Level 3 Communications

The people calling are spoofing numbers. They will tell you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest for a payday loan gone bad. here is a new number they are calling from 832-431-4221. There are other numbers from California, Wyoming, New York, Ohio...  I wish I still had them in my phone. My payday loan was paid in full, I asked them to send me something in writing in the mail and they refused. When they refused, I gave them my attorney's phone number. They still haven't called him. Never give them any information over the phone, if they cant send you something in writing do NOT pay them over the phone. If they refuse a payment plan, then guess what, your debt is free and clear. Also, if they do take you to court, they have to prove that you intended not to pay it back at the time you got the loan. So unless your lawyer contacts you about them calling, don't give them anything. Level 3 Communications is just one of the many companies that they are spoofing their numbers. Also, if you keep on researching the number, most come up as cell phones, it takes a little digging but you can find out a lot. Our local stations did a report on this kind of scam for payday loans and even went to New York to confront them. It was a very interesting report.

While Level 3 may be permitting the abuse through inaction against its clients, it is still just a carrier and not the source of whatever calls from a PDL thug.

It *is* a carrier name which surfaces often in discussion of other phone frauds, and it was consistently among the few to do nothing with my frequent email spam reports years ago. I think it was a spam harbor then and perhaps little has changed.

Level 3 shows up a lot because they are so big. In fact they are the single biggest CLEC out there. So they harbor phone spammers in much the same way that the Interstate Highway System harbors bad drivers.

I used to have some links/phone numbers specifically for reporting telephony abuse to Level 3, but I seem to have misplaced them. You could start by sending an email to abuse@level3.com or calling 1.877.2LEVEL3. I have had success with them in the past (on an Internet account), but they aren't in the FDCPA enforcement business, so they need a clear cut violation of their AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) before you can expect them to turn somebody's phone service off. Being fair, I wouldn't want my phone turned off simply because somebody said I was annoying them.

If you contact them, I'd just tell them you'd like them to look at whether one of their customers is violating their AUP, and then tell them what the customer is doing that you think might be out of bounds. In your case, you have a pretty good argument, but you need to get your (verifiable) facts together, and be short, sweet and succinct. Let them draw their own conclusions about the activity, and the consequences, if any. The more you tell them about what they need to do, the less likely they are to listen.

HTH

The $64k Q - how will they respond to a subpoena for the full identity of the caller using one of their particular numbers?? Inquiring minds want to know.

Marie,

This is a legitimate company, not a spam haven like Pacific Telecom appears to be.  As I said, they have been responsive in the past.  So why would you suggest that they would ignore a court order?  Can anyone ever pass muster with you?  There is such a thing as being too cynical.

lone stranger

So which department at Level 3 do you work for???

"So which department at Level 3 do you work for???"  Normally I just ignore such foolishness, but...

This has to be one of the stupidest comments I have seen here. Are you new to the site, or are you one of these people who comes here to post without reading the threads? If you had any idea who I was, and why I am here, even you would probably have had enough sense not to make such an absurd statement.

It is easy to be an idiot in the peanut gallery throwing rocks at people - but spending years on this site and elsewhere trying to help folks and stop scammers actually takes some effort.

It is sad that anytime someone points out the truth of a situation, there is some loudmouth at the end of the bar who knows nothing, and has accomplished nothing, but wants to kill the messenger rather than have their self-pitying and paranoid delusions challenged. Believe it or not, there are many legitimate and well run companies in this country, large and small. I can't say much about Level3 except that when I tracked down a scam operation to a customer of theirs, they did actually shut them down. BTW - how many such operations have you spent days tracking down, and managed to get their services shut down?

Even sadder, if someone who did work for Level 3 took the time and effort to post here and share information, they would be rewarded with sniping from some noisy donkey like you. Nice.

FYI, I don't work for Level3 or any other CLEC. Ask any regular on the site if they think I am a shill for Level3 and see what they say. Better yet, if you can mange it, search my posts and read for yourself to see what I am about.

In the meantime, stop braying.

"mange" should have been manage.  My keyboard had a recent and unfortunate encounter with a latte, and has been dropping and adding characters ever since it dried out.

Maybe it prefers black, no sugar.

Yup.  It was the sugar that did it alright.  Laptops are great until this happens.  I guess when it gets annoying enough I will take it out and give it a soak in distilled water.

If I am not wrong Level 3 used to sell dial-up internet as well? Usually the ISP has no complete knowledge of the ones that abuse their systems until they find out about it. This is why people should complain whenever they get a fraudulent call. The intent of a crook is to use a service to abuse people and try to get away with it. The scammers overseas are connected to the net and the telephone lines using their own ISPs, and trying to pinpoint them is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Suddenly I don't want to Know Marie Better. Looking for someone to punish can be fun, but it's more efficient to work the problem ahead of the politics.

That's a reasonable argument. There could be a law of averages at work. Around here it's possible to drive around with a state emissions test decal that's two or three years expired, so long as the driver is cautious and otherwise legally compliant. Not that I would personally know anything about that .... or popular speed trap sites .... or how the "median speed" concept informs police response ....

You're correct about the form of complaints. I was taught to dryly detail the problem and try not to tell harried network engineers how to do their jobs. Complaints in general, including those presented in court, tend to work better with less coloring.

Unless you have been on the receiving side it is hard to appreciate that a terse Dragnet style "Just the facts"  complaint carries more weight than your most persuasive argument.  Normally all I say is "Please handle per your AUP/TOS.  Thanks." followed by a cut and paste of the damning evidence.  It gets a lot more results than a long narrative.  As you say, "dry details".

GOOD ADVISE, THANKS