Anyone else getting phone calls.
“I’m Kristie calling from a Medicare secure phone line.”
I’ve been hanging up…figure it’s spam…doesn’t Medicare contact via snail mail?
Complete scam. They will tell you that per Medicare, you can get a free home test kit. Just need to verify your SSN. ?
And of course- they want your DOB “just to confirm it’s you”.
With your DOB and SSN someone can pretty much ruin your life…
I hang up! No info given. So annoying. Kristie is probably related to Rachel from cardmember services!
We have really strong spam call blockers. Very few get through and if I don’t know them we don’t answer. A few we needed went to vm but then we can call back. So I never hear those.
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security contact recipients by mail. If they want you to call them, they will list phone number on the letter they send you.
We had a short power failure yesterday and while resetting clocks, I realized the land line was dead. We only have it as part of our cable bundle and never use it. I discovered that sometime in the last few weeks it had come unplugged from the modem. I’m not sure why I bothered plugging it back in…but it explains the absence of junk calls!
I got a call the other day from my Medicare Advantage dental insurer. They wanted to tell me about the result of a predetermination of benefits that had been requested. All fine and dandy. But before she would tell me, she wanted me to give her my member ID. I didn’t – after all, she called me – even though it was probably legit. She seemed surprised and said I’d be receiving a letter. Fine with me. I don’t need the info over the phone.
D got a call like that the other day! She isn’t anywhere near medicare age!
I’ve gotten spam calls in Chinese at least once a week. I never answer, but they always leave a voicemail and it’s in Chinese…my H, S, and D have all gotten them as well.
H got a call saying there was a warrant out for his arrest! Geez, they could give someone a heart attack!
My stepfather gets so many junk and robocalls on his landline phone. He gets all sorts of scam medicare and social security calls. He has a jitterbug phone that he rarely uses, so he doesn’t get scam calls on that. He also gets a lot of political calls as well. We visited him right before the whole covid thing…my god, he was getting calls from just about every candidate from both parties and from people trying to get him to volunteer for campaigns and to donate money! Don’t even get me started on the junk mail!
@thumper1 I have become familiar with them both!
Has anyone gotten the robocalls where the recording says: “hehehe, excuse me I have to adjust me headset!”
I do phonebanking for a nonprofit organization. (And before you lambaste me, we only call people who have signed up to belong to the organization; we don’t make cold calls to strangers!) But sometimes people have set up their voicemail so that it sounds like they’re talking to you, but it’s a recording. One of my fellow callers had a man allegedly helping his wife, who was allegedly in labor, but he kept telling the caller that he really wanted to talk to her – inbetween yelling, “Not yet, honey! Don’t push until the doctor gets here!”
@VeryHappy does phonebanking procure substantial donations? We support many nonprofits, but unsolicited phone calls from previously supported orgs is not well received. My go-to is we never contribute to phone solicitations and to take us off their call list. Most do. Maybe I’m just a cranky old lady who gets too many random calls.
But thanks for the crazy good answering voicemail turning the tables on the incoming shenanigans!
India must have been reopened. Got a few calls today from the IRS. Sigh.
There’s a nonprofit organization that I support that went permanently off my donation list because of the rudeness of a phone banker. This was back in the days when I still had an active landline. (Since then I disconnected the landline and ported the number over to Google voice, so it only goes to voicemail - that way I don’t have to share my mobile number with non-friends. )
Anyway, when I got the call, I politely said, “I support your organization, but I never make donations over the phone. Please put my number on your do-not-call list.” But the person (male) argued with me. He was very aggressive about his pitch, which finally led me to tell him something along the lines of, "I already have told you no. No means no. If you don’t stop badgering me and hang up right now, I will take your organization OFF of my donation list, and never make another donation again…
The guy kept arguing.
So a very worthwhile nonprofit lost a reliable donor, forever. (I don’t feel bad about my own decision because I don’t have a lot of money to give, and so my limited funds for donation are just going to other equally worthwhile nonprofits).
We’re not asking for donations when we call. We’re asking three questions – can they attend a local event, can they join a national orientation call, and can they do phonebanking. Our objective is to get them to become active in the organization and not just be a passive member. Because these people have recently signed up to belong to the organization, 99.9% of the time our calls are warmly received. And, of the people we wind up talking to, 76% of them say yes to at least one of our questions.