"Debt Advice Bureau" telephone scam
Anyone else being pestered by these buffoons? They've been calling me 5-10 times a month for about a year now (and that's just the calls I've picked up). "Debt Advice Bureau" is only their latest bogus name; they've used a couple of others, but the spiel is always the same. "Can I speak to Mr or Mrs Bunny? How are you today? I'm calling about a government scheme to write off personal debts and unsecured loans ... blah, blah ... " - brain switches off, telephone goes down. Dialling 1471 gives "We do not have the caller's number to return the call" - which indicates that it's an overseas call, presumably from India or Pakistan as they always have an Asian accent. The laughable thing is, I don't have any debts, but telling them that doesn't make any difference - they'll be calling again the next day or after a week or two. Why can't their heads just explode or something?
Post edited by Battle Bunny on
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http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/
The Telephone Preference Service cut down a lot of my nuisance calls but not all.
I wish I had more time to get involved.
There is a similar organisation for mail.
She was chinese or Japanese could barely speak English I could hardly understand her, all I remember her saying was in the end after much drivel "How about I give you Nokia" I don't remember if I was abusive in some way but she actually hung up on me I think :lol:
If they don't, simply report them.
Cold callers are, in my eyes, fair game. A lot of fun can be had with them if you can lead them away from their script.
If all else fails, ask them out for a date, they won't ring back, espically if they are male!
S
Yeah but if you do that, they could sell the contact details they got in the first place onto more people, even if it is just your phone number, that way the scammer/spammer still lines his pockets and further screws you.
the biggest scammers are actual companies, the T-Mobile phone I mentioned earlier in the thread caused me months of grief when I moved here. It's all very interesting, maybe now is the time to post the scans of the letter I sent to a debt collection agency T-Mobile turned me over to after violating an agreement they made with me, and the reply from the credit agency basically saying they weren't going to do anything to me :lol:
The initial letter after a lengthy 2 hour call to T-Mobile from an international number.
My letter back to the agency they turned me over to.
...and the agencies reply
The TPS only works with inland callers; overseas callers don't give a monkeys about it, especially if they're financial scammers.
I agree that, if I can be bothered to waste the time, techniques like pretending not to be able to hear or understand them, or answering each question with a question, can be amusing for a while. Denying all knowledge of the person they're asking for (ie. me), slamming the phone down immediately, hanging up while they're in the middle of a sentence, and similar disruptive ploys, can be quite satisfying as well. Not that I suppose they care, as I expect that 99.9% of their targets send them packing, so they're used to it. It's the 0.1% of idiots that keep them in business that's the real problem.
I see that BT offer free caller display if you register with TPS, so it's probably worth spending 20 quid on an enabled phone to get that feature. Any caller who's number doesn't display then doesn't get picked up.
Just signed-up with the TPS so should be getting a lot less of this kind of stuff.
just remeber with that though that you wont be able to recieve any calls from switchboards, which might mean freinds and famlies at work, mail order companies, other services etc.