FTC Hangs Up On “Rachel From Cardholder Services”

Again, here is the basic sermon about spam/scam/phishing phone calls: Check the caller ID. If you see a name and/or number you do not recognize, do not pick up the call. If you should pick up the call, and a voice tells you to press a number, do not press any button. Hang up! Finally, report the information you have about the call to the FCC and/or the FTC.  Persistence produces results. Thank you.

I went out and got a very loud airhorn. I cannot wait to blast out a telemarketer's eardrums

Too bad but I am still getting calls as of 1/5/13 from 402-982-0422. I am pretty sure I have some more recent than that (today is 2/8/13) but this was the last one I documented. They call my home and my cell from different numbers. The calls have slowed. I was getting 2 a day on each phone. Now I get about 3 a week on each phone.

No company OR individual should be able to show false or spoof an area
code.  This should include ALL from attorneys, debt collectors to  telemarketers AND POLITICAL CALLS..
Any calls from a telemrketer or political entity with more than say, 5 phones should be required to have available a NO CALL LIST NUMBER that works ,or the carrier disconnects their lines.
POLITICAL CALLS USING ROBOCALLERS should be OUTLAWED  outright.or
Until political calls are made by robots going door to door,  

A  friend has a couple of good tactics for turning annoying live tellemarketers On Their Ear.
Keep a good high pitched whistle by the phone.
After 2 or 3 firm, clear short statements PLEASE  QUIT CALLING,  ME, blast them good.

For halfway polite callers,  just tell them that you're sorry, sitting down with your family to ?eat?eTC
Ask them to give you their  number  where you can call them back when you've finished, or at YOUR convenience.   lol

Telemarketers who obtain and call cell phone numbers  should be subjected to triple fines.

Wonder if attempts by telemarketers to contact individuals on the No Call list ought to be considered a form of Wire Fraud.   Now that...is punishable by fines and Jail Time.
good luck and good hunting,

Yes, they have a new plan. They don't use "Rachel" anymore. They now have a male's voice which is quite loud. Still no way to press any number to stop receiving the calls. I thought the FTC made all telemarketers give the called person the option to stop the calls. Guess not!

Not to sound smart or anything, but I did look up which Federal agency handles the SCAMS. Here is the link to the Federal Government agency. However, I, too, thought it was the FCC. They own the phone lines and numbers, but apparently don't have much to do with complaints.


http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/governments.php

Re-reading the listing shows an inconsistency with whom does what.  The only thing I can suggest is to report it to both agencies like mentioned in another post. Eventually it will get to the right one.   Yes, the "T" does stand for "Trade".  I guess I'll call both and see who does what.

Rachel still calls me.

This is nothing short of domestic terrorism. Hang them be there short hairs.

Anger, and wishes, will get us nowhere.  And I believe the do-not-call list is "impractical", for off-shore callers etc are probably not under its jurisdiction.  Also with tightening  (U.S.) budgets, I've heard some cities FINING people for inappropriate (not-true-emergency) 9-1-1 calls.  

So we, the annoyed recipients need to do something, but I have no idea what.  It would include providing money, for little gets done without it, and some serious research as the even POSSIBILITY of being able to track and consolidate callers.  The Caller ID is useless, as they can spoof that arbitrarily.  

I personally would consider a home phone "device" that instantly looks up all caller IDs on the internet and does not even RING those that were found to be known scammers (because in spite of making up the IDs, they DO use them probably thousands of times).  but getting them tracked and stopped is the obvious goal.

And today got another robocall with a "final notice" to lower my interest rates. (Left on my machine, I wasn't home). Unless you recognize the number AND want to talk to them, just let it ring. Never answer, NEVER press any number, NEVER call back. That just confirms that a live human answers the phone, so you just painted "spam me!" on your number.
And don't get your blood pressure up over what is, let's face it, a minor annoyance.
Oh, and Julia, thank you for this site. The DDOS attack proves that you are hitting some creeps in the pocketbook.

The last two calls I received had the following as their caler ID information:

CreditCards
410-844-5512

CreditCardDebt
616-613-2079

I knew right off bat just by looking at the caller ID it was a scam. As usual, I did not answer. Those two calls have been in the past week. So as you can see, the calls are still alive and well.

These guys who do this have an office in Altamonte Springs, FL by Burlington Coat Factory.  Called Elite Marketing or Green Savers.

They called me once this week, three times last week, and five times the week before that. So much for the Feds shutting them down! I DID feel sort of bad when the agent who answered was a happy, chipper young girl probably trying to work her way through college. I told her they'd called me dozens of times, refused to take me off their list, then screamed as loudly as I could "QUIT CALLING ME YOU MORONS!!!" Sigh, it didn't help... Bet she HATES her job.

Getting rid of Rachel is like playing "Whack a mole". Rachel has undergone a sex change operation since the FTC action. I'm still getting annoying robo-calls about lowering credit card balance interest rates, but it is a now a canned male voice, and is completely anonymous.