Having fun with the scammers

Why are we still engaged on this?

Hang up. They don't care that you are taking their time up and its probably the poor souls doing this so they don't starve who are going to suffer most.

Just hang up.

volver On the whole these aren't honest sales people, they are scammers attempting to trick people into giving them financial information.

I had a friend who would say she was a police officer, they had telephoned a crime scene, their number had been traced and they were to stay where they were until an officer arrived to take their statement! Usually they hung up as soon as they heard the words "police officer"

Yes, I know that Oldwoman70.

They are generally calling from organised call centres. They are as organised as the "real" call centres and don't give two hoots if the people they are calling are having a laugh pretending to keep them hanging on.

The people making the calls are generally employed by the people running the call centres and are on commission. They probably have a maximum allowed time to try to win a caller over and that's why they hang up after 5 minutes, not because the person they've called has confused them.

The call centres are calling millions of people every day and so keeping one guy hanging on for 5 minutes doesn't stop them having time to annoy anyone else.

Oh, and while someone is having fun thinking they are confusing them, they're going on the list of people who are likely to engage, so they get called again.

Just hang up.

There are so many urban myths about peoples clever and ingenious responses to scam callers- from putting the phone down and walking away to blowing a whistle down the phone.
However tempting it is to tell them to naff off, volver is right. Just hang up.

I had a friend who used to threaten to put a curse on them.
(like the old lady from drag me to hell)
Apparently it worked, as some of these people are very superstitious.

I have zero sympathy for scum who try to con people (very often elderly and vulnerable) out of their life savings.
I don't care what their circumstances are.
They deserve everything they get. And more.

Oldwoman70

volver On the whole these aren't honest sales people, they are scammers attempting to trick people into giving them financial information.

I had a friend who would say she was a police officer, they had telephoned a crime scene, their number had been traced and they were to stay where they were until an officer arrived to take their statement! Usually they hung up as soon as they heard the words "police officer"

Brill.

I don't subscribe to the poor people being exploited by the call centres Anybody who tricks people into handing over their bank details and pin numbers know exactly what they're doing.

Just hang up.

As soon as you talk to them you are identified as someone that they can engage with on the phone. Whether you think they are superstitious or not, the call centres for whom they work have much better idea of how this works than someone who thinks telling them they are cursed is a good way of getting rid of them.

If you talk to them, they will call you back and they have cleverer and cleverer ways of getting you to talk, and eventually all these "clever" people armed with whistles will give something away.

Really, its not clever. JUST HANG UP

Five years old. Still true.

www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2016/05/28/six-reasons-not-to-engage-with-scammers-no-matter-what-your-facebook-friends-tell-you/?sh=7b87f907439d

Exactly.
You can always mutter the F word after you have hung up!

My landline is on silent - I never use it, it's just part of the internet package. I never answer my mobile when it's an unknown number - if it's a genuine call they'll leave a message.

On the odd occasion when I've answered such a call I just put the phone down - why engage with them, it doesn't make you clever or amusing! It doesn't affect them one iota.

There are all sorts of services and devices you can get to screen out the majority - I never understand when people complain they're pestered by so many calls.

It used to be that hospitals & GPs would have withheld numbers or not leave messages for confidentiality reasons but I think that must have changed, or I've signed some sort of permission, as I've had phone calls from both that I'm able to see who is calling.

My husband used to do something similar, he used to tell them all about his stroke and could they give him more details of the recent accident he had had. We now have a house phone that only let's calls through if they are on our call list and a call blocker on our mobiles

janipans
Well that's you told ?

Just hang up!

Just hang up

Where's the fun in that?

snowberryZ

^Just hang up^

Where's the fun in that?

You don't get scammed?

That's quite a good thing.

Anybody remember watching Sally Lindsay in
Cold Call?

It's shocking how quickly they managed to part her from her money.
The people working for the main man knew exactly what they were doing.

I wouldn't mind watching it again. Hope it's back on soon.

This one is mildly amusung
youtu.be/CuVFcizDwqw

Don't think I'd have the patience!

youtu.be/KCv_vTIS4ZU
Tiny Tim ?

I just tell them I died in the car crash that they keep insisting I was involved in, they soon depart after that.

Why can’t you just say no thank you and hang up. these people are on minimum wage in a call centre and have to put up with constant abuse and time wasters. Keeping them on the line will not stop cold callers but will stop them reaching their targets and mean even less pay. I am sure most of them do not work there by choice.

Elizabeth27 We are talking about scammers not genuine people working in call centres

Why can’t you just say no thank you and hang up. these people are on minimum wage in a call centre and have to put up with constant abuse and time wasters.

Actually these ‘poor people’ are criminals. They are no different from anyone else that makes their living by robbing people. I know someone that lost £10,000 they could ill afford to lose and would have lost their entire life savings if it wasn’t for the bank manager noticing the sudden withdrawals.

Fgs! These people make their living by conning often elderly people. Shame on anyone that pities them.

I think of someone takes the absolute liberty of phoning me, uninvited, to try and scam me out of money, then it is up to me how I deal with them.

Don't like it?
Then don't phone.

It's particularly annoying when it's the same people, multiple times daily, and you need the phone to be be free because you're waiting on an important call.

I think some people are mistaking cold callers trying to sell something with scammers who are stealing from the vulnerable. The scammers know what they are doing is illegal and immoral, they are the digital equivalent of Fagin’s boys. To me they are fair game. My son and I used to have a little game to see how long we could keep them on for, nowadays when ‘Microsoft’ phone I give them the IP address of Google.