numerous calls
Complaint
VickieG
Country: United States
Same thing is happening to me. Have written down several of the phone numbers and attempted to call back, but the numbers are bogus!
Googled Cardmember Services, but got a particular bank's card-member services. She was familiar with the scam and said that they charge your credit card in order to lower your interest rate. My guess is nothing ever gets changed on your card with the exeption of a charge for a bogus service.
What do we need to do to end the phone calls? Once a day would be annoying, but I am getting 3+.
Googled Cardmember Services, but got a particular bank's card-member services. She was familiar with the scam and said that they charge your credit card in order to lower your interest rate. My guess is nothing ever gets changed on your card with the exeption of a charge for a bogus service.
What do we need to do to end the phone calls? Once a day would be annoying, but I am getting 3+.
Comments
Use an alias, pretend to be interested, pretend you have about $5k to $10k in credit card debt, string them along with questions, act real dumb, give them fake credit card numbers, etc.
Their robocalls are cheap, costing them next to nothing, but they can never close a "sale". Only their live people can do that, and if they are wasting their time talking to you, they can't swindle someone else.
There is some evidence from consumer reports that they are getting increasingly frustrated, responding with obscenities and expletives, when people try this tactic.
These crooks are fraudulently impersonating "your bank", and "VISA and MasterCard" in their deceptive pitch, yet they are using those same systems to run through their fraudulent charges. That means that VISA and MasterCard are getting high levels of fraud disputes and chargebacks against someone, yet they have not cut them off. Even if FTC can't locate the robocallers directly, due to faked caller id, the fraud dispute trail through VISA and MasterCard should lead directly to them.
Put political pressure on VISA and MasterCard. In the past, the political spotlight forced them to cut off merchant accounts to numerous charge cramming scams, following Senate hearings a couple years ago.
This scheme can only keep going as long as the money flows. Contact your congressman, and specifically the offices of Sen. Jay Rockefeller, to file complaints against this phone scam and the critical role played by VISA and MasterCard in it's perpetration.