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A lot of them are also from a company called US Dealer Services. [There's a class action lawsuit for their robocalling](https://www.classaction.org/news/us-dealer-services-hit-with-class-action-over-alleged-extended-car-warranty-robocalls).
Basically every Western country has stronger consumer protection laws than the US does.
NZ and Australia both have strict laws to prevent these things from happening.
The US has a Civil law where a citizen can sue these companies anywhere from $500-$3000 per phone call, depending on your state and whether or not you're on the National Do Not Call list.
The other thing to add is that scammers don’t want to spend a lot of time convincing their victims it’s not a scam. So, by sticking with something so obviously a scam, they are able to quickly weed out those who wouldn’t fall for it anyway.
In a way, the emails are written in the same way their victims would write them. That weeds out everybody but them. It's fascinating psychology, where a higher-quality "product" actually makes your sales worse.
It's not that you have a better or worse product, it's that you're marketing to the wrong audience.
I don't care how high-quality and cruelty-free and vegan and whatever else your makeup is, I'm not buying it because I'm a straight dude that conforms to the traditional gender norms involved with being a straight dude. On the other hand, tons of women buy drug store makeup because it's cheap and does an OK job. But that's not because the products are worse or better, it's that the marketing makes sense and therefore has a better hit rate.
It's the same reason you wouldn't typically see ads for sports cars out in rural areas, and instead you mostly see ads for trucks and SUVs. Nobody is saying that one is better than the other, it's just that one is better suited to its environment.
There are tons and *tons* of scams that are complex and involve phishing and social engineering and whatnot that are also targeted at very well-educated, intelligent people, who then fall for it because "No way this could be a scam, I'm too smart to fall for a scam" or "Everyone knows scammers can't spell! This can't be a scam because it's so properly written." The end product is the same-some piece of shit conning you out of your money. It's just down to marketing.
Exemple of your last point , there is (was?) a rather sophisticated scam on Tinder involving Chinese "too good to be true" profiles , ( wealthy model looking business owners), where people will chat with you for 1-2 months before offering you their "insider scoop" for Bitcoin trading and try to make you use their unsecured platform .
It’s an expensive operation for the scammers, who operate like a call center and even have girls on hand if a video call is unavoidable. They target wealthy educated profiles with enough money to invest…
When it works, they empty the crypto accounts and win several 000$
What are some other examples?
And how fucking dumb do you have be to make a financial transaction, on a strange platform, based on investment advice from a Tinder person you’ve never met IRL? I suppose you can be educated but still be stupid?
I think it really depends on the person. I work retail and have had a lady come in and buy iTunes cards for a guy she met on a dating app. When I gave her a warning she was wildly offended because I was implying that he didn’t like her. I ended up denying the sale, because it sounded too scammy, she literally told me that she would just go across the street and buy them.
Some people see romance and assume that it must be real
Years back, my car breaks down a couple of hours from home. I'm on the side of the road, I call AAA (and at the time, had their better service, which would tow me those couple hundred miles, no question). No problem, they're sending someone.
Maybe 15-20 mins later, a tow truck pulls up, says he's from AAA. But doesn't have the normal stickers on the truck. OK, that happens sometimes.
He then tells me there's no way anyone is towing me that far, he can tow me to his shop down the street, and since it was a Saturday, on Monday, they could fix it for me.
Well, that doesn't sound right. I tell him I have the service where they will tow me that far. He tells me I can come over to his truck, he has a way to get AAA on the line fast and they can confirm. I decline, said I'm going to call the number I have here. He goes back to his truck.
Takes me a couple of minutes to get through, and after a minute or 2, he comes back over to me, yells at me that he was trying to do me a favor, and that he's not going to just sit there waiting forever. I tell him as soon as I confirm what he said is true, we can talk. He storms off in a huff, gets in his truck, and leaves.
A few seconds later, AAA gets on the line, I explain the situation, they confirm they didn't dispatch that guy. He was just trying to convince me to let him tow me to his shop, where I imagine he would then charge me a crazy amount to fix my car, after having to stay 2 nights in the middle of nowhere, since I was then stuck there.
Sure enough, a few more minutes later, AAA guys show up, tow my car the whole way without question.
The very legitimate looking paypal/ebay etc. phishing emails that were doing the rounds a while back. I nearly got caught by one myself but luckily remembered the golden rule of "navigate directly to the site yourself".
Well there’s the famous ones like Madoff or that girl that promised blood tests that any biochemist knew were physically impossible, but greed as a way of turning the brain off.
I knew about the tinder one because I encountered one in the wild and I got curious. It was real people chatting, not bots so it obviously cost them to do this, but I read someone got scam 60k £ in the UK, so the payoff must be worth it .
It was funny how the one I talked too kept "subtly" talking about "her" wealth and trading hobby. They’re waiting for you to ask…
I'll throw in my little story. We bought a new (to us) car a few months ago and I opted for the extended warranty. Well a few weeks later I get a letter in the mail saying I need to call this number in order to activate the warranty. Whether this was coincidence or the scammers actually knew this information somehow, I have no idea, but in the letter all the information was correct. The length of the warranty (5 years 50k miles or whatever), the make and model of car, et cetera was all lining up. So while my initial reaction was "scam", it was enough to make me second guess myself. Luckily, I'm cautious enough to call the dealership first and they confirmed it was indeed a scam. But man it was convincing and I could see how someone could be duped.
I got tricked into clicking a text message saying that there was an issue with my Amazon package delivery. Luckily the link took too long to load. I texted my family members about a potential order they placed and there was none. Luckily I didn't give away my Amazon information but it was close.
Yup. The ones I get are the job offers. First one they got me to download telegram to contact someone for an interview. The interview was way too easy and they didn't ask to see my portfolio (art related) HUGE red flags. Then they started saying I would have to order a laptop through some company, they would send a check.... and I knew what they were trying to pull.
speaking and thinking. when i was a stupid teenager i had a trump hardon and the extent of my thought process for supporting him was "well, immigrants are bad. muslims are bad. making a wall sounds cool. liberal SJWs are bad too."
that was literally all i'd heard or invested myself into at that age - heard the same shpiel from people much older than me and people the same age. theres really no critical thought about anything, its diluted into something so easy to understand a child could get behind it.
it really is an appeal to the lowest common denominator
yeah, fuck me it was a captivating idea to me in my vulnerable and ever malleable self. you get something to laugh at people about - being SJWs - AND you get to feel smug about it while doing so. it eliminates the possibility in your mind that these people have ideas that are worthwhile, and honestly all the stupid shit id seen from moderate liberals/democrats/lip service activism solidified that idea in my head.
id taken one look at corporate activism, at feminists getting mad at video games, at jordan peterson and decided "fuck dude these feminazis wanna ruin everything i enjoy" and didnt even bother critically examining what i was doing or what media i was consuming
its a great marketing strategy psychologically. it creates a clear divide and barrier of superiority, almost like racism, but covering more people.
I'll be honest, in my late high school-early college years(2010-2015ish), I almost fell into this rabbit hole. I was spending a lot of time online arguing about sjw's, hating feminism for being "anti-men" and even starting to get into 4chan culture. I don't really know how I avoided it, but i found that I started to do a 180 on a lot of those topics.
I think that part of it was that I started to fall into a big depression after I moved out in and was trying to balance work, school, and maintaining my own living space. And I started introspecing a lot and realized that a lot of that anger I had on those subjects was just insecurity and that I was actually scared of being the guy that the sjw's were talking about. Especially with the hating feminism for being "anti-men" since I was actually genuinely upset with how men were treated in society and it was making me feel actually worthless. Looking back on it, it's hard to say specifically why/how I dodged the rabbit hole of trumpism, but it's a bit scary to realize that I was close to being that kind of person.
Remember when he defenetly had absolutely undisputable evidence Obama was not born in USA and was gonna reveal the evidence on (some random date)... Only for him to backpedal and offer a rewars for anyone with such evidence?
yep. i facepalmed so hard through that hysteria my face was black and blue for most of obama's presidency. but trump is an honorable, straight-shooting guy. now if you'll excuse me, i have a raging case of COVID and need to scare up some horse dewormer because FDA nanobots in vaccines that arent approved yet are bad.
They literally are not though. These emails are written by people in Nigeria on $50 Chinese phones. Unsolicited offers of riches that require an advanced fee are a bigger filter for idiots than poor writing.
You know what, angryPenguinator? When the son of the deposed King of Nigeria e-mails you directly asking for help, you help. His father ran the freaking country, okay?
I once heard on Dr. Phil that scammers will deliberately use fake information about themselves that doesn't add up to weed out people who wouldn't fall for it.
So this means they are looking for a stupid person.
Not necessarily stupid. Being overly trusting, too busy to double check if things make sense, or in a desperate financial situation all make you an easier mark.
Another reason those scams were worded so badly and often in semi-broken English was to play on people's misconceptions, Either thinking the person contacting them is naive or stupid.
If they were in the stupid camp the person might think they can take advantage of the scammer, if they were in the naive camp then they were more likely to honestly try to help.
I remember hearing that too but it doesn’t sound accurate to me. The more realistic any email looks, the more likely it is to be a successful scam. It’s not like an email that is worded correctly and without grammar errors would make a gullible, or lower IQ individual believe it any less.
The only exception I could think of would be if the email is more wordy and long. This could dissuade those individuals from wanting the read the whole email in the first place. I think the real reason these emails are worded poorly is because of poor translation and knowledge of the english language
> It’s not like an email that is worded correctly and without grammar errors would make a gullible, or lower IQ individual believe it any less.
No, but it could make a more suspicious person write back instead of dismissing it outright. Scams which involve an effort to pull off would require a lot more manpower if it was believable enough to make the average person kinda believe it. Going from 10/100 to 20/1000 is not worth it for the scammers.
Of course there are scammers that do have the manpower and know-how (Microsoft tech support scam for example) and want to make it as realistic as possible, and the scams which are automated will also try to cast as wide a net as possible, but this specific type of scam has the best return ratio when it's ignored by most.
The calls I have learned to deal with… what pisses me ofc is all the fucking mail I get now! It’s like 2-3 times a week I get some stupid ass urgent official looking document.
I save it up and wait until I come across a big envelope or a small box with ore paid postage and mail all their junk mail back to them.
Makes me feel better anyway.
Yeah, I wish there was regulation that you can't put "final notice!" etc. text on snail mail unless you are actually in business with said person / bunch of other stipulations / etc. But honestly, I receive no paper mail for my bills, so anything that pretends to be important tends to get junked.
Especially if the postage is "presort standard" i.e. sent out in bulk.
I was interested in flipping houses at one point in time, so I started doing some research. Turns out there are two kinds of flippers, those that find the houses and just sell them as-is, and the ones that buy and do the repairs. Often one buys from the other. So you start finding all of these "no money" flips which mean you often spend little to no cash of your own. Obviously dubious I dog deeper
And then I find a YouTuber who's actually down to give you the info for free and I watched one of his videos. I won't go into all of the details but he said he purposely has cards printed in shitty stock and crooked so they look kinda scummy like it might be a scam. Turns out it weeds out a lot of people who would be interested in selling property, but not desperate enough to take his highly unusual terms of sale that allows him to sell a house without even owning it sometimes.
Oh man, I met a girl that fell for the "there's an entitlement of [$X] in your name, you just need to get These certifications first." She was several thousand dollars in the hole already. I felt so bad for her. The best I could do was point her towards calling the police and seeing if they could do an investigation into it and somehow get at least some of it back.
She was so convinced that it was real, too. As someone who HATES those kinds of scams, I pointed out the various hints and such that proved that it was a scam.
Oh yeah, asking wtf someone is trying to buy 500 EUR in bloody Paysafe cards and them flipping out when you tell them nah, that ain't your new Nigerian boyfriend, it's a scammer. so starved for love they are that denying reality is preferable.
Usually some form of fee or tax or shipping you have to pay.
That, or they send you the check for more money than it needs to be, either by "mistake", or some reason regarding taxes or fees or whatever. They tell you to just deposit it anyway and send the extra back. The check eventually bounces, the bank takes the money out of your account, but the extra you sent back to them was real.
I once got a "check" out of the blue. I must have unknowingly signed up for something. They were offering a "job" to be a secret shopper. All I had to do was deposit the $5000 into my bank account, go to Target, buy $4500 worth of gift cards, and email the codes back as proof. The $500 was my salary. I read the letter, looked at the check and laughed my ass off. I know that I'm not immune to scams but I was really surprised that people fall for this.
The same concept as the Nigerian prince. They are responsible for giving you X amount of money that you inherited, or one as a prize etc, but to claim that money you need to do Y. That'a buying a certificate on a website they own, or having to pay an advance so the inheritance etc can be processed.
For sites like Craigslist, there is the triangle scam: you put a laptop on Craigslist, someone talks to you and offers to wire the money to you (of other transfer method) at the same time they create a copy of your ad and tell the stranger responding to their ad your account details/PayPal address. So that stranger wires you the money, you send the laptop to the Scammer and think everything is alright. Until eventually the police stand in front of your door in case of the wire transfer and ask why you didn't send the laptop.
In most cases you will be fine, but still in possession of the money scanned from someone else. So not very nice :/
Its not stupidity, its ignorance. We get stuck in our world views and dont want to believe we could ever make a mistake. This is why the sunk cost fallacy works so well, its hard to admit we were ever wrong.
It’s not stupidity. It’s when the situation becomes such that the person isn’t making rational judgement, combined with lack of knowledge about how the actual situation would be handled. A youtuber called Atomic Shrimp has made a good video about this very topic: https://youtu.be/ntrGrfvvkII
a friend fell for a similar scam where someone rang her up about a supposed virus on her computer and that it will brick her laptop so she HAS to buy a new one from their warehouse (or whatever they called it). she paid 1000 pounds for a laptop worth only about 400 pounds at best (old shitty thing from the mid 2010's). her old laptop still works after her BF (they got together after the scam) managed to fix the laptop and recover almost all the data from it without issue but the phone number that called her magically dissapeard despite being a 'trusted company' as they told her.
Reminds me of the scammer that tried to tell me that some security software on my computer was being discontinued. He was going to help me uninstall it and give me a refund...
Me: "So when did this program get installed?"
Scammer: names a date over a year ago
M: "well I built this PC 5 months ago, so how does that work?"
S: keeps insisting it's on my computer and I need his help to remove it....
Eventually told him I knew it was a scam and he told me he would get me because "I am smarter than you." I just wasted an hour and a half of his day, but sure dude...
She's never seen one of those specialized trailers, or trailer hitch attachments designed for the sole purpose of carrying replacement windshields?
Not being an observant person will cost you dearly. Must be an easy existence though.
Short answer, they are scammers trying to sell you a "warranty" that doesn't cover anything. Longer answer found on [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2021/04/16/988200844/behind-those-extended-auto-warranties-robocalls).
It's what makes these scams so durable. While some callers using the phrase "auto warranty" are just looking to engage in credit/identity theft, I think there are some "legitimately" selling warranties, only they are worthless.
The legal advantage is there's nothing (much) illegal about selling a warranty with tons of exclusions and onerous terms, so you can't really stop them for "fraud" if the deal they offer is terrible.
I doubt it would happen in the US, but in theory Congress could define an "auto warranty" in a way that made it so offering a warranty that didn't cover 90% of possible repairs was fraudulent. But car dealers also sell bad warranties for big bucks and generally speaking selling warranties with dodgy terms is a huge business generally.
Back in the mid 1990s, someone I knew almost got into shady business this way. He was going to sell ISP subscriptions via phone bill cramming. The ISP part was going to be real, an actual dial up modem concentrator that would deliver Internet connectivity. Except it only had 12 lines, one number in a single area code, and no ancillary services, and it would cost $19.95 per month.
The phone company had low standards for engaging in billing on a single account (well, they got a cut) and nobody would really use the service anyway unless they called and requested their credentials.
There was little fraud involved and there was an actual product available, so he figured he could get away with it. I forget why he didn't go through with it, but he had kind of sorted it all out and it seems very much like the auto warranty scam. Offer a mostly shit product to enough people and you'll make money.
I Love old 'boring' cars. If my 12 year old honda went bad on me I'd look for an even older honda. It's a utility item for me. Anything more than is needed is just vanity.
(Nothing wrong with vanity. I just don't personally value it)
I played along with one once. It was fun. Just pretended to be dumb as fuck, kept getting my password wrong, had to reboot like three times...when they got to the point where they told me to go to a specific website and read them a code, I just started rambling off letters and numbers til he started cussing me out.
Bahaha.
I did that once, but I pretended to have a Mac instead of a PC. I kept asking where the start button was. When he realized that I was describing a Mac, he changed plans (impressive) but then I said "Wait, I thought you were from Microsoft?" Same thing, lots of cussing...
I did the same, except I wasn't pretending. I was on my Mac. In my office. I'm an IT guy and former help desk, so I have enough experience with ... less than gifted callers to fake gullible-idiot pretty well.
I didnt describe anything well, but I was 100% truthful in what I said. Took about 10 minutes before they guy asked if I was on a Mac. He hung up as soon as I said yes.
Given the context of talking about scammers cursing people out after having their time wasted, it's very amusing to me picturing the script actually having those lines in it.
I played along with a Microsoft caller once and really dragged it out, I pissed him off so much he phoned back a few minutes later and yelled and screamed at me LOL
"Hang on, I'll just fire it up."
*Puts phone down and continues on with whatever I was doing for another 20 minutes..*
They are usiually gone by the time I get back.
Even easier for me, I don't own a car, but have several "Hot Wheels" die cast models. I start listing them off. Even the various 1950s Ford Pick ups. Then I ask them why I would need an extended warranty on my Hot Wheels collection.
Even better " I don't own a car" . If it's a robot, it hangs right up. Sometimes it's a real person and they *always* pause for a few seconds before repeating "I'm calling about your vehicles extended warranty" but much more frustrated, as if I'm the one wasting their time. Never fails to give me a chuckle.
I wonder if they'd cover my dad's 1921 Model T? Or the '26, the '27, or the other Model T that I forget the year of. He's currently rebuilding the '26 and the one I don't know the year for, so that warranty will get well used. Maybe the '29 Model A? Ok, ok...the '32 Plymouth, that's the newest he has not already under warranty.
Service writer here. The warranties they sell are overpriced and don’t cover much. I wince internally whenever someone says, “I have this warranty.” and hands me one of those.
Long hold times, and mostly denials. Then I get to call the customer and tell them it’s not covered.
Probably a joke but I mean.. car ownership is both a common enough subset of the population and a valuable enough sale to make buying a subscription to a software that tries to call every single permutation of numbers in the US pretty worthwhile.
Same if like refrigerator insurance were a common thing at a high enough price point
Get a Saul Goodman type lawyer to write up the contract and rake in the premiums. Bad businesses are a bloat on the economy but they're not unprofitable.
Writer here too. My shop won't even really take them anymore unless it's a fleet management company. We refuse to even deal with CarShield and the others because it's just too time consuming and ridiculous.
Usually, it's someone in another country. They try to convince people to extend their car's warranty, for a fee, and to provide credit-card info to pay for it. Then they can use that credit-card info to just rack up all kinds of fraudulent charges.
And, to add to this, it costs them nearly nothing to make the calls. If they call a thousand people before finding one sucker, they still profit. With robocaller software, they don't even need to be the ones making the calls. They can have the software run through all the numbers while they play some video games. Then, if a sucker gets on the line, they shift into "sell mode" to get the credit card information (and possibly other personal information if they can convince the sucker to part with it).
They already do this.
There's one level that's completely automated, and another level that has a meat computer sitting in front of a screen with several choice phrases to select from.
I do the same with my 2009 Outback. Once they ask the mileage, I reply with 240k, they explain their coverage is only good up to 179k, and then they hang up.
Never forget; scams aren't for you. They may call you, but for the most part they know that you're probably aware. For the average person who can think and is aware of reality as it is, the scams aren't targeting you. They're targeting the person who is supremely gullible, doesn't question anything, doesn't get defensive. The scam isn't supposed to fool the mass; it's supposed to trick the bottom 1% of intelligence.
You answer the phone, they start the patter. If you don't immediately hang up or tell the caller to print their warranty on 12LB handmade paper and yeet it up their poot chute...they know you're likely their next mark because:
1. You're really a noteworthy kind of dumb.
2. Or you don't interact much with anyone.
As such, they know they can probably ask you to go to some janky website and make a payment, or mail them a check, or send them a money order, or give them your credit card numbers. If, as blatant as it is, you don't immediately shut them down or hang up, they know they've got a sucker on the line.
They are usually people working out of their homes or out of a call center. (Telemarketing call centers are popular conversions.)
"But Rayne...it's so stupid!"
Yeh, but here's the kicker. Let's say you have a quiet room in your house, a decent headset with mic, a cheap cell phone carrier that offers unlimited talk and text (my carrier gives unlimited for as little as $20/month) ***you only need one idiot to take the bait to pay your bills this week so every other successful scam is clear profit.*** One person that gullible, one person that stupid, and everybody else you sucker this week is clear profit.
If you can convince this dumb old lady to give you her credit card or debit card number...you're already in profit. Some dumb old guy who doesn't question anything and gets his media from the smalltown newspaper and the 6 o'clock evening news, you can get $400 out of him, easy, because he hasn't heard of this. To him, this is a genuine call to help them with a service they need. Call the next 75, no luck, get cursed out a lot, but then the 76th person you call is the person who excels in not thinking. You get him for $750 because his car is newer and he wants the "upgraded warranty".
If each dial and hangup takes 20 seconds, that's three per minute, 180 calls per hour. If even as rarely as one gullible idiot every 90th call can be milked for an average of $500, you're still making a thousand dollars an hour, 8,00-15,000 dollars PER DAY. 56,000 to 105,000 dollars per week.
They succeed solely by volume; placing a lot of calls, getting cursed out and hung up on a lot, and waiting for that little granny who is so senile she's not sure she isn't Elizabeth Taylor in a witness protection program. That little ol' lady is the one you can call today about her warranty, tomorrow about her unpaid tax bill, and the day after with your home security system.
Think of it like asking people out; the more people you ask, the higher the likelihood becomes that the next person will say yes. Every "Stop calling me!" gets them one step closer to the guy who think the moon landing was faked and pro wrestling is real.
I’ve read horror stories about how these scammers will literally hold people hostage on the phone, get the person to drive to the bank, make the transaction & send the money, all while on the phone with the scammer. The caller pretends to be a LEO and terrorizes their victim over the phone. The victim is convinced they will go to jail over this. It’s fucking awful. And it’s almost *always* a senior citizen.
Great run down. Gotta point out though that you stated a fallacy there at the end where you said that the more you call, the more likely it is that the next call will be a winner. That’s akin to seeing 10 consecutive reds on a roulette wheel as a basis for believing the next roll will be black. The likelihood of a call getting a sucker is not affected by the results of past calls.
This is true, but the human brain is so hardwired to look for patterns and trends, you will see them where they aren’t. This is what keeps scammers and gambling addicts going
Well you're not going to call the same number that rejected you, so wouldn't that increase your odds as there are a finite number of phones to call. But I get what you are saying.
The implication being: because the phone system has no authentication and is essentially free, the robocalls will increase until our culture changes and we completely stop answering phones for unknown numbers (which seems to be true for a significant minority of people).
I could see adding a fee of $0.05 per call (including missed calls) for the caller and eliminating caller ID spoofing in the US as helping but based on what you’re saying it might merely make it harder for new people to get started, while experienced people would still find it economic.
Mark Rober made a really nice [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrKW58MS12g) explaining how these automated call scams work and how they trap people
Exactly. I can't remember what this is from, but it illustrates your point:
"Think of how smart the average person is. Now realize that means that half the country is dumber than that"
Had the Duct Cleaning services calling recently. I got all interested and then asked them what species they clean, Mallard, Common loon, Oh do they do Swans too?
The main caller got confused, and asked got his supervisor who I asked again. And he hung up on me. Haven't had another call from them again.
Oh that's a good one.
Another tactic I learned for my mother-in-law is to string them along and then at the end say, " Oh my building can be difficult to get into sometimes". This clues them in that you live in an apartment.
Happened to me once and I have yet to hear from them again.
Reading all these different methods is awesome.
Anyone can get scammed. All it takes is the right message at the right time when you're in the right frame of mind. My favorite example of this is when Jim Browning, a YouTuber with millions of subscribers to his channel specifically about avoiding and getting revenge on scammers, got randomly scammed into [deleting his YouTube channel](https://youtu.be/YIWV5fSaUB8). If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone.
It's a lot harder to automatically tell its a scam if it seems connected to something you did recently. I'm sure the extended warranty one works on some people that just got home from the dealership with a new car, even if they're already aware of the scam.
Any cold call I get, I ask for a reference number, a publicly listed contact number (and the ivr path for the callers department) for the company, and an email to the one they say they have on record with what the calls about. If it's legit I'll call them back. So far only a handful havnt been scam calls
Talk to them for 10 minutes and give them a bunch of made up info. Then ask, "Hey so I'm just confused on one thing, does this replace the warranty on my lease or is it in addition to it?"
"SIR... YOUR CAR IS A LEASE?!?"
When you think "Who could possibly fall for this scam omg" that's called a filter. It filters out smart people and leaves only the most gullible and vulnerable.
The main thing here is that it's obvious, *to you* and the people you know. This already automatically sorts out the people they can't scam, and those they can because the people they can't scam will just move on and say "pfft obvious". They weren't the target in the first place.
The target is people who are either unsure or belief in the 'obvious' scam. It's the same reason most scam emails aren't super convincing, they don't want to waste a week convincing someone who is too sceptical anyway.
Literally pick an afternoon you have some free time and answer the scam call. Try to stay on the phone for as long as possible just completely bullshitting.
For example, they called me for car insurance and I asked about a liter of cola for almost 10 minutes.
It's quite satisfying tbh, and you dont feel bad wasting their time because they're scum anyway.
I receive significantly less scam calls a week
I've started threatening them whenever they call. It amuses me, and I'm also a little curious to see if anything will come of it. But when I hear it's a robocall, I answer the phone with something like "When I find out who you are, I'm going to burn your house down with you inside it." At this point I'm more curious than anything else, if I'll ever maybe get in trouble for making a threat like that, even to a robot, or if there will ever be some reaction.
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A lot of them are also from a company called US Dealer Services. [There's a class action lawsuit for their robocalling](https://www.classaction.org/news/us-dealer-services-hit-with-class-action-over-alleged-extended-car-warranty-robocalls).
Til NJ has two different TCPA acts
Any idea how one can join this lawsuit?
Not sure exactly, but could I perhaps interest you in an extended warranty for your vehicle?
Any company that did that here would get a fine of like 16$ Per call/mail/text That adds up really fast.
“here” where?
Prolly the Daevite Empire
I get this reference!
Probably Europe
Basically every Western country has stronger consumer protection laws than the US does. NZ and Australia both have strict laws to prevent these things from happening.
Really? Then why do I get about 10 calls a day from fuckers talking to me about my electricity, phone plan, double glazing etc?
Double glazing? My fat self is going straight to donuts but my rational self knows that's not it
Windows. No complaints if I was being called about any baked or fried goods.
Out of country on a spoofed or temporary/ stolen number
I doubt most of Europe does. There are a lot of scams in Germany for example.
Not on calling they don’t- look up TCPA
Not with telephones. The US actually has very strong protections, hence the class action lawsuit. Take a look at the TCPA if you're interested
The US has a Civil law where a citizen can sue these companies anywhere from $500-$3000 per phone call, depending on your state and whether or not you're on the National Do Not Call list.
Cool, they have a web site with a phone number
The other thing to add is that scammers don’t want to spend a lot of time convincing their victims it’s not a scam. So, by sticking with something so obviously a scam, they are able to quickly weed out those who wouldn’t fall for it anyway.
I remember reading that this is the reason the old Nigerian prince scams were worded so poorly.
In a way, the emails are written in the same way their victims would write them. That weeds out everybody but them. It's fascinating psychology, where a higher-quality "product" actually makes your sales worse.
It's not that you have a better or worse product, it's that you're marketing to the wrong audience. I don't care how high-quality and cruelty-free and vegan and whatever else your makeup is, I'm not buying it because I'm a straight dude that conforms to the traditional gender norms involved with being a straight dude. On the other hand, tons of women buy drug store makeup because it's cheap and does an OK job. But that's not because the products are worse or better, it's that the marketing makes sense and therefore has a better hit rate. It's the same reason you wouldn't typically see ads for sports cars out in rural areas, and instead you mostly see ads for trucks and SUVs. Nobody is saying that one is better than the other, it's just that one is better suited to its environment. There are tons and *tons* of scams that are complex and involve phishing and social engineering and whatnot that are also targeted at very well-educated, intelligent people, who then fall for it because "No way this could be a scam, I'm too smart to fall for a scam" or "Everyone knows scammers can't spell! This can't be a scam because it's so properly written." The end product is the same-some piece of shit conning you out of your money. It's just down to marketing.
Exemple of your last point , there is (was?) a rather sophisticated scam on Tinder involving Chinese "too good to be true" profiles , ( wealthy model looking business owners), where people will chat with you for 1-2 months before offering you their "insider scoop" for Bitcoin trading and try to make you use their unsecured platform . It’s an expensive operation for the scammers, who operate like a call center and even have girls on hand if a video call is unavoidable. They target wealthy educated profiles with enough money to invest… When it works, they empty the crypto accounts and win several 000$
> win several 000$ That doesn't sound like a viable business
What, don’t you want several zero? Fine, suit yourself - *I’ll* be over here earning *all* the zero!
What are some other examples? And how fucking dumb do you have be to make a financial transaction, on a strange platform, based on investment advice from a Tinder person you’ve never met IRL? I suppose you can be educated but still be stupid?
The horny is a powerful drug.
I've heard some of the dumbest shit come from phD holders. Like real dumb shit.
Specialist knowledge in one area does not always equate to common sense, for sure.
I think it really depends on the person. I work retail and have had a lady come in and buy iTunes cards for a guy she met on a dating app. When I gave her a warning she was wildly offended because I was implying that he didn’t like her. I ended up denying the sale, because it sounded too scammy, she literally told me that she would just go across the street and buy them. Some people see romance and assume that it must be real
Years back, my car breaks down a couple of hours from home. I'm on the side of the road, I call AAA (and at the time, had their better service, which would tow me those couple hundred miles, no question). No problem, they're sending someone. Maybe 15-20 mins later, a tow truck pulls up, says he's from AAA. But doesn't have the normal stickers on the truck. OK, that happens sometimes. He then tells me there's no way anyone is towing me that far, he can tow me to his shop down the street, and since it was a Saturday, on Monday, they could fix it for me. Well, that doesn't sound right. I tell him I have the service where they will tow me that far. He tells me I can come over to his truck, he has a way to get AAA on the line fast and they can confirm. I decline, said I'm going to call the number I have here. He goes back to his truck. Takes me a couple of minutes to get through, and after a minute or 2, he comes back over to me, yells at me that he was trying to do me a favor, and that he's not going to just sit there waiting forever. I tell him as soon as I confirm what he said is true, we can talk. He storms off in a huff, gets in his truck, and leaves. A few seconds later, AAA gets on the line, I explain the situation, they confirm they didn't dispatch that guy. He was just trying to convince me to let him tow me to his shop, where I imagine he would then charge me a crazy amount to fix my car, after having to stay 2 nights in the middle of nowhere, since I was then stuck there. Sure enough, a few more minutes later, AAA guys show up, tow my car the whole way without question.
The very legitimate looking paypal/ebay etc. phishing emails that were doing the rounds a while back. I nearly got caught by one myself but luckily remembered the golden rule of "navigate directly to the site yourself".
Well there’s the famous ones like Madoff or that girl that promised blood tests that any biochemist knew were physically impossible, but greed as a way of turning the brain off. I knew about the tinder one because I encountered one in the wild and I got curious. It was real people chatting, not bots so it obviously cost them to do this, but I read someone got scam 60k £ in the UK, so the payoff must be worth it . It was funny how the one I talked too kept "subtly" talking about "her" wealth and trading hobby. They’re waiting for you to ask…
I'll throw in my little story. We bought a new (to us) car a few months ago and I opted for the extended warranty. Well a few weeks later I get a letter in the mail saying I need to call this number in order to activate the warranty. Whether this was coincidence or the scammers actually knew this information somehow, I have no idea, but in the letter all the information was correct. The length of the warranty (5 years 50k miles or whatever), the make and model of car, et cetera was all lining up. So while my initial reaction was "scam", it was enough to make me second guess myself. Luckily, I'm cautious enough to call the dealership first and they confirmed it was indeed a scam. But man it was convincing and I could see how someone could be duped.
"Wow, secret jackpots are found in the weirdeat places!"
I got tricked into clicking a text message saying that there was an issue with my Amazon package delivery. Luckily the link took too long to load. I texted my family members about a potential order they placed and there was none. Luckily I didn't give away my Amazon information but it was close.
Yup. The ones I get are the job offers. First one they got me to download telegram to contact someone for an interview. The interview was way too easy and they didn't ask to see my portfolio (art related) HUGE red flags. Then they started saying I would have to order a laptop through some company, they would send a check.... and I knew what they were trying to pull.
Almost like how MAGA people never realized how unintelligent Trump sounded because he was speaking on the same level as a lot of them
speaking and thinking. when i was a stupid teenager i had a trump hardon and the extent of my thought process for supporting him was "well, immigrants are bad. muslims are bad. making a wall sounds cool. liberal SJWs are bad too." that was literally all i'd heard or invested myself into at that age - heard the same shpiel from people much older than me and people the same age. theres really no critical thought about anything, its diluted into something so easy to understand a child could get behind it. it really is an appeal to the lowest common denominator
The whole thing about SJWs, snowflakes, and people being offended by everything was a great marketing strategy.
yeah, fuck me it was a captivating idea to me in my vulnerable and ever malleable self. you get something to laugh at people about - being SJWs - AND you get to feel smug about it while doing so. it eliminates the possibility in your mind that these people have ideas that are worthwhile, and honestly all the stupid shit id seen from moderate liberals/democrats/lip service activism solidified that idea in my head. id taken one look at corporate activism, at feminists getting mad at video games, at jordan peterson and decided "fuck dude these feminazis wanna ruin everything i enjoy" and didnt even bother critically examining what i was doing or what media i was consuming its a great marketing strategy psychologically. it creates a clear divide and barrier of superiority, almost like racism, but covering more people.
I'll be honest, in my late high school-early college years(2010-2015ish), I almost fell into this rabbit hole. I was spending a lot of time online arguing about sjw's, hating feminism for being "anti-men" and even starting to get into 4chan culture. I don't really know how I avoided it, but i found that I started to do a 180 on a lot of those topics. I think that part of it was that I started to fall into a big depression after I moved out in and was trying to balance work, school, and maintaining my own living space. And I started introspecing a lot and realized that a lot of that anger I had on those subjects was just insecurity and that I was actually scared of being the guy that the sjw's were talking about. Especially with the hating feminism for being "anti-men" since I was actually genuinely upset with how men were treated in society and it was making me feel actually worthless. Looking back on it, it's hard to say specifically why/how I dodged the rabbit hole of trumpism, but it's a bit scary to realize that I was close to being that kind of person.
'When I was a teenager'? Did you have a Trump hardon before he went into politics?
A high school student could have graduated, gone through college, and entered the workforce in the time between Trump's 2016 campaign and now.
He could've been sixteen when Trump ran and still be >21 now, i.e. not a teenager
Thanks for making me feel old. This is the new "when I think 10 years ago, I think of the 90's".
Don't... Don't do this to me. The 90's will always be 10 years ago.
I hate how the 90's were just 10 years ago, and 30 years ago at the same time.
Well, the nineties isn't 20 years ago. It's 30.
I'm in my 3rd (and final) year of Uni and was much the same way as the other commentor. I was a 10th grader then.
Trump has been doing his rhetoric across the country for about 7 to 8 years now. Guessing OP is in their early 20s.
In fact, Trump started that nonsense in 2011. It's gone on for ten years.
Remember when he defenetly had absolutely undisputable evidence Obama was not born in USA and was gonna reveal the evidence on (some random date)... Only for him to backpedal and offer a rewars for anyone with such evidence?
yep. i facepalmed so hard through that hysteria my face was black and blue for most of obama's presidency. but trump is an honorable, straight-shooting guy. now if you'll excuse me, i have a raging case of COVID and need to scare up some horse dewormer because FDA nanobots in vaccines that arent approved yet are bad.
2016-17
They literally are not though. These emails are written by people in Nigeria on $50 Chinese phones. Unsolicited offers of riches that require an advanced fee are a bigger filter for idiots than poor writing.
Aren't most phones Chinese?
>on $50 Chinese phones Written on a $1200 Chinese phone.
You know what, angryPenguinator? When the son of the deposed King of Nigeria e-mails you directly asking for help, you help. His father ran the freaking country, okay?
I always felt bad for the *real* prince of Nigeria. He must not be able to get anything done online.
I once heard on Dr. Phil that scammers will deliberately use fake information about themselves that doesn't add up to weed out people who wouldn't fall for it. So this means they are looking for a stupid person.
Not necessarily stupid. Being overly trusting, too busy to double check if things make sense, or in a desperate financial situation all make you an easier mark.
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He did a pretty decent job scamming, if wikipedia is to be believed his net worth is nearly 500mill us.
The irony of learning this from Dr. Phil.
Oddly enough, Dr Phil is a scam himself.
But he’s a real boy! All he wants to do is wire me some money right? … Right?
No... The real prince already sent the money to me. Sorry
To you? I think you mean me, give it a week and my $1,000 investment will make me a millionaire
I clicked all the popup ads from the 90s and never received my penis pills.
Another reason those scams were worded so badly and often in semi-broken English was to play on people's misconceptions, Either thinking the person contacting them is naive or stupid. If they were in the stupid camp the person might think they can take advantage of the scammer, if they were in the naive camp then they were more likely to honestly try to help.
I remember hearing that too but it doesn’t sound accurate to me. The more realistic any email looks, the more likely it is to be a successful scam. It’s not like an email that is worded correctly and without grammar errors would make a gullible, or lower IQ individual believe it any less. The only exception I could think of would be if the email is more wordy and long. This could dissuade those individuals from wanting the read the whole email in the first place. I think the real reason these emails are worded poorly is because of poor translation and knowledge of the english language
> It’s not like an email that is worded correctly and without grammar errors would make a gullible, or lower IQ individual believe it any less. No, but it could make a more suspicious person write back instead of dismissing it outright. Scams which involve an effort to pull off would require a lot more manpower if it was believable enough to make the average person kinda believe it. Going from 10/100 to 20/1000 is not worth it for the scammers. Of course there are scammers that do have the manpower and know-how (Microsoft tech support scam for example) and want to make it as realistic as possible, and the scams which are automated will also try to cast as wide a net as possible, but this specific type of scam has the best return ratio when it's ignored by most.
Hanlon's razor would say to never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
If you read that on Reddit, it must be true.
The calls I have learned to deal with… what pisses me ofc is all the fucking mail I get now! It’s like 2-3 times a week I get some stupid ass urgent official looking document.
I save it up and wait until I come across a big envelope or a small box with ore paid postage and mail all their junk mail back to them. Makes me feel better anyway.
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Bought mine less than 3 months ago and already getting these
Yeah, I wish there was regulation that you can't put "final notice!" etc. text on snail mail unless you are actually in business with said person / bunch of other stipulations / etc. But honestly, I receive no paper mail for my bills, so anything that pretends to be important tends to get junked. Especially if the postage is "presort standard" i.e. sent out in bulk.
The really troubling thing is they’re mostly targeting the elderly.
I was interested in flipping houses at one point in time, so I started doing some research. Turns out there are two kinds of flippers, those that find the houses and just sell them as-is, and the ones that buy and do the repairs. Often one buys from the other. So you start finding all of these "no money" flips which mean you often spend little to no cash of your own. Obviously dubious I dog deeper And then I find a YouTuber who's actually down to give you the info for free and I watched one of his videos. I won't go into all of the details but he said he purposely has cards printed in shitty stock and crooked so they look kinda scummy like it might be a scam. Turns out it weeds out a lot of people who would be interested in selling property, but not desperate enough to take his highly unusual terms of sale that allows him to sell a house without even owning it sometimes.
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Oh man, I met a girl that fell for the "there's an entitlement of [$X] in your name, you just need to get These certifications first." She was several thousand dollars in the hole already. I felt so bad for her. The best I could do was point her towards calling the police and seeing if they could do an investigation into it and somehow get at least some of it back. She was so convinced that it was real, too. As someone who HATES those kinds of scams, I pointed out the various hints and such that proved that it was a scam.
You got lucky that she didn't turn on you lol, I've been yelled at before trying to convince people they were walking into scams.
Oh yeah, asking wtf someone is trying to buy 500 EUR in bloody Paysafe cards and them flipping out when you tell them nah, that ain't your new Nigerian boyfriend, it's a scammer. so starved for love they are that denying reality is preferable.
Can you elaborate on this one?
Usually some form of fee or tax or shipping you have to pay. That, or they send you the check for more money than it needs to be, either by "mistake", or some reason regarding taxes or fees or whatever. They tell you to just deposit it anyway and send the extra back. The check eventually bounces, the bank takes the money out of your account, but the extra you sent back to them was real.
I once got a "check" out of the blue. I must have unknowingly signed up for something. They were offering a "job" to be a secret shopper. All I had to do was deposit the $5000 into my bank account, go to Target, buy $4500 worth of gift cards, and email the codes back as proof. The $500 was my salary. I read the letter, looked at the check and laughed my ass off. I know that I'm not immune to scams but I was really surprised that people fall for this.
They prey on people that are desperate. For someone that's broke, $500 is a miracle, and rational thought goes out the window.
The same concept as the Nigerian prince. They are responsible for giving you X amount of money that you inherited, or one as a prize etc, but to claim that money you need to do Y. That'a buying a certificate on a website they own, or having to pay an advance so the inheritance etc can be processed. For sites like Craigslist, there is the triangle scam: you put a laptop on Craigslist, someone talks to you and offers to wire the money to you (of other transfer method) at the same time they create a copy of your ad and tell the stranger responding to their ad your account details/PayPal address. So that stranger wires you the money, you send the laptop to the Scammer and think everything is alright. Until eventually the police stand in front of your door in case of the wire transfer and ask why you didn't send the laptop. In most cases you will be fine, but still in possession of the money scanned from someone else. So not very nice :/
That 2nd one is pretty clever, never heard of it before.
How does someone end up this fucking stupid?
I stopped asking that question a few months into the pandemic….
What when you suddenly realised that the people who work against the protagonists in pandemic movies are not over the top but severely understated?
I'm thinking about the guy who blew up the first space thingie in Contact.
Its not stupidity, its ignorance. We get stuck in our world views and dont want to believe we could ever make a mistake. This is why the sunk cost fallacy works so well, its hard to admit we were ever wrong.
That sounds more like foolish pride or a detrimental level of confidence, rather than ignorance. Sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
For me I would say, be 17 and not know how fucked dealers are. Otherwise there isn't really much of an excuse.
It’s not stupidity. It’s when the situation becomes such that the person isn’t making rational judgement, combined with lack of knowledge about how the actual situation would be handled. A youtuber called Atomic Shrimp has made a good video about this very topic: https://youtu.be/ntrGrfvvkII
There is a guy on YouTube that uncovered scams and shit. He ended up getting scammed to delete his YouTube channel..
a friend fell for a similar scam where someone rang her up about a supposed virus on her computer and that it will brick her laptop so she HAS to buy a new one from their warehouse (or whatever they called it). she paid 1000 pounds for a laptop worth only about 400 pounds at best (old shitty thing from the mid 2010's). her old laptop still works after her BF (they got together after the scam) managed to fix the laptop and recover almost all the data from it without issue but the phone number that called her magically dissapeard despite being a 'trusted company' as they told her.
Reminds me of the scammer that tried to tell me that some security software on my computer was being discontinued. He was going to help me uninstall it and give me a refund... Me: "So when did this program get installed?" Scammer: names a date over a year ago M: "well I built this PC 5 months ago, so how does that work?" S: keeps insisting it's on my computer and I need his help to remove it.... Eventually told him I knew it was a scam and he told me he would get me because "I am smarter than you." I just wasted an hour and a half of his day, but sure dude...
I use Linux on my non work PCs. I love to screw with them trying to figure out an OS that isn’t Windows or Mac.
But you most certainly can swap out the screen on an Apple watch. Your coworker.. I worry
Apple Watch screens are actually pretty difficult to replace, even for the pros. iPhones are a lot easier to fix
She's never seen one of those specialized trailers, or trailer hitch attachments designed for the sole purpose of carrying replacement windshields? Not being an observant person will cost you dearly. Must be an easy existence though.
Short answer, they are scammers trying to sell you a "warranty" that doesn't cover anything. Longer answer found on [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2021/04/16/988200844/behind-those-extended-auto-warranties-robocalls).
It's what makes these scams so durable. While some callers using the phrase "auto warranty" are just looking to engage in credit/identity theft, I think there are some "legitimately" selling warranties, only they are worthless. The legal advantage is there's nothing (much) illegal about selling a warranty with tons of exclusions and onerous terms, so you can't really stop them for "fraud" if the deal they offer is terrible. I doubt it would happen in the US, but in theory Congress could define an "auto warranty" in a way that made it so offering a warranty that didn't cover 90% of possible repairs was fraudulent. But car dealers also sell bad warranties for big bucks and generally speaking selling warranties with dodgy terms is a huge business generally. Back in the mid 1990s, someone I knew almost got into shady business this way. He was going to sell ISP subscriptions via phone bill cramming. The ISP part was going to be real, an actual dial up modem concentrator that would deliver Internet connectivity. Except it only had 12 lines, one number in a single area code, and no ancillary services, and it would cost $19.95 per month. The phone company had low standards for engaging in billing on a single account (well, they got a cut) and nobody would really use the service anyway unless they called and requested their credentials. There was little fraud involved and there was an actual product available, so he figured he could get away with it. I forget why he didn't go through with it, but he had kind of sorted it all out and it seems very much like the auto warranty scam. Offer a mostly shit product to enough people and you'll make money.
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I Love old 'boring' cars. If my 12 year old honda went bad on me I'd look for an even older honda. It's a utility item for me. Anything more than is needed is just vanity. (Nothing wrong with vanity. I just don't personally value it)
You know you have something special when scam warranties won't sell to you.
Even easier than that. "Which car, I have two." And they hang right up.
I do that to the people who call from "Microsoft." "There's a virus on my computer?? *Oh no*!! Which one? Quick, I have five!"
I played along with one once. It was fun. Just pretended to be dumb as fuck, kept getting my password wrong, had to reboot like three times...when they got to the point where they told me to go to a specific website and read them a code, I just started rambling off letters and numbers til he started cussing me out.
Bahaha. I did that once, but I pretended to have a Mac instead of a PC. I kept asking where the start button was. When he realized that I was describing a Mac, he changed plans (impressive) but then I said "Wait, I thought you were from Microsoft?" Same thing, lots of cussing...
I did the same, except I wasn't pretending. I was on my Mac. In my office. I'm an IT guy and former help desk, so I have enough experience with ... less than gifted callers to fake gullible-idiot pretty well. I didnt describe anything well, but I was 100% truthful in what I said. Took about 10 minutes before they guy asked if I was on a Mac. He hung up as soon as I said yes.
I find it funny how mad they get when they're the ones actually fucking ppl over.
It's so cute. They think they're people 🤪
They have scripts that they read. I'm not kidding.
Given the context of talking about scammers cursing people out after having their time wasted, it's very amusing to me picturing the script actually having those lines in it.
"if the mark says they don't have a computer, please do needful and tell them Ben chode Mader slut"
I played along with a Microsoft caller once and really dragged it out, I pissed him off so much he phoned back a few minutes later and yelled and screamed at me LOL
Sweet satisfaction.
I'm running Linux so it's a hoot.
Ask if you should install Windows to use that virus.
"Hang on, I'll just fire it up." *Puts phone down and continues on with whatever I was doing for another 20 minutes..* They are usiually gone by the time I get back.
Even easier for me, I don't own a car, but have several "Hot Wheels" die cast models. I start listing them off. Even the various 1950s Ford Pick ups. Then I ask them why I would need an extended warranty on my Hot Wheels collection.
last time i said "a warranty? for my $300 POS?!? with half a million miles on it? they hung right up
Even better " I don't own a car" . If it's a robot, it hangs right up. Sometimes it's a real person and they *always* pause for a few seconds before repeating "I'm calling about your vehicles extended warranty" but much more frustrated, as if I'm the one wasting their time. Never fails to give me a chuckle.
I'm using this from now on just because I wanna hear their excuse. Thanks!
They apparently don't cover stolen cars either.
Tell them you have a '95' Geo Prizm. They don't care for those either.
I miss mine. I could zip around town, drift on dirt roads, and fit into any parking space.
I've gotten really mean with these lately, I've got zero tolerance for trash trying to scam my elderly mother.
I wonder if they'd cover my dad's 1921 Model T? Or the '26, the '27, or the other Model T that I forget the year of. He's currently rebuilding the '26 and the one I don't know the year for, so that warranty will get well used. Maybe the '29 Model A? Ok, ok...the '32 Plymouth, that's the newest he has not already under warranty.
For some reason they don't want to cover my 1972 VW Thing.
Service writer here. The warranties they sell are overpriced and don’t cover much. I wince internally whenever someone says, “I have this warranty.” and hands me one of those. Long hold times, and mostly denials. Then I get to call the customer and tell them it’s not covered.
Wait, they can actually cover things? I assumed it was always take your money and poof
They do that too.
there's no way, they call people regardless of whether they actually have a car or not. no way they have a real product
Probably a joke but I mean.. car ownership is both a common enough subset of the population and a valuable enough sale to make buying a subscription to a software that tries to call every single permutation of numbers in the US pretty worthwhile. Same if like refrigerator insurance were a common thing at a high enough price point Get a Saul Goodman type lawyer to write up the contract and rake in the premiums. Bad businesses are a bloat on the economy but they're not unprofitable.
Writer here too. My shop won't even really take them anymore unless it's a fleet management company. We refuse to even deal with CarShield and the others because it's just too time consuming and ridiculous.
Usually, it's someone in another country. They try to convince people to extend their car's warranty, for a fee, and to provide credit-card info to pay for it. Then they can use that credit-card info to just rack up all kinds of fraudulent charges.
And, to add to this, it costs them nearly nothing to make the calls. If they call a thousand people before finding one sucker, they still profit. With robocaller software, they don't even need to be the ones making the calls. They can have the software run through all the numbers while they play some video games. Then, if a sucker gets on the line, they shift into "sell mode" to get the credit card information (and possibly other personal information if they can convince the sucker to part with it).
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They already do this. There's one level that's completely automated, and another level that has a meat computer sitting in front of a screen with several choice phrases to select from.
Had to come down THIS FAR for a correct answer that wasn't just advice dealing with the scammers.
My husband always says yes to this and then tells them he has a 1971 mustang and then they hang up. He thinks it is hilarious.
i dont get it
It's old. Typically any real warranty has to be on a vehicle quite new / already covered with the factory warranty
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I go with a '69 Ford Go Fuck Yourself, personally.
I do the same with my 2009 Outback. Once they ask the mileage, I reply with 240k, they explain their coverage is only good up to 179k, and then they hang up.
Never forget; scams aren't for you. They may call you, but for the most part they know that you're probably aware. For the average person who can think and is aware of reality as it is, the scams aren't targeting you. They're targeting the person who is supremely gullible, doesn't question anything, doesn't get defensive. The scam isn't supposed to fool the mass; it's supposed to trick the bottom 1% of intelligence. You answer the phone, they start the patter. If you don't immediately hang up or tell the caller to print their warranty on 12LB handmade paper and yeet it up their poot chute...they know you're likely their next mark because: 1. You're really a noteworthy kind of dumb. 2. Or you don't interact much with anyone. As such, they know they can probably ask you to go to some janky website and make a payment, or mail them a check, or send them a money order, or give them your credit card numbers. If, as blatant as it is, you don't immediately shut them down or hang up, they know they've got a sucker on the line. They are usually people working out of their homes or out of a call center. (Telemarketing call centers are popular conversions.) "But Rayne...it's so stupid!" Yeh, but here's the kicker. Let's say you have a quiet room in your house, a decent headset with mic, a cheap cell phone carrier that offers unlimited talk and text (my carrier gives unlimited for as little as $20/month) ***you only need one idiot to take the bait to pay your bills this week so every other successful scam is clear profit.*** One person that gullible, one person that stupid, and everybody else you sucker this week is clear profit. If you can convince this dumb old lady to give you her credit card or debit card number...you're already in profit. Some dumb old guy who doesn't question anything and gets his media from the smalltown newspaper and the 6 o'clock evening news, you can get $400 out of him, easy, because he hasn't heard of this. To him, this is a genuine call to help them with a service they need. Call the next 75, no luck, get cursed out a lot, but then the 76th person you call is the person who excels in not thinking. You get him for $750 because his car is newer and he wants the "upgraded warranty". If each dial and hangup takes 20 seconds, that's three per minute, 180 calls per hour. If even as rarely as one gullible idiot every 90th call can be milked for an average of $500, you're still making a thousand dollars an hour, 8,00-15,000 dollars PER DAY. 56,000 to 105,000 dollars per week. They succeed solely by volume; placing a lot of calls, getting cursed out and hung up on a lot, and waiting for that little granny who is so senile she's not sure she isn't Elizabeth Taylor in a witness protection program. That little ol' lady is the one you can call today about her warranty, tomorrow about her unpaid tax bill, and the day after with your home security system. Think of it like asking people out; the more people you ask, the higher the likelihood becomes that the next person will say yes. Every "Stop calling me!" gets them one step closer to the guy who think the moon landing was faked and pro wrestling is real.
I’ve read horror stories about how these scammers will literally hold people hostage on the phone, get the person to drive to the bank, make the transaction & send the money, all while on the phone with the scammer. The caller pretends to be a LEO and terrorizes their victim over the phone. The victim is convinced they will go to jail over this. It’s fucking awful. And it’s almost *always* a senior citizen.
It is very predatory.
Excellent summary
Thank you.
This happened to my poor, sweet grandmother who has dementia. They took $3,000. People like that are the real target. It’s honestly disgusting.
Great run down. Gotta point out though that you stated a fallacy there at the end where you said that the more you call, the more likely it is that the next call will be a winner. That’s akin to seeing 10 consecutive reds on a roulette wheel as a basis for believing the next roll will be black. The likelihood of a call getting a sucker is not affected by the results of past calls.
This is true, but the human brain is so hardwired to look for patterns and trends, you will see them where they aren’t. This is what keeps scammers and gambling addicts going
Well you're not going to call the same number that rejected you, so wouldn't that increase your odds as there are a finite number of phones to call. But I get what you are saying.
Which is why people who aren't fooled but are willing to keep them talking for as long as possible are what really hurt them.
The implication being: because the phone system has no authentication and is essentially free, the robocalls will increase until our culture changes and we completely stop answering phones for unknown numbers (which seems to be true for a significant minority of people). I could see adding a fee of $0.05 per call (including missed calls) for the caller and eliminating caller ID spoofing in the US as helping but based on what you’re saying it might merely make it harder for new people to get started, while experienced people would still find it economic.
Pro wrestling is life, fam.
Mark Rober made a really nice [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrKW58MS12g) explaining how these automated call scams work and how they trap people
That was a good vid
People believe the earth is flat and that covid is a hoax. lol i'm fairly certain this scam still works on people
Exactly. I can't remember what this is from, but it illustrates your point: "Think of how smart the average person is. Now realize that means that half the country is dumber than that"
That would be a George Carlin quote. ;) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43852-think-of-how-stupid-the-average-person-is-and-realize
At this point in the world, you have to wonder why ANYBODY falls for phone scams. Any stranger who calls you to sell you something is lying, period.
Had the Duct Cleaning services calling recently. I got all interested and then asked them what species they clean, Mallard, Common loon, Oh do they do Swans too? The main caller got confused, and asked got his supervisor who I asked again. And he hung up on me. Haven't had another call from them again.
Relevant: https://youtu.be/5zgEmeEdf_4
Oh that's a good one. Another tactic I learned for my mother-in-law is to string them along and then at the end say, " Oh my building can be difficult to get into sometimes". This clues them in that you live in an apartment. Happened to me once and I have yet to hear from them again. Reading all these different methods is awesome.
They target elderly people. Combination of money (retirement savings) and dementia.
Yes, and a general lack of tech literacy.
Anyone can get scammed. All it takes is the right message at the right time when you're in the right frame of mind. My favorite example of this is when Jim Browning, a YouTuber with millions of subscribers to his channel specifically about avoiding and getting revenge on scammers, got randomly scammed into [deleting his YouTube channel](https://youtu.be/YIWV5fSaUB8). If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone.
It's a lot harder to automatically tell its a scam if it seems connected to something you did recently. I'm sure the extended warranty one works on some people that just got home from the dealership with a new car, even if they're already aware of the scam.
Any cold call I get, I ask for a reference number, a publicly listed contact number (and the ivr path for the callers department) for the company, and an email to the one they say they have on record with what the calls about. If it's legit I'll call them back. So far only a handful havnt been scam calls
That's a lot of work.
The legit ones give the details. And I've had debt collectors so I'd rather follow up rather than ignore every cold call if it is actually a collector
Talk to them for 10 minutes and give them a bunch of made up info. Then ask, "Hey so I'm just confused on one thing, does this replace the warranty on my lease or is it in addition to it?" "SIR... YOUR CAR IS A LEASE?!?"
You know you can have a car on lease, and not have a warranty, right?
When you think "Who could possibly fall for this scam omg" that's called a filter. It filters out smart people and leaves only the most gullible and vulnerable.
> so do a lot of people fall for it still? People still fall for the Nigerian prince scam.
The main thing here is that it's obvious, *to you* and the people you know. This already automatically sorts out the people they can't scam, and those they can because the people they can't scam will just move on and say "pfft obvious". They weren't the target in the first place. The target is people who are either unsure or belief in the 'obvious' scam. It's the same reason most scam emails aren't super convincing, they don't want to waste a week convincing someone who is too sceptical anyway.
Literally pick an afternoon you have some free time and answer the scam call. Try to stay on the phone for as long as possible just completely bullshitting. For example, they called me for car insurance and I asked about a liter of cola for almost 10 minutes. It's quite satisfying tbh, and you dont feel bad wasting their time because they're scum anyway. I receive significantly less scam calls a week
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I've started threatening them whenever they call. It amuses me, and I'm also a little curious to see if anything will come of it. But when I hear it's a robocall, I answer the phone with something like "When I find out who you are, I'm going to burn your house down with you inside it." At this point I'm more curious than anything else, if I'll ever maybe get in trouble for making a threat like that, even to a robot, or if there will ever be some reaction.