Fun with telemarketers/phone scams 2012 edition

FAST6191

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As the title says new and recent stories about having fun with telemarketers and phone scams from GBAtemp members are the desired content.

Note abuse is easy/boring and if you are calling someone (unless it is an especially good prank good in which case make another thread) even if they are stupid enough that modern society or not you think evolution has failed (do no get me started on Western Union for that one and if they ever wonder why a lot of their clients suffer poor security on their machines.....) it is not what this thread is for.

Alas I have not had fun on the level of my Brazilian land deal (I probably shared that one last time but suffice it to say it was one of my favourites and the resulting hate spewed down the phone from them keeps me warm when I need it) for a while or even much time to wind up the calls from "Microsoft security" (one day I will get a proper VM set up in time again and think clearly when they send me to the windows only version of the remote support software of the moment) of late- my usual policy of alternating between master IT tech and "what is the start button" takes too long to get anywhere good (some have wanted me to manually count every "red or yellow" entry in the event viewer and will not be massaged past it).

To this end I have had to satisfy myself with winding up the machine calls from PPI (payment protection insurance*) by pressing 5 (it is always that number to go through to a human it seems and many seem to have blocked the usual holes in most of the machine dialing systems) and leaving the line dead which the last few days has caused serious annoyance on their part, putting the phone down midway through surveys (I have not beaten my 7 calls back record yet), getting put through to supervisors to help clear my debt (I am a factory owner deep in debt it would seem beyond the rank of the rank and file), confusing the people writing down the surveys (I use fuel cells and gas bottles wouldn't you know meaning I am off the grid), apparently I have no phone service (something about routed VOIP number) and generally talking nonsense when they are doing surveys (20 people in the house, 25 kids living here sort of thing, messing up their databased with invalid postcodes and addresses which they apparently do share.....).
Sadly there has been a completely lack of personal injury claim people the six months or so as those were great fun. I will say though certain high profile car insurance company that promised to keep my (very fake and unique to that company) details safe did a terrible job at it after the two year mark.

Also answering the phone with "yeah.. hi.. what do you need?" seems to confuse most telemarketers and I have yet to figure out why.

*apparently along with loans some people were sold insurance in case they could not pay through illness or something and they might not have leading to a large amount of people that got sold it being entitled to a refund but some leeches decided to try and to offer the service of phoning up the bank and saying oi for a decent cut. My capacity for memorising ultimately pointless things is probably better spent learning how to beat various old games so I have not been bothered to read up enough on the PPI stuff to do some real damage though.

Anyhow as I have had nothing interesting in a while over to everybody else. Also I highly encourage winding telemarketers up- many of these places have a proper quota and if wind ups become common enough well lack of profit has sunk bigger and badder things in the past.
 

loco365

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We haven't had a telemarketer call in a while, but a friend of mine had one call, so he just yelled random gibberish into the phone. The telemarketer hung up on him.

And no, he doesn't live in Soviet Russia.
 

Tom Bombadildo

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I don't have problems with telemarketers anymore because I told them to put me on the no-call list.

Funny story sort of related, a few years ago we had some Jehovah Witnesses coming to our door for crap. So my older brother goes out there with a BB Gun and threatens to shoot them if he ever sees them again. We've never had a visit since...hehe.
 

Janthran

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I don't have problems with telemarketers anymore because I told them to put me on the no-call list.

Funny story sort of related, a few years ago we had some Jehovah Witnesses coming to our door for crap. So my older brother goes out there with a BB Gun and threatens to shoot them if he ever sees them again. We've never had a visit since...hehe.
There's a pretty easy way to make them go away, which is more fun because it stumps them.
1. "Does God love everyone equally?"
"Uh, yes."
2. "So tiers don't exist?"
"Correct."
3. "But not everyone is going to Heaven?"
Done. Just know their beliefs and you can easily mess them up.
 

pokefloote

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Jehovah Witness' are fun to deal with. One time they trapped my little sister into talking with them, so I went upstairs, found some random shitty deathcore music and blasted it.
Left shortly after and never returned.
 

Janthran

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One time the JW came to my house and asked if [my dad's name] was there. I said no, he's on a run.
"Oh, does he still live here?" I was like "Uh, yeah, he just runs every Sunday morning.."

I realized the implications a few minutes afterwards. Lol.
 

nukeboy95

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here how u get rid of them
  1. seem like you want what there selling
  2. have them go to some where 1-2 hours away from your house
  3. if they dont ask for a address they start cussing till they hang-up
  4. ???
  5. profit
 

MelodieOctavia

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I usually head them off with "Hi, Excuse me, for just a second. Could I have your home number, so I can bother you while you eat dinner? No? Then why would you do that to me?" They usually hang up at that point.
 

Sora de Eclaune

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I had an... encounter... with a Jehova's Witness a couple of weeks ago. I opened the door and they spewed the stereotypical JW stuff, and that's when I grinned and pretended to be interested for a moment before this came up:

Me: "I'm confused about something. Can you clear it up?"
JW: "Sure, I'll do my best."
Me: "God is good and Satan is bad, right?"
JW: "Yes. *Insert long impossible-to-remember descriptions from the bible here*"
Me: "Has God killed people?"
JW: "Yes."
Me: "Has Satan killed people?"
JW: "No, but he takes the evil ones to hell."
Me: "So Satan's the police man of the earth?"
JW: "Well, you could call him that."
Me: "Policemen are good, though."
This is when the Jehova's Witness realizes I'm screwing with his beliefs, and promptly excuses himself as he has other houses to go to.

Alessa dealt with a telemarketer about a month ago and we haven't had any telemarketers since. I wasn't around when she spoke to them, but this is apparently what went down:

Alessa: "So I buy your service and get all that?"
Telemarketer: "Yes you do."
Alessa: "And it's only $29.95 a month?"
Telemarketer: "Uh huh."
Alessa: "Do you accept infant goats sacrificed on an altar of Satan as payment? I haven't stolen this month's allowance from the bank yet."
Telemarketer: "Let...uh...let me...uh...let me get a manager."

Apparently she was put on hold and no one ever came back, so she hung up.
 
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Pleng

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I like to play with the guys who call you up and say they can see your computer has a virus... you know the ones who want you to install team viewer so they can get all your crap from your computer?

I try and play as dense as I can, believably, make out I can. Let them progress the conversation a couple of steps each time then ask them questions like 'who are you again?' and 'why are you calling?', yet phrase them a bit differently each time. Make out you're genuinely confused; they'll have patience with you because they will believe they are about to fleece the **** out of you. When they finally get to them asking for your team viewer password slowly spell out the five letters 'F'.......'U'. Sometimes they get it straight away. Sometimes it takes them a while.

It's hilarious how genuinely angry and abusive these guys get with you for 'wasting' their time. It really seems to go over their heads that they deserve every last thing that's coming to them for what they are trying to do!

If you get really well practised at this, you can even start bringing in a couple of different characters. Old doddy grandpa answering the phone; 'wizzkid' know-it-all grandson who's always 'yea team viewer i know that. ill load it up through gimp'. 'yes im in firefox now, im downloading teamviewer with my cabbagedownload addon. its super fast that way'.
 
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FAST6191

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I post plenty in the EOF triassic911.

God squad at the door. It tends to be Mormons or one of the other not quite mainstream flavours around here but they have stopped as I did read the book of Mormon once when I was reading all the books of the various religions and as others have pointing out logical holes (of which it was second only to some of the borderline cult stuff and some of the more interesting interpretations of Islam) but I tend not to be in hearing range of the front door these days so I have not had the pleasure in a while and it seems they have stopped trying to bother me in town although most people that try to bother people in town seem to avoid me (I guess they do not like being sidestepped?). The music one has not been possible in a while although they did used to bother me on Sunday and as the only CD I had with me in that house was Venom - Black Metal (it is not actually what most people would understand as black metal, indeed I do not really care for black metal and usually treat it as a waste of good instrumentals) they tended to make their excuses and leave and there was another time when an associate rolled up when I was playing windup and provided a choice backing track from the car.

Do they still get you to do Teamviewer Pleng? They stopped that one for me quite a while back and go for all the others which is a pain as the others are not quite so easy to work on whatever throwaway linux VMs I have around here.
I would do different voices but although my voice is not yet monotone the entire range tends to be witnessed in a single sentence although for proper windups I do actually "try" and as most of the people are not completely moronic they see through it and try to call me on it. I get the odd yell when I switch to myself (hold on are you sure you mean this machine as I have at least six here and countless more virtual machines) and/or call them on it being a scam after wasting a bit of time but true anger seems to be reserved for the likes of my Brazilian land deal* or lately the PPI stuff. Some of the personal injury people were semi congratulatory after I got bored which was nice but the best ones were thirty minutes in when they tried to seal the deal I would start on "but it was an accident.... it is not like they were doing it on purpose", "why would I want to sue them?" and so on which really threw them through a loop.

*a lady phoned up and did a pretty good line in high pressure sales techniques (repeating my fake name (which of course I made her work to get) every few seconds, talking me up like my semi clueless persona of the day knew what they were doing, tying it to a lifestyle....) to get me to buy some land in Brazil for a hotel because of the upcoming Olympics there and after I got bored about forty minutes in I started putting the phone down. She called back the next day and I denied all knowledge making no effort to mask my voice "be a man and tell me if you do not want to speak to me"... phone down... Her boss calls back and flies off the handle at my brother who was round and I had given the phone and also denied all knowledge.
 

Paarish

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This guy phoned my house for a security check for my laptop. Since I didn't know anything about this I instantly knew it was some kind of scam.
As he was telling me what to do for the "security check" I opened up some porn, put it at full volume. I told him that this came up after I followed his instruction, making sure he could hear the grunts and whatnot. :creep:
He hung up after that.

True story too.
 
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nukeboy95

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This guy phoned my house for a security check for my laptop. Since I didn't know anything about this I instantly knew it was some kind of scam.
As he was telling me what to do for the "security check" I opened up some porn, put it at full volume. I told him that this came up after I followed his instruction, making sure he could hear the grunts and whatnot. :creep:
He hung up after that.

True story too.
some-one is dirty
 

Pleng

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This guy phoned my house for a security check for my laptop. Since I didn't know anything about this I instantly knew it was some kind of scam.
As he was telling me what to do for the "security check" I opened up some porn, put it at full volume. I told him that this came up after I followed his instruction, making sure he could hear the grunts and whatnot. :creep:
He hung up after that.

True story too.

Kind of related...

If you ever get those pervy nuisance phone calls (you know the ones "i wanna do whadyacall it to your sometwhatsit", "i wanna exusemeplease to your ibegyourpardon", that kind of stuff), a great way to throw them off (and seemingly ensure they never call back again) is to be totally up for it: "wow.. that sounds great", "whoa really?!!" - the heavy breathing stops all of a sudden, a slight pause followed by a nervous cough; "what else?" I ask; phone goes dead.
 
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NeoSupaMario

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This guy phoned my house for a security check for my laptop. Since I didn't know anything about this I instantly knew it was some kind of scam.
As he was telling me what to do for the "security check" I opened up some porn, put it at full volume. I told him that this came up after I followed his instruction, making sure he could hear the grunts and whatnot. :creep:
He hung up after that.

True story too.

Kind of related...

If you ever get those pervy nuisance phone calls (you know the ones "i wanna do whadyacall it to your sometwhatsit", "i wanna exusemeplease to your ibegyourpardon", that kind of stuff), a great way to throw them off (and seemingly ensure they never call back again) is to be totally up for it: "wow.. that sounds great", "whoa really?!!" - the heavy breathing stops all of a sudden, a slight pause followed by a nervous cough; "what else?" I ask; phone goes dead.
L.O.FUCKING.L.
 

Anon10W1z

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Before the guy could even speak, my sister just talked as if she was a little kid.

"Hi! How are you! I'm very good! What's your favorite color? Food? Speaking of food, my mommy's making dinner so bye!"

Before the telemarketer could, my sister hung up.
 

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