Beware of the Indian Call Centre

I don’t have children, but I could forward the call to someone else for them to talk to. Say centrelink, or the mormans.

I once had a co-worker who had a brilliant way of dealing with tele marketers. He would say “I’m busy at the moment, I’ll put you on to some one who can speak with you.” He would then hand the phone over to whichever of his young children were around. As he explained it, it took care of the telemarketers and increased his children’s vocabulary and phone skills at the same time. With a little monitoring he ensured the kids didn’t give away any valuble information.

Excellent soloution I think.

@Deano Those are some good ideas though I prefer this website as you can get directly to the point of what you think of them in their own language… http://www.vnutz.com/curse_and_swear

Any and all telemarketers get the simplest treatment of all when they call me, and it must work because after a brief flurry a year or so ago I do not ever get these calls.

The method? When they call, and they start their spiel, I immediately say “Can you hold on a sec?” and they say “Yes” and I toss the phone onto the couch and carry on whatever I was doing. When I come back ten minutes later they’ve gone. If they call again, same thing. Very few try and wear me down, the Accor holiday mob tried for a few weeks but even they gave up eventually.

Do the old Jerry Seinfeld chestnut and ask if you can call them back.

enrique said :

Why waste your time at all talking back to them – just hang up straight away. If everyone treats them like this then they might eventually start giving up. I just don’t understand why people who receive a phone call from a stranger feel the need to talk back to them – I guess that’s one for the psychologists.

Their business model is similar to spam in that it is based on volume and they only need a very small percentage of calls to be successful to make a profit. The quicker they can churn through their call lists, the more profitable they are. So hanging up on them straight away actually helps them. By tying them up on your call, you are costing them money. If everyone has a chat with them their business model wouldn’t be profitable and then they would give up.

Here are some ideas for messing with their minds.

Working at a bank I had an elderly woman come in with instructions to send $400 to an Indian bank account in order to protect herself from ‘viruses’. People do get caught by this and completely fooled.

barking toad said :

I love getting these calls.

It’s fun to chat while you load the Kevin Bloody Wilson CD and leave the phone near the speakers with Santa Claus booming.

😀 I thought I was the only person who loves that song.

These type of people are the equivalent of some dodgy looking dude in the street coming up to you and saying “can I look in your wallet to read your license and credit card and to see how much money you have?”

Why waste your time at all talking back to them – just hang up straight away. If everyone treats them like this then they might eventually start giving up. I just don’t understand why people who receive a phone call from a stranger feel the need to talk back to them – I guess that’s one for the psychologists.

Yep well I had them also, they said they were from Windows, and that they had recieved a message that my computer had serious problems, I just said their is nothing wrong with my computer,they did ask me to turn on computer, and pointed out the errors and warnings, I just played along to waste their time, at the end I told them off.

H1NG0 said :

I hang up as soon as I hear a gap of silence and before they have a chance to speak.

+1

I stumbled across a great new tactic when I received a nuisance call offering me Telstra services. Ask them why they are bothering you and you’ll get into an argument over whether they are bothering you or not…they will insist they are not, to which you reply that it is up to you to decide whether someone is bothering you or not and that they indeed are. Once you had that out for a while start to demand an apology for bothering you.

If you want to increase their costs, keep pretending you cant hear them as asking them to call back, then play the name generator game, or tell them your so grateful for their assistance because your computer takes about half an hour to boot up, every couple of minutes give it a “c’mon you piece of shit” while they hang on the line.

They asked if I had Windows I just told them I didn’t, they had no idea what to say next and hung up on me.

My mum also had this call and did very well by not going along! Though what would they say if you tell them you use a Mac I wonder?

I love getting these calls.

It’s fun to chat while you load the Kevin Bloody Wilson CD and leave the phone near the speakers with Santa Claus booming.

Injuns? Get the wagons in a cicle folks!!!!

Pointing the racist finger eh? Could have been Nigerians you know.

They were working for “Windows”? Well they probably know a fair bit about “malicious material” then. I’d recommend you let them help you as long as they promised to send notification back to Windows at each step.

H1NG0 said :

I hang up as soon as I hear a gap of silence and before they have a chance to speak.

So glad it’s not just me who does that!

BerraBoy68 said :

lizw said :

I had a similar phone call a few months ago. They were apparently working for “Windows”.

My mother had this call only today. Being elderly and not too savvy she apparently went along with the callers request for a while. She said it was only when she realised that the guy on the phone wanted to be paid for the help he was supposedly providing that she said she couldn’t pay, an argument ensued and the guy hung up on her. The end result is that she rang me in tears and is now too scared to answer the phone. Lovely people, scammers, eh!

I had the Windows phone call on the weekend. Was suss from the start but they soon hung up when challenged.

This is a well-publicised scam. These bottom dwellers are preying on the ignorant and the gullible. The best way to deal with them is to keep them stringing along as long as you possibly can – cost them as much time and money as possible – the fake name generator is an excellent tool for screwing them over.

BerraBoy68 said :

he said it was only when she realised that the guy on the phone wanted to be paid for the help he was supposedly providing that she said she couldn’t pay, an argument ensued and the guy hung up on her.

So that is the scam? I assumed they would ask for enough info to get into your computer (and/or tell you to disable firewalls, etc to make it easier).

Buy a whistle. At an appropriate juncture in the conversation blow it loud and long into the mouthpiece.

They won’t call back.

Or ask them what they are wearing

lizw said :

I had a similar phone call a few months ago. They were apparently working for “Windows”.

My mother had this call only today. Being elderly and not too savvy she apparently went along with the callers request for a while. She said it was only when she realised that the guy on the phone wanted to be paid for the help he was supposedly providing that she said she couldn’t pay, an argument ensued and the guy hung up on her. The end result is that she rang me in tears and is now too scared to answer the phone. Lovely people, scammers, eh!

I had a similar phone call a few months ago. They were apparently working for “Windows”. I’m a bit useless with computers, told them I didn’t understand what they were trying to tell me, and could I get a phone number to call them back later. Funnily enough they were going to be too busy to take my call. That’s when I figured out it was a scam, and started asking them their company name, their name, and so on. They hung up fairly quickly after that. “George” also had a sub-continent accent.

Skidbladnir said :

This would be one of those times that convincing dead-tree media and television to step up and use their resources to warn the public would be a good thing.

There was a story about this exact scam in the Canberra Times about a month ago.

From a different thread….

Deano said :

I enjoy having a bit of fun with these guys by seeing just how long you can keep them interested. I use the Fake Name Generator to come up with a credible but bogus set of personal details, including a credit card number, that I then use to place fake orders. As they are usually Indian based call centres, they wouldn’t know Canberra from Canningvale. Frequently they will ring back to verify details and you just give them another set of bogus info.

Would be interesting to set up a fresh operating system (with absolutely no personal information or data whatsoever), and feed them the details, just to see what there attack method is.

Here is an excellent video that as well as letting you know what these scammers sound like, suggests a good way to deal with them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MplWwOzBXHM

I hang up as soon as I hear a gap of silence and before they have a chance to speak.

Yes, its more than likely a scam.
How did they cross-reference the affected computer with the phone number?
Why are they cold-calling?
Why are they referring people to a website that either downloads more crap, or requires payment?

For a target audience, they’re probably trying to play confidence games with either:
a) Seniors without much computer knowledge, or
b) Parents without much computer knowledge.
Neither of whom are likely to read RiotACT.

This would be one of those times that convincing dead-tree media and television to step up and use their resources to warn the public would be a good thing.
(Or everyone who reads this mention it to one of those targetted groups)

Unless the readers of RiotACT are willing to draw out as much information as possible from the phone operators and post it here (websites directed to, names of companies involved, how they claim to have ‘found out’, etc) there’s not a lot we can do.

If they call, ask them to provide more information about yourself. Your full name address etc. What kind of computer you use. What kind of “malicious material” you’ve downloaded and from where.

“F*ck you and the elephant god you rode in on” is faster and more gratifying.