I had an interesting experience with these scammers.
I played dumb and got from automated to first line qualification to second line qualification to the person that closes the deal. At each level you could tell that the savvy-ness of the person went up dramatically. When I got to the closer, he was smooth as silk. He asked me for info from my credit card statement. I kept him on the phone a good 10-15 minutes playing dumb, then I hung up. He called back immediate and said "oh, we got disconnected" and I basically told him he was scum and I did this because I asked to be taken off their "list" about 20 times. He said "you'll regret this" and hung up. At this point my phone rang again and someone started screaming at me. He had redirected the complaining victims like myself to my phone #. I unplugged my landline and called AT&T on my cell. They really couldn't do anything, which I found amazing. After 30 minutes I plugged the phone back in and didn't receive any more calls.
Then, googled "card services". It took me a while, but I found a law suit against some company from around 2002, and even found a PDF containing the complaint by some lawyer in TX, complete with a phone number. I figured, what the heck, I'll call it and see if anyone answers. Some old guy answered on the 2nd ring and I explained the situation and he was very surprised. He said the company had been shutdown soon after the law suit. I told him they were back, with a vengeance. They had been calling me at least once a day for a year. He told me to start a case with the FCC (I think... it was a few years ago), which I did by filling in a form on their website. Never heard squat.
After the incident mentioned above, I didn't get a call for more than a year. Then, they started up again. Now, I just hang up immediately. I'd say I get a few a week at this point.
I played dumb and got from automated to first line qualification to second line qualification to the person that closes the deal. At each level you could tell that the savvy-ness of the person went up dramatically. When I got to the closer, he was smooth as silk. He asked me for info from my credit card statement. I kept him on the phone a good 10-15 minutes playing dumb, then I hung up. He called back immediate and said "oh, we got disconnected" and I basically told him he was scum and I did this because I asked to be taken off their "list" about 20 times. He said "you'll regret this" and hung up. At this point my phone rang again and someone started screaming at me. He had redirected the complaining victims like myself to my phone #. I unplugged my landline and called AT&T on my cell. They really couldn't do anything, which I found amazing. After 30 minutes I plugged the phone back in and didn't receive any more calls.
Then, googled "card services". It took me a while, but I found a law suit against some company from around 2002, and even found a PDF containing the complaint by some lawyer in TX, complete with a phone number. I figured, what the heck, I'll call it and see if anyone answers. Some old guy answered on the 2nd ring and I explained the situation and he was very surprised. He said the company had been shutdown soon after the law suit. I told him they were back, with a vengeance. They had been calling me at least once a day for a year. He told me to start a case with the FCC (I think... it was a few years ago), which I did by filling in a form on their website. Never heard squat.
After the incident mentioned above, I didn't get a call for more than a year. Then, they started up again. Now, I just hang up immediately. I'd say I get a few a week at this point.