50% of my Spam Calls are timeshare related cold calls

[T_R_Oglodyte]

I've been having some fun the last several days. I typically get from four to eight phone calls per day from unrecognized numbers. I don't answer, and the call goes to voice mail. I figure if it's a real call, they will leave a voice message.

the last couple of days, just for fun when a call comes that I don't recognize, I answer the call on speaker, I say "Hello [my name]", and then hit mute and see what happens.

Because I responded verbally, the spammer phone system routs me to a live person. (If I respond and don't say anything, they drop the call.) With the phone on mute I can hear what the live person says. Based on what I'm hearing the live person say, about 50% of those unrecognized are timeshare-related cold calls.

 

[moonstone]

I used to get a lot of those as well, then the winter I was at home doing chemo and bored, I decided to answer unrecognized number calls. If it was about a timeshare I told them we don't have any now. I must have told at least a dozen callers we dont have a timeshare. I don't think we have had any of those calls since. We do get calls, as late as last week, from somebody saying they were with the IRS or some other US Gov't agency and there was a problem and we needed to call them back right away. They all went to the answering machine since we are away for the winter. The funny thing is in Canada we don't have the IRS or Social Security.


~Diane