Phone Calls

For the last couple of weeks I have been receiving cell phone calls, looking for Gerald.  No body here by that name and hang up. 15 minutes later is Gerald there?  Looking for auto loan, need Gerald.  What the heck?

These are almost always far Eastern voices like they are from India or one of those countries, and they are in a room full of callers talking all at once in the background.   4 or 5 calls a day began to reach my phone and now they don't hang up.  They keep talking to you and you can't hang up on them either because they somehow hold your phone on  the line.

I have called T-Mobile, my carrier and they claim they know nothing about this.  At first I thought it was individuals looking for me (Gerald) to make them a loan to buy a car.  The phone numbers are random from area codes all over the country.  But then after several calls today, I began to get repeat numbers.

Not only are they burning my phone minutes,  I have spent a lot of time on the phone with T-Mobile trying to resolve what to do about it.  Their only suggestion is to change my phone number.  I've had it for 10 years, so changing it now seems like leaving all my old friends behind.

So in desperation  I typed the phone numbers into google.  That brought up WhoCallsMe dot com which has responses from all the other folks that have been called from these numbers.  Sometimes it is an auto loan, and others claim to be an attorney doing collections.  The callers threaten to have the police come and arrest you.  We don't have debtors prison here in the US so that isn't going to happen.

I looked up 7 different numbers that have called looking for Gerald Coffie, and in every case it is this same group from India that is badgering folks.  Its some kind of a scam to get your social security number and other pertinent facts so they can steal your identity.

This afternoon I downloaded an App on my android phone called mobile manager that will block unwanted calls from specific numbers.  It will block everything that isn't in your contact list if you want, but I do get outside calls that are for us, so that seems too drastic.

I loaded all the numbers that the auto finance folks have been using into the blocker, and so far I am now call free.  But it is only a matter of time that they use a new number I don't have blocked.  Every time they call now,  that new number will get blocked.

So beware of calls for auto loans.  Collection agents, and the like.  Now days they are probably phony, and their origin is usually outside of the US.  The phone company says they can't do a thing about it!

Retired Rod