On traditional landline phones that older folk tend to use (although I guess that's dwindling every year) a common tactic for scammers is to ask the victim to call the number on the back of the card.

However the scammers don't hang up they just play a fake dial tone so the victim dials the number thinking they're contacting their bank but they're actually just speaking to the scammers again

How did that work?

In the Netherlands, in the 80s-00s at least, hanging up cleared your line, so picking it up again would get you a fresh dialtone even if the other side didn't hang up (and the other side would get a modified "busy" signal if you hung up on them).

Different telephone switches (the big ones in the central offices) have different behavior for clearing the line when one party hangs up. I've heard that some switches wouldn't clear the line for tens of seconds when a called party hung up, and that those switches were common in the UK.

I personally recall people ocassionally being able to hang up one phone before picking up a different phone if they wanted to take the call in a diffent location in the house. Although, I don't remember it ever being very effective, over time (in my corner of the US), it became never effective, so you'd just leave the first phone off the hook and have to hang it up later.

this was (is?) a "feature" that let you answer a call in say the front hall, then hang-up and continue the call in your office as long as the originating caller did not hang up the handset. The scam relies on actually playing a dial-tone and ringing after the victim "hangs up", which is how some people noticed it "sounded weird" and then called their bank on another line or cell phone.

Because when you hear the other side (pretend to) hang up, you need to not be fooled and also hang up on your side. If you don't hang up on your side, then on older phones you actually have no way of telling the call is still going.

On your smartphone, it's easier to not fall in this trap, as the screen is making it harder to type a phone number while the call is still going.

No, this isn't just confusion, this is a real behaviour difference between smartphones and (some) landlines. If someone calls you on a landline, depending on the exchange, hanging up your phone might not be enough to end the call; when you pick up again, you may still be connected to the caller.

It used to be the case that the party who made the call - being the party who is paying for it - was solely responsible for terminating it; then timeouts were introduced; and on many landline exchanges there is still a timeout before the call is actually terminated if the callee hangs up but the caller does not - although these days it is just a few seconds, that may still be long enough that you stay connected to the original caller if you hang up then immediately try to place a call.

Google "called party clear" for gory details.

A weird one that happened to me a few years ago was when I ordered about $100 worth of products from banggood, my phone rang within seconds of the purchase going through. The display on my phone showed it to be a bank I never heard of. When I did a search, it turned out to be a small bank with about a dozen branches in a state hundreds of miles away. The voicemail however was from my bank's fraud department informing me they were locking my card due to unusual activity. When I called my bank using the number on my card, they verified that the original call was from them and they were able to unlock my card. They had no idea why the name of a different bank showed up on my phone. Best I can determine is that my cell provider was the one who added the name information and something in their database was incorrect.

I've definitely noticed that some small regional banks make extra money by offering services to other small banks and credit unions. For example, cashier's checks issued by my (fairly large actually) credit union are actually drawn on a midwestern regional bank that they seem to use as a service provider. So it's possible that bank is somehow involved in your bank's card issuance.

I also wonder if it's a contract call center or fraud prevention company and the caller ID value was just bad... at some point their phone number may have gotten put on a listing for one of the banks that uses them and now it's stuck in the Google Caller ID database or whatever. Google's caller ID is frequently pretty out of date and it's unclear how you would get it fixed (e.g. my husband has had his phone number for years and Android phones still show someone else's name when he calls).

Most banks don't do their own everything. A few seemingly little banks (often in the middle of nowhere) take on different tasks. It could well be that when you called "your bank" the other bank was originating the call and the person at your bank didn't know how the backend was really wired.

THat's my experience; they specifically ask you to call the number on the back of your physical card.

My US cards send me texts and I reply Y.

Same here for my UK cards. Good system.

Agreed. I personally carry a Citi card (double cash) because it has the best (for me) rewards, but I also carry an AMEX blue cash preferred for which I pay an annual fee. The customer service I get from amex is DRAMATICALLY better than from Citi.

With Citi: * it's non-native-English support. No judgement of course but I don't appreciate the language barrier when the entire job of customer support is communication. * Support generally seems to be very low-context and low-power. The person you talk to generally can't actually do anything, only escalate. * Support seems very disjointed and prone to missing details.

I was burned by Citi support in a pretty big way:

1. I was moving cross-state, and we were selling (under contract) our old house and not yet closed on the new one. In between, we were living with my parents.

2. Literally the first day we were at my parents, some fraudy charges showed up on my citi card. I called, they cancelled the card, etc. I told them I was not currently at my address on file, I was at my parents, is this OK, etc. They said yes, that's fine, they'll send replacement cards to the new address. I very specifically verified with them that they were sending them to the right place, and the person even got a little tired of me being so tight about it. Ok, I figured, I feel like I've gone above and beyond on my end to make sure this works right.

3. 2 days later, I see on my security camera that the old cards have been delivered to the front door of the old house, 300 miles away.

4. I call back, and they tell me they don't see any record of me having requested a different address. Sigh. I ask if they can cancel those cards and re-send them to the right address this time. They say yes, we go through the loop again, etc.

5. I wait a day or two and no cards show up at either location. I call back again. I get told there's no record I asked to cancel these cards or re-send them. This rep finally tells me they can't re-issue the cards again so soon, and need to wait 5 more days. In the meantime, these active cards are just sitting on my porch in a big envelope that says "CITI - URGENT - PLEASE STEAL ME" written all over it.

And, you know, I really needed to use this card since I was trying to buy appliances for the new house.

I ended up resolving this by just making an extra trip back to the old house anyway just to finish cleaning it up and to grab the cards since I needed to go one more time anyway. I called back to make sure they weren't going to cancel these cards, and of course there was no record I'd ever asked to cancel them, etc.

Compare this to AMEX support. Native english speakers, they seem to have the power to actually just fix things for me, etc.

So, while I still use my citi card just to keep the credit line open, my Amex card is my pinch hitter and cornerstone.

When dealing with banks that I know have lousy customer service over the phone I keep recordings. "Recordings may be taken for training and customer service purposes" says the message. Thanks, I'll take your advice.

In the UK the tax-free savings account allowance is per tax year. I paid the money into a not-so-great bank offering excellent rates a few days before the deadline one year and called to create a savings account. Weeks later they've got no record of the savings account, and when I call they explain I'm too late now for "last year's" allowance. I point out that I made the transaction before the deadline and they explain that oops, sadly they don't have that call recorded, and so there's no evidence I actually authorised account creation back then. So I play back my recording, and what do you know, suddenly the bank has a new explanation for what went wrong and wants to pay me compensation for their mistake in not making the account.

A better bank would have eaten the cost of this mistake up front of course, but I already knew this was a lousy bank, that's why they're offering by far the best rates. To attract customers despite the reputation.

> In the meantime, these active cards are just sitting on my porch in a big envelope that says "CITI - URGENT - PLEASE STEAL ME" written all over it.

I have more than a few credit cards, and I've never encountered a card issuer in the US that mails active cards. All of them require some sort of activation process before they can be used. That way, it doesn't matter if they're stolen.