My very favorite was the IRS call my friend received. He owed the IRS money, and they wanted him to pay with ITunes gift cards. You can’t make this stuff up!
I got a weird one monday. It was something to do with Medicare or supplementary plan. I had just had foot surgery for a lisfranc injury that day and was a bit out of it and in pain. The girl had a really strong accent (I’m usually pretty good understanding accents). Asked me for date of birth. Told her I didn’t understand what she was calling about. She told me a bit snottily I just had to listen She went on a bit more and I told her I had no idea what she was talking about and hung up. i was really annoyed. i think it conveyed. She probably thought I was on something - She was right! Still have no idea what She was talking about. (I only answered cause the hospital usually calls after a surgery and the bedroom phone has no caller ID - husband said he hadn’t answered cause it was a suspicious number - he used to entertain himself by answering the weird calls but has got bored with them so let’s calls to go answer machine and just picks up if it is someone he wants to talk to).
@bookworm - gas stations will routinely “ping” your card for $1 just to be sure it works. I guess yours was stopped?
I wonder if these people need psychological therapy after work. Can you imagine working at a job where 8 out of 10 people hang up on you or swear at you? And you constantly keep calling just to see if you can snag that one stupid person a day?
I signed up for something like ‘No Robo Calls’ on my home phone and it works great! The phone rings once and stops. I have no idea how it works. Sorry, cannot remember the name of the service, but it’s free.
So I guess I’m the only one that’s not about to get arrested:)
Nomorobo
One tax attorney I know said their firm (their clients do sue the IRS for real) gets a bunch of such fake IRS calls. 
My landline gets at least 6 spam calls a week that leave 37 second voice messages, plus another dozen where they hang up without leaving a message. The numbers are ever changing and usually have the pre-fix of either my home or cell phone. Many are spoofed local numbers with the name also showing up on caller ID.
I now never answer my phone unless I know who it is and block all spam numbers. Might as well hold up a finger to stop the tides. The numbers just keep on changing. I don’t engage and want the number to be very disappointing. Hah. The Do Not Call list hasn’t worked in years. And now the cell phone gets regular spam calls without a message left weekly, too.
Yes, I rarely answer phone calls any more on landline or cell because of so much spam. It’s a pity but very irksome! My blocked call list grows daily—it has several dozen #s and more all the time. :-& 8-}
@BunsenBurner : Re: Post #26. Those calls might be real.
Green witch, Costco Visa fraud department said it was suspicious for the low amount, and coming from a gas station.
It had nothing to do with a change in my behavior, like making a charge below $5.00.
Besides the IRS calls, I also receive almost weekly calls to support the police department, and currently, candidates for the August elections.
I was getting similar scam texts on my cell about 10 years ago. Eventually texted back, in official sounding language, that this was a police monitored line, cited some “code,” and they stopped.
If I happen to answer the landline and it’s the IRS scam or similar, I’ve made the same response and they hang up and go away.
About the calls for police donations: long story, but I knew the outfit making these calls, they were local. If anything ever got donated, it was likely ten cents on the dollar. Or less. Feel free to hang up. Scam.
“I wonder if these people need psychological therapy after work. Can you imagine working at a job where 8 out of 10 people hang up on you or swear at you? And you constantly keep calling just to see if you can snag that one stupid person a day?”
Often, these calls are coming from places like Pakistan or India. It’s a job, in places where many don’t have job and take anything they can get.
I think we should all get airhorns and blast them into the phones.
I also don’t answer unknown calls on the landline or cell. DH sometimes does, especially on the cell. We got alot of robocalls of all sorts on the landline, and just recently have begun getting more of them on the cell. It’s very annoying.
Of course, I get the IRS/Microsoft/Treasury Department calls, too; NoMoRobo works great on my landline. Now I’m getting spam calls that leave messages in Chinese or Japanese. From real spoofed numbers, too. And since I have a business that I use my cellphone for, I can’t just block real numbers; someone may actually try to call me.
I am a self-employed freelancer and maybe ten years ago stupidly registered my infornation with Dun & Bradstreet for a D-U-N-S number. Business was slow and I must’ve read that I’d pick up new clients by being registered with D&B. All it did was put me on calling lists for solicitations for business loans and credit card processing services, I called D&B several years ago to remove my listing from their database, but the spam calls and junk mail have not stopped.
I got a robo call yesterday from a computerized female voice that said my first name twice, in a questioning way, followed by a laugh and a comment about ‘her’ husband. It was weird. It was a fundraising call from a sketchy outfit called Women’s Cancer Fund. The website shows it gives out grants up to $250 toward unpaid utilities etc.
I reviewed the organization’s 2016 Form 990 tax return on guidestar.org and in 2016, only $10k was paid out in these particular $250 grants.
I also noted that professional telemarketers raised $1.2M and kept $1M with only $200k going to the charity.
Ridiculous!
I ask the caller if they will regale their mother, over dinner on the weekend, with stories of how they tried to scam other peoples mothers. I’ve found that the line will often go silent…
I got the call with the reference to the husband just yesterday and hung up so fast I never even heard the name of the charity. The voice is so obviously a recording that It’s hard to believe anyone would stay on the line long enough to be coerced into donating, but I guess it’s so cheap to set up these calling systems that even a very low success rate makes it worthwhile.
I answered a call a few days ago; the caller ID had a person’s name and a local phone number (our area code, and my home town’s exchange). I volunteer for a group that uses a telephone tree, so I assumed that while I didn’t recognize the name, it had to be someone in my town, so I answered.
It was an automated call about lowering the interest rate on my credit card. I decided to hit “1” so I could ask them to remove my name from their list. As soon as the gentleman came on the line I politely asked that my name be removed from their list. He asked me a question which I thought sounded crude and obscene but I was shocked and assumed I had misheard it because of his accent. He repeated it again very slowly (it referenced a body part). I yelled at him and hung up the phone, but wish I could somehow have reported it.