someone wait when a telemarketer hangs up and is ready to deal with the next victim. If things bog down, and no one is ready for a call, they just hang up. This way, they externalize the cost of idle time. So not only are they harassing us, we are paying for the privilege! Of course, this strategy is blatantly illegal, but these people are crooks anyway, so they don’t care.
Oh, and someone asked when all this started happening. Jan 20, 2001 is my guess. And I think it will only get worse as the economy tanks, and more and more people are desperate enough to take telemarketer jobs.
May 18th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Heh. We should wish that we still had the electro-mechanical telephone switching systems of yore – specifically what was known as the Strowger switch (or step-by-step).
A little known “feature” was known as “called party hold,” where the called party could simply leave the phone off the hook during a call and the calling party wasn’t able to disconnect the call.
Call me with a scam/spam? Just a minute while I lay the receiver down and go wash the dishes. The guy at the other end simply could not disconnect the call.
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:51 am
My dad keeps an old referee’s whistle next to the phone for just these types of calls. I’m sure the phone system has a volume limiter, but it makes him feel better to think that the person interrupting his watching of “The Price is Right” will have to take a break while their hearing returns.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:33 am
Alot of people are confusing Dealer Services or National Auto Warranty Services with other companies. They do NOT dial outbound to their customers. The best way to figure out who is calling you is to do something like this:
1. Answer the call nicely and sound interested
2. Play along with the rep, the first person you speak to is probably just screening calls so you may have to agree to speak with specialist or a sales person.
3. Go through the sales pitch and tell them you need to call them back with your credit card
4. Get their callback number and post it here. I’ll check back every so often. I can look to see who the phone number belongs to and also verify it with the utility company.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
This comment is in response to the one from Jim Vandiver.
You are a liar and a shill for National Auto Warranty Services located in Wentzville, MO. We have seen your numerous posts all over the internet and we are on to your lies on behalf of the scumbags at National Auto Warranty Services. We will not let you or your scumbag company rip people off.
(Note: to everyone: the following refer only to the company National Auto Warranty Services located in Wentzville, Missouri. There are many other companies with a similar name that may be legitimate. Also, there is a company known as “Dealer Services.” This is the company that sends warranty expiration letters to your house with a logo that is a copy of the one used by General Motors. Guess what? It is the same company!)
National Auto Warranty Services is one of the biggest auto warranty scammers and crooks in the country. There is no way they are legitimate in any sense of the word.
Want proof? View this link, a press release from the Attorney General of Missouri:
http://ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2008/030608.htm
They are currently being sued by Missouri for fraud and numerous violations of the state’s “No Call Law.”
In addition, they are part of a national crackdown on telemarketing fraud from the Federal Trade Commission. This press release clearly shows they were involved in both the state and a federal action:
http://ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2008/National_crackdown_on_telemarketing_fraud_includes_three_cases_filed_by_Nixon/
You can lookup this company’s listing at the Missouri Secretary of State website. Be sure to click on the “Filed Documents” link at the top of the page. If you look under the Annual Report dated 4/3/2008, (and previous filings) you will see the home address of both the President and Vice President of this company. This is public information:
https://www.sos.mo.gov/BusinessEntity/soskb/Corp.asp?411719
In addition, this Jim Vandiver, or whoever this person really is, has listed more than one location under his profile for different posts. For example, under this post, he is from Council Bluffs, Iowa.
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/rocky-hill-ct/T3S758L7945R8ND2M
But in the following, he lists himself from Troy, NY.
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/201/RipOff0201058.htm
Guess Jim Vandiver will have to refund the $7.50 that National Auto Warranty Services paid him for his post. Good luck on your next career. Or perhaps Jim Vandiver is really Darain Atkinson, the President of National Auto Warranty Services, or Cory Atkinson, the listed Vice President. In that case, good luck in prison.
Here is how to contact these crooks:
http://www.oneautowarranty.com/
800-724-8510
Here are the owners’ addresses as listed in their Missouri corporation filing. This is public information:
Darain Atkinson (President)
1009 Hawks Landing Drive
Lake St. Louis, MO 63367
Cory Atkinson (Vice President)
20 Signal Hill
St. Charles, MO 63301