Telemarketing - the
scam that never stops
By now, most adults have
experienced a period of excessive telemarketing calls at one time or another. While you may hang up or completely ignore
them, telemarketing scams are actually more successful than you may think. Because of this never ending problem, it is
very important to keep yourself aware and understand how to identify these
scams. This will help you to elude these
financial traps that attempt to pump you for personal information and steal
your money.
For those of you who are
not familiar these fraudulent techniques, here are few examples of the most
popular telemarketing scams and how they operate:
Credit Cards: This
is by far the most frequently attempted telemarketing scam used today. It is broken down into the following
categories:
- Financial issues - A
telemarketer calls and notifies you of financial woes. They typically pretend to be a creditor,
requesting payment up front while arranging funds to be directly accessed from
your account. The scam artist may ask
for a credit card number, bank account number or a social security number,
critical information that should never be given away over the phone.
- Free gifts - In this
variation, a scammer requests a credit card number while offering a free gift
in exchange. You may be told that the
gift will be validated after verifying a credit card number. In truth, if a consumer truly receives a
gift, it is likely to have been charged on their own account with more charges
to follow.
- Loss protection - A
phony telemarketer offers you a credit card with loss protection
insurance. When receiving a call like
this, you should know that these additional protection plans are
worthless. If you're curious about
adding protection, directly contact your credit card company and learn what
they have to offer.
Investment scans: This type of scam focuses on the "big
dreamer". It promises an unbelievable
return to those willing to invest their money in precious items such gold,
silver, rare coins, vintage stamps, and even oil well leases. At the prices a scammer will offer, these
deals are too good to be true. Never
purchase anything over the phone from someone you don't know or any service you
did not request.
Lottery scams: In this scam, a telemarketer calls to tell a
consumer of a rare opportunity to win thousands of dollars in lottery prize
drawing. They are then swindled into
purchasing high stakes in the competition to increase the chance at
winning. Though it sounds tempting, this
is merely another telemarketing scam.
Many other telemarketing
scams exist from work-at-home schemes to product assembly services. The best approach against this crime is to
never make purchases over the telephone unless it was you that initiated the
contact. You can also elude these
dangerous situations by registering your phone number with FTC's Do Not Call
Registry, a national service that will not cost you a penny. According to federal law, telemarketing
agencies are required to maintain their own Do Not Call list, in which they
must fulfill when a user makes that request.
