My mother just received a phone call concerning one of her credit cards..yep on a Sunday. THis man from India wanted to offer her something for her credit card, then jumped the conversation to she owed some money on something or other and he needed her card number. Of course the entire time I am telling her noway, never give your card number out on the phone for anything unless you call the number yourself.
Then this guy was very insistant about needing her credit card number to take care of this business....whatever it was. I knew she didn't owe the credit card company anything because I am in the process of taking over the care of her bills and we only have one large bill out ( hail storm damage). Regardless mother was totally confused. The more confused she got the more he insisted upon the credit card number.
Finally, I told her to have him state the number of the card he has ( after they decided which card?!) since he thought it was wrong and he could not get some bill or something paid. Well guess what, he only repeated back a few numbers and she said, that is not even an acct. number. I took the phone at that time and told him he would have to speak to me and he said he was not authorized to speak to me and I told him...MY MOTHER JUST HANDED ME THE PHONE (idiot).
Long story short,I told him that we do not do business on a Sunday, and he never indicated to my mother what the payment was for and for that matter, why did he mention nearly every card she had?????I then told him that I was hanging up now. And I hung up the phone.
Is that awful or what????????? SOmehow some guy that has an 800 number from wherever ( India he said) has a list of my mothers' credit card names but not the numbers. He totally confused her then insisted upon her giving him the numbers and furthermore would not speak to me. I have never have trouble with businesses talking to me to have me do business for my mother, that includes th ephone company who wants social security and birth date numbers.
Just letting you know that tis the season to rip people off! I am calling the credit card companies tomorrow and letting them know what is going on.
**The first tip was that I knew she hadn't used the credit cards cause I am trying to get her to pay them all off so we can buy a new car, so she hasn't used them in months so there is no way that a payment of something did not go through.
jode
Jode,
Thats awful, I'm happy you were by your mother, the outcome could have been really bad. if you have caller id i would report the number to your local station, theres been a lot of that type of stuff happening recently, in various forms of the overall same story.
good luck with it!
Good idea, I will do that. I make it a general rule not to carry any credit cards or bank cards. I buy all my mom's stuff and what my daughter and I need with cash only.If we do not have the cash...then we do not need it.THe budget is crappy but it works.Tis the season for this kind of call. I got one and the person on the other side hung up on me!!! I decided to play his game on him and he wasn't to happy with me. Got no info from me, only a headache!!!
These telemarkers don't like me and I delight in giving them a hard time.
Jode, I used to work for American Express writing Fraud information for their merchants. If this person has that much info on your mom, identity theft might be in process. You need to contact each of her credit cards and banks regarding this incident. They should all have a fraud investigation team. You can also find info at www.fbi.gov and the Better Business Bureau web site. Identiy fraud is really climbing high and all the credit card companies are taking concerted efforts to try to fight it. The more people report it, the better off all of us are.