After several weeks of quiet, the calls began anew this week, but with an interesting twist. They said they want to call "to confirm the shipping address before they send out the medication". That's funny, I didn't remember ordering anything!
And, in another interesting twist, they said they were calling from "LV Riga" pharmacy. Immediately the name rang a bell - I had screwed them out of about $150 around two years ago.
It was the only time I tried this trick, but when they were relentlessly calling me in early 2005 I decided to take a risk. I needed some ambien at the time, as I was having trouble sleeping, so I placed an order with LV Riga. They were one of the most relentless callers at the time, and I figured I was already on every list anyway, so my calls couldn't possibly increase.
I received my medication about three weeks later (after they promised me a two day delivery) so I decided to dispute the charge with my credit card. Instead of saying that I received it later than promised, I just told them I never received it at all. They investigated, and issued me a full credit.
Now, this is certainly a tactic that involves financial risk. That was the only time I ever did it; I thought that by going through the process I would find out some details about who, or what company, was calling me so relentlessly. (Of course, there were the additional side benefits of getting some free medication, and swindling them out of some cash.)
I was surprised to find out that the credit card company had very little information on this vendor. Either that, or they were unwilling to share. If anyone has any information on how credit card companies process these transactions, I would be fascinated to learn.
Do they know exactly who is charging me when I place an order like this? All I know is that Riga is the capital of Latvia. It doesn't exactly seem like a hotbed of pharmacy telemarketing.
About Me
- Kim Jong Syrj
- I'm sick and tired of it all and I'm not going to take it anymore.
2 comments:
Well, your bank paid SOMEONE. It's cheaper for them to write it off for a dinky $150 or so than investigate it, but if you put on a show of being concerned and wanting to track down the folks yourself, you should get some info from them. In my case, I was able just to google the name of the entity and came up with some interesting stuff. Most of the hits were--hate to say it--that company's help wanted ads in newspapers all over India, for telemarketing scum to hound us harder. It seems they're doing unpleasantly well. I'm not sure how, on a business model of calling the same people many times in a single day; surely after the first one, two, or three hangups, the prospects for that prospect are dim. Maybe they're trying to aggravate us so we'll need valium or something by the end of their barrage.
I also found some very interesting sites and forums and chatrooms where these cockroaches trade information, tips and tricks, phone numbers, etc.
I think the tail is wagging the dog by now: There's more trade in phone numbers (ours) than in drugs, is the only way I can figure it.
LV is just the abbrev for Latvia (their TLD too), so they're just telling you where the entity is. You ought to be able to squeeze a name out of them.
I finally heard from FTC, months after I'd abandoned my barrage of hundreds of complaints! An awesomely polite, professional paralegal who sounded about 20 years old. He asked for any charge card transactions/bills I had from these lice, and instructed me on what info to "redact" by blocking it out 'cause they didn't wanna see my confidential information, and if I sent it they'd have to go to a lot of trouble to redact it themselves. Pretty funny when you remember all the spying, eavesdropping, snooping without warrants, data mining, kidnapping, torturing, etc. that the gov't has been cheerfully carrying out against us lately, to hear this earnest young man concerned that I not reveal what drug I'd bought, or whatever datum it was.
I got all excited and said I'd do whatever it took. I offered to do a sting operation, work with FDA or even DEA, Treasury, FBI, etc. I said I'd testify. I told him that this was not just a do not call violation, but a bunch of international drug smugglers and criminals on a grand scale.
He and his bosses didn't bite, and nothing came of it.
You'd be surprised about Latvia not being a likely site for this sort of thing. The E. european countries of the former USSR are emerging as major org. crime centers. But these operations are truly international: call centers in India, pharmacies in India, SE Asia, or even USA (the classy ones), banks way offshore--there's always a currency conversion charge--and actual headquarters God knows where. It's impressive. As a libertarian, I'd be cheering the whole endeavor of free trade, cutting out the doctor middleman and passing the savings on to me, etc., except for this shady and obnoxious business of selling and trading customers' phone numbers so freely to such buttsuckers as the Indian crowds. That's just wrong for so many reasons.
I love what you've managed to do, having them talk to each other like scorpions in a jar!
Can't tell you much about cellphone facilities to filter them out, except that all the features you spoke of (requiring no-name callers to identify themselves, screening out known numbers, etc.) are available in good old-fashioned land line dinosaur phone service. I've been considering switching to VOIP and a key factor will be whether I can get those same features. The US cellphone industry is a blinkin' scandal; we're years behind the world in every way, and paying through the nose for deliberately crippled, attenuated, lousy service. The carriers hack the phones to make them proprietary and to kill features they have built in. Argh. They're like laptops: pay much more for much less capability.
Mmmm: I just thought of something that might interest you: Check out grandcentral.com. It's a free service that does all kinds of stuff with incoming phone calls (rings two numbers at once, lets you screen, record calls, etc.) but it does require a new phone number. You don't abandon the number(s) you have, but their magic only works on calls to the new number you get when you sign up. A few calls to the termites using that number as your CID should get things rolling though.
This is the most well-written and thoughtful posts I've seen on my blog. Your insights are excellent. Thanks JRazz!
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