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Accident that wasn't my fault.

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Hi ECCOnoob. In principle I agree with what you're saying which is why I just hang up on them. However at the moment I'm going through a really stressful period with other half seriously ill in hospital. I'm expecting phone calls to report on his condition and these nuisance calls are really not helping. Also I've got a 98 year old mother who is also plagued by the same type of calls despite us having tried to block them. They upset and confuse her. I really feel that's I've gone beyond worrying about some unknown callers feelings. I wouldn't be expected to suffer from harassment at work so why should I put up with it in my own home.

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I usually start off asking them where they stole my number from and wont go any further until they have answered that.  They will give me the usual BS about a fictitious department so I inform that that as that doesn't exist and that they are handling stolen goods.

 

Dont normally get many persisting after that, curiously enough, they never say goodbye when they ring off.  I have had a couple swear at me however :)

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11 hours ago, ECCOnoob said:

I dont agree with all this.

 

Whilst these calls are clearly annoying and shouldn't be tollerated - what is wrong with a simple no thank you and hang up.

 

Why all the wind ups and swearing and harrassing. 

 

The poor sods making the calls are probably sat there on tuppance a hour just doing a job.  A job they clearly dont want and clearly hate but its a job to pay their way.     Its just like the poor sods doing chugger work or market researching or leaflet dropping or canvassing.   Im sure they dont want to be working as that - but its a job.   Surely there is no need to make their crappy day worse by being jerks to them. 

 

No thank you and walk on.    No thank you and end call.    Works for me perfectly fine. 

 

If you want to be productive, report the companies, report the numbers, go after the owners and directors.   That's the people who we should be antagnoising and disrupting not some poor call handler.

Chugging, market research, leaflet dropping, etc are all regulated and (should be at least) carried out within the law. These people are breaking the law by phoning people in the first place.

 

In the case of the "Microsoft support" type calls they are trying to trick vulnerable people into giving control of their computers to the caller, with all the risks that entails, in order to trick them into paying money. If you'd had an elderly parent scammed by these people would you be so sympathetic towards them?

 

They aren't people just trying to earn an honest crust. Your argument is basically "be nice to scam artists - they are just doing their job".

 

As THC said, reporting them is a waste of time.


Apart from possibly making the called person feel better, I'm not sure swearing will have much effect. They'll just be able to dismiss you as a nasty person.

 

Wasting their time means they have less opportunity to scam vulnerable people out of money. (Or for ECCOnoob - may create extra jobs as their bosses will have to employ more staff if they want to scam as many people.)

 

They are trying to scam vulnerable people, they should feel bad about what they are doing - regardless of whether I point it out to them or not.

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To be fair there's a difference between a cold calling ambulance lead chaser and a scam call to seize control of your PC and drain your bank account.

 

Both are illegal, but the second is far more malicious than the first, which is mainly annoying rather than directly damaging.

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5 minutes ago, Cyclone said:

Both are illegal, but the second is far more malicious than the first, which is mainly annoying rather than directly damaging.

While acknowledging that there is a difference, I would argue that encouraging people to make fraudulent or exaggerated motor insurance claims costs people way more than the relatively few cases when someone hands control of their computer to a fraudster, so is directly damaging.

 

However convincing a fraudster is, you ultimately have a choice over whether you allow someone to take money from your bank account. I however, have no choice over whether to pay the £76.51 added to my insurance premium as a result of fraudulent and exaggerated insurance claims.

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I don't think they are encouraging that are they?  They're actually hoping that you've had a real accident.

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17 minutes ago, Cyclone said:

I don't think they are encouraging that are they?  They're actually hoping that you've had a real accident.

Of course they are.

 

A fraudulent insurance claim is not pretending to have had an accident as clearly that would go nowhere if there was no evidence for it happening. What they are doing is encouraging you to claim for losses which you haven't actually suffered in a genuine accident which is what is fraudulent.

 

The first time I 'played along with them' I admitted that I had been involved in an accident but hadn't claimed because I hadn't suffered any loss. After half an hour the claims advisor was talking about a payout of something north of £25K, all through probing questions and suggestions as to what could be claimed for. At one point I was asked if my sex life had been affected by the accident. I asked what that had to do with anything and he said that things like that can really bump up the claim. When I relied that I didn't know that he said "Shall I put that down as a yes then?"

 

These companies basically take on your case and take a cut of any payout made. The higher the payout, the higher their cut, so they neither know nor care whether what you are claiming for is legitimate or not. 

 

And we all pay for it through higher insurance premiums.

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Fair, if that's what they do then yes that's totally illegal.  I've never played along that far to find out.

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10 minutes ago, Cyclone said:

Fair, if that's what they do then yes that's totally illegal.  I've never played along that far to find out.

As I said, I haven't done it for a while. If I do it again, I may tape it. I may also ask the advisor "is this legal?" to see what their response is.

 

And let's not forget that it takes two to tango. It is not the claims company which is making the fraudulent claim it is YOU! How often do you hear people say "Of course I bumped up my insurance claim. I've paid enough over the years and all I'm doing is getting some of it back." Well they are getting it back, but from you and me through higher insurance premiums.

 

By defrauding an insurance company you are not 'sticking it to the man', you are sticking it to your fellow men. We live in a capitalist economy where business will always win. Fraudulent insurance claims don't reduce shareholders' dividends. The divident stays the same because we subsidise it through higher premiums.

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