At 2:12 PM, I received another annoying telemarketing/scammer credit card call. When I answered the phone I heard a message about reducing credit card interest rates. There was a mention that the call was from "Cardmember Services". Since there was no mention of my credit union nor bank, it was obvious that it was not a call from my bank nor credit union. I hit "1" to speak to a representative so I could ask that the calls be stopped. When I was finally connected to a person, I asked her what company she represented in a friendly tone; the person immediately hung up without answering, so I couldn't ask to be removed from any calling list used. I then used *69 to get the calling number, which was 7172038889. When I called I heard the message "Please leave a message for. That mailbox is full." There was no person or company identified after the word "for". I've received many telemarketing calls where the caller is identified as "Cardmember Services" and don't know how many telemarketing companies or credit card scammers use that identification. If it was a telemarketing number, there was not a way for me to get the actual name of the company.
As I usually do in such cases, I reported the calling number to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's National Do Not Call Registry website, since my home phone number is in that registry, thus telemarketers shouldn't be calling my number. Unfortunately, many telemarketers ignore the list, apparently feeling that nothing will be done to them if they ignore the list. Perhaps that is true; I don't know how limited the FTC's resources may be for pursuing such companies. I can only hope that if enough complaints are filed for a particular number that the FTC will investigate and at least fine a few of them, though I'd like to see such companies put out of business.
I think anyone who would answer such a call and provide a credit card number to the caller is either a fool or extremely naive, since providing credit card information to an unknown caller may provide an opportunity to a scammer to use that information to use the credit card information for nefarious purposes. But since I've frequently received such calls, apparently such telemarketers/scammers find a fair number of people willing to do so.
