Pedln - we had a plague of these here in the UK a few months ago. I think they call from India, the screen always says 'international'. My husband found another way of blocking them - we had already subscribed to the 'no cold calls' number for UK calls, but a lot were getting through - since he used this new method, we've not had a single one. Tonight I will ask him how he did it, though I don't know if it would work in the US. I'll report back.
Somebody suggested that you should place the phone on the table and walk away, thereby running up their phone bill until they realise you're not there.
My mother was very upset a while ago by calls she kept getting when there appeared to be no-one there. She thought it was burglars checking out the property to see if anyone was in. I then read in the newspaper that many of these call centres have their workers call several numbers at once - then they speak to the first one who picks up, and leave the others waiting. I passed this on to my mother so at least she's been able to stop worrying about that, but really these places infuriate me.
Another scam I heard about on the radio this week was elderly people being sold 'warranties' over the phone. One confused old lady had been sold FOUR warranties for some TV service she didn't even have, plus several others for other things. Her son only realised when he looked at her bank statement. He was more than willing to take over her banking for her, and she was happy for him to do so, but our banks have now made it so difficult for a 3rd party to operate your account that families struggle to do this. In theory the person can sign a Power of Attorney in favour of someone else, but even then the banks make a huge song and dance about accepting them.
This reminds me of something else that happened this week. I am the secretary of the local arts & crafts centre (a charity run by volunteers). Last September we completed a new bank mandate to change the signatories on the bank account to me and another guy, as the existing signatories were no longer involved. We took all our ID into the bank, they sent the form away, we heard nothing - but our banks never do confirm anything. So after a while, Colin & I started signing cheques to pay our tutors - all of these cheques went through the system and were paid. This week I had to call the bank about something - the person I spoke to was actually from another bank, as the original bank has farmed out the work to them because they 'have a backlog'. He discovered that the mandate we sent in TEN months ago had never even been looked at (still in a queue). I asked how, in that case, these cheques signed by us hadn't been rejected. He said 'signatures aren't checked on cheques any more' - can you believe that?!!! So now, when these same banks are making a humungous fuss about genuine, concerned, families trying to help elderly parents with their banking, they are at the same time letting cheques go through with just about any signature on them. And we wonder why there is a banking crisis.
Rosemary
