Get a recent call from a telemarketer telling you that your auto warranty has expired. I did, which I blogged about not long ago. I heard, “this is the second time we have called you that your car warranty has expired”. They called me on my home, work, and even cell phones — all of which are unlisted and on the do not call list. It appears that the telemarketers were using fake caller-id’s, which is a big no-no. In fact, they used the phone numbers to call people (well fake phone numbers) that really belonged to other people.
The two companies, Voice Touch Inc. and Transcontinental Warranty Inc., were named in a lawsuit filed in the Chicago District court by the ftc, who is seeking injunctions to their telemarketing efforts. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz called it “one of the most aggressive” telemarketing schemes the agency has ever seen.
The laws state that a telemarketer must use their real phone number (not a fake one) and also provide you a means to be removed from the phone number database. Unfortunately, they didn’t comply with either. They also, didn’t even think to use the do not call list to filter their phone number directory.
Many people have been complaining recently about getting these calls from random phone numbers saying “your warranty is about to expire”, or “you have just a few months left on your car warranty”. Appears some folks at reddit were complaining about this as well and actually found the culprit. Yesterday, they somehow found the real information about the telemarketer company and started calling it including hacking into their voice mail system and listing the different extensions. Unfortunately, there were apparently quite a few unhappy callers who had left messages asking for refunds … as of today the main phone number is disconnected.
Here are a few excerpts of their discussions there:
As the 800 number was reporting disconnected, I called (949) 475-9500, pressed zero for an operator and asked to speak to a manager. They passed me to Customer Service. Phone rang for about 5 minutes then I got “Jeremy.” I asked to have my cell # removed from their call list and he said he’d take care of it. Then I asked for his name and direct contact number. he told me: Jeremy, 1-800-499-4116, extension 467.
just got a call from their auto dialer 10 minutes ago, so they’re still up to it. I pressed 1 to connect to an agent and he picked up after about 10 seconds. I told him to stop calling me and he just hung up the phone.
They list all of the commands for the voicemail system. Unfortunately for these folks people should be more vigilent when getting and trusting a telemarketer.
If you look on CallCatalog.com at some of the more recent posts you’ll see that there are many phone numbers where there are repeat callers. These unwanted callers are dialing different individuals. For example 402-982-0669 has quite a few complaints on this number, you can use a reverse phone directory to identify who the caller is and also post a complaint. There are many other phone numbers that can be looked up and found that are calling many other people and bothering them.
Unfortunately, the FTC’s do not call list is a good place to post a complaint but its not a reverse phone directory where you can lookup a phone number. Its only one way. The best two way directory are some of the public ones that allow people to find out who is calling them and also allows them to post a complaint.