One of the realities of growing older is that doctors and pills play an increasingly important role in your life. . .or at least that’s our own experience and friends of a similar vintage tell us it’s theirs too.
But there’s on affliction we didn’t count on: An endless barrage of robocalls.
They fall into two categories, and it’s the second that really piques our curiosity.
The first variety of robocall comes from “Cardholder Services” or some variant thereof, and it begs us to get a consolidation loan to pay off our credit card balances [and never mind that we don’t have credit card balances, since we pay our bill in full every month].
If you “press one for more information,” you get a pitchman or woman, often but not always speaking in an Indian accent, and if you ask them which credit card company they represent, an immediate disconnect follows.
After the first two or three calls, we asked the huckster to remove our name from their list and were assured it would be done.
Yeah, right. The next call came later that same day.
When we went through our four miserable months of chemo a year-and-a-half ago, we received between one and three calls daily with precisely the same spiel.
Getting such calls is bad enough, but it’s vastly worse when you’re riding waves of nausea and fatigue. Disconnect the phone, you say? Well, I couldn’t, since calls from doctors, nurses, and schedulers mandated keeping the line open.
Finally we recalled some advice we once received from a friend who was a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney years earlier, during another spate of phone hucksterism. “Get a whistle and blow in the mouthpiece.” It didn’t stop the calls, but we did receive a certain cathartic relief.
The Cardholder Services scam is ubiquitous and has been the subject of countless warnings, as in this 27 February 2013 alert from Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen:
Consumer Alert: Don’t Fall for “Cardholder Services” Robocalls
Consumers beware: Prerecorded phone calls from “Rachel” or “Wendy” from “cardholder services” offering to significantly lower credit card interest rates are likely nothing more than scams, Attorney General George Jepsen said today.
“My office has received numerous complaints and calls about these robocalls, and the best advice for any consumer who receives one of these calls is to immediately hang up,” said Attorney General Jepsen. “For consumers looking to lower their interest rates, your best option is to avoid a persuasive sales pitch, call the customer service number on the back of your credit card and request a reduced rate.”
The automated robocalls claim to have an “important message” regarding an opportunity to reduce high credit card interest rates. Consumers are urged to “press 1″ to connect with a live representative or “press 2″ to discontinue getting such calls. Consumers who press 1 are connected to live telemarketers, who claim that, for a fee, they will deliver a reduced rate on a credit card and see significant savings on finance charges. Often, consumers have no way to screen these calls using Caller ID, as the incoming number is “spoofed,” or displayed as a false number.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that after consumers pay an up-front fee – sometimes totaling thousands of dollars – the companies do little or nothing to lower credit card interest rates. The FTC advises consumers that federal law prohibits companies that sell relief services from charging a fee before a debt is settled or reduced. With few exceptions, prerecorded sales calls such as these are illegal under state and federal law.
Here’s an 3 August 2012 report from Robin Taylor of WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh:
Stopping Robocalls & How They Get Around the Do Not Call List
Four months earlier, in a 6 April article headlined “Scams: 2.6 Billion Robo-Calls Later, Why Won’t Rachel from Cardholder Services Just Go Away?,” Time reported:
The Federal Trade Commission, which in 2010 shut down a massive robo-calling operation that was responsible for a huge number of the calls from Rachel — and Stacey, a similar friendly voice selling auto warranties — said the responsible company made 2.6 billion calls in a year and a half period, of which 1.6 billion were answered by consumers. Of those, 12.8 million people actually spoke with an agent, the FTC said. Yes, it took a lot of calls (generated by computers, which don’t get too tired), but nearly 13 million people bit.
Following that shutdown, the FTC saw a decline in complaints from people on the national Do Not Call registry. But it was short-lived, with complaints soaring to a new record in 2011. Last week, the FTC settled a case against SBN Peripherals (a.k.a. Asia Pacific Telecom), agreeing to a permanent ban from telemarketing and a payment of $3 million in assets.
So, now that the company that made billions of calls is gone, why is Rachel still calling? Why are so many consumers still filing Do Not Call list complaints against her and her ilk? (She recently called my cell phone.)
While SBN and its related companies might have been Rachel’s biggest launching pad, it was hardly her only one. The FTC, which is in charge of policing Do Not Call violators, recognizes consumers’ frustration with Rachel’s persistence and the annoyance of these calls, which do not discriminate between home or cell phone. “Rachel is a sort of generic name recording that different scammers use,” explained FTC spokesman Frank Dorman. “It’s not just one big operation.”
And on 1 November 2012 the FTC announced:
FTC Leads Joint Law Enforcement Effort Against Companies That Allegedly Made Deceptive Cardholder Services Robocalls
Agency Gets Court Orders Disconnecting Five of Them
The Federal Trade Commission escalated its campaign against illegal, unwanted robocalls announcing that it pulled the plug on five companies based in Arizona and Florida allegedly responsible for millions of illegal pre-recorded calls from “Rachel” and others from “Cardholder Services.” State partners in Arizona, Arkansas, and Florida also took legal action against similar companies.
Just two weeks after the FTC held a summit in Washington, DC, to examine the robocall problem, federal courts granted the agency’s request to temporarily halt five robocall operations that allegedly deceived consumers into paying hundreds or thousands of dollars by making phony claims that they could reduce credit card interest rates in return for an upfront fee.
“At the FTC, Rachel from Cardholder Services is public enemy number one,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “We’re cracking down on illegal robocalls by bringing law enforcement actions and pursuing technical solutions to the problem.”
The FTC gets more than 200,000 complaints each month about telemarketing robocalls, including calls from “Rachel” that pitch consumers with a supposedly easy way to save money by reducing their credit card interest rates. After collecting an up-front fee, however, the FTC believes that the companies do little if anything to fulfill their promises.
And that’s just a sample of developments in 2012. More stories followed in 2013, and they’re still coming strong in 2014.
So Rachel, it seems, has more lives than a cat and is harder to kill than Godzilla.
Instead of sending our drones after people in other countries we unintentionally [or otherwise] provoked into striking back, why not send ‘em after Rachel and her enablers? I have had my left endlessly interrupted by anyone with turban, and no Muslim ever awakened me from a rare moment of peaceful sleep in the middle of an onerous course of chemo.
And why not sic the NSA on ‘em? After, they’re real enemies of domestic peace and tranquility. . .at least in our humble opinion.
At the very least, try these sociopathic assholes as organized crime under the federal RICO statutes [the way they should have gone after the banksters].
But wait, you say, didn’t I start this infernal essay with something about the afflictions of the elderly?
We’ve fallen and we can’t get up!
Now here’s where it gets interesting.
Rachel seems to be an omnivore, as predator feasting on the phones of folks of all ages.
But there’s another predator out there who seem to know if you’re receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits.
We learned about it the moment the first call came in back in 2012, and we are reminded of it on more days than not, often three or four times a day.
Once again, WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh was on the story with this segment from 29 August 2013:
Medical Alert Robocall Scheme
From the 4 June 2013 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
Senior citizens warned about ‘robocalls’ for medical alert equipment
The state Attorney General issued a warning on Tuesday to older Pennsylvanians about a recent spike in so-called “robocalls” designed to deceitfully obtain billing information to charge $35 a month for purported monitoring services that may be unnecessary.
The businesses sometimes identify themselves as “Senior Medical Alert” or “Senior Medical Advisors,” state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane said. She said recorded messages tell pople they have been approved for medical alert equipment “at no charge.” When people respond, however, they are pressured into providing billing information, Kane said.
She said the robocalls use scare tactics to get seniors to respond quickly. Some seniors have received follow-up calls from telemarketers who are even more aggressive and harassing, Kane said.
A story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that same day marks the only instance we ever felt sympathy for the company that made the most obnoxious commercial ever:
Life Alert rides to the rescue on medical alert robocalls
The suit filed in a California federal court accuses a company named ConnectAmerica.com of robocalling consumers and leading them to believe that the calls and the products being sold are from Life Alert. That’s in no small part, the suit says, because callers sometimes mention the “I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up” slogan that most people equate with Life Alert.
Life Alert told the court the robocalls are diluting its trademarked name and slogan.
The company asked the court to order Connect America and partners including LifeWatch Inc. to surrender the profits gained through the calls.
The medical alert calls have become as prevalent as those old Rachel calls used to be.
And here’s an announcement from Colleen Tressler of the Federal Trade Commission issued on 13 January of this year:
To robocall scammers who lied about free medical alert devices: We’ve got your number
The FTC warned people last summer about illegal prerecorded sales calls from scammers pitching safety alert systems for older adults. And now, the FTC and the Florida Attorney General have acted to temporarily halt and freeze the assets of an Orlando-based operation that not only used illegal robocalls to pitch so-called “free” medical alert devices to older consumers, but also lied about the cost and quality. The FTC and the Florida AG are working to permanently ban the operation from illegally pitching their products and to get refunds for victims.
The scammers lied when they said the devices had been bought for consumers by a relative or friend. Really? Don’t you think your friends and relatives would tell you if they bought you a gift, especially if you have to pay an activation and monthly monitoring fee? I know mine would. The scammers continued their lies when they told people they wouldn’t be charged anything before the devices were activated. In fact, the scammers started charging people who agreed to receive the system immediately, regardless of whether the system had been activated or not. Makes me so mad I could spit nails. A lot of the victims were elderly, live alone, and have limited or fixed incomes.
And that worked about as well as the stop-Rachel actions, given that we are getting the calls on average once a day.
On 19 June, the American Association of Retired People notified members:
Two New Twists in Returning Medical Scam
Remember those bogus offers for a free medical alert device? That robocall ripoff, which went viral last year, has returned with a vengeance – with two new twists.
But don’t be fooled. It’s the same old scam that tries to get your credit or bank account information for supposed monitoring fees for the “free” device that never arrives.
Provide that info and you risk identity theft.
The latest twists: Some robocalls now also promise that you’re entitled to $3,000 in money-saving coupons. Others falsely claim that the free-device offer is being made on behalf of AARP.
But what really makes us curious is how the phone criminals [and that’s what they are, even though none ever seems to wind up in handcuffs] managed to get massive lists of older people. Databases were breached. Which ones? How often?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Now the final irony. . .
Whilst compiling this fulminatory response to endless harassment, we mused that at least our cell phone was free from targeting.
Pride goeth before the fall.
No more than 10 minutes later, it rang. Just take a brief survey, we were told by recording, and we would be flown off to the Bahamas, accompanied by a companion, for a free cruise!
We punched O in a futile effort to reach a human, only to discover later while compiling this screed that my button-punching could’ve have inadvertently allowed a breach to personal data.
So don’t push buttons. . .
The cell does have a number capture, which whycall.me traced back to Brooks Fiber Communications in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Two folks logged calls from the number at the site, one reporting the same free cruise spiel, and the other:
Pre-recorded telemarketing message promotes resolving student loans. I NEVER HAD A STUDENT LOAN! This company does not vet their call list! I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS COMPANY TO ANYBODY! ! ! ! ! VERY RUDE.
And to conclude. . .
Two offerings from the Federal Trade Commission’s Robocalls webpage, beginning with a short information video from FTC attorney Kati Daffin:
Robocalls Gone Wrong
Program notes:
Kati Daffin, attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, explains about the recent dramatic increase in illegal telemarketing robocalls, what the FTC is doing about it, and why it’s difficult to trace these calls.
And finally, for the nerds amongst, the infographic: How Does a Robocall Work?, A visual guide. And click on it to embiggen:
And call out the drones!
