One from today!

[protege]

It's been a *long* time since I've posted a sighting. This one is actually more of a phone call. A scammer, actually.

Around 1:30, the phone rings. Since I had nothing to do and everyone else was busy, I naturally picked it up. You can imaging my annoyance, when the first thing out of the guy's mouth is... "This is Bill, I'm from copier tech support. What's your copier's model number?"

"Bill" got evasive when I asked what company he worked for. The prick actually said "the same one I've always been with." Nicely done, dickbag. You're pretty fucking lucky that my boss was standing behind me at the time, and I didn't have my usual Moss Motors (MG auto parts house) catalog nearby. I've been known to give out random part numbers to fuck with these type of scammers.

Since "Bill" wouldn't tell me who he was with, I hung up on his ass. Not even 5 minutes later, he calls back, and he's pissed. This time, my boss was gone, so Beth picked up the phone...and ripped him a new asshole

Seriously, you call once, I tell you we're not interested...and you call back? No wonder I have little tolerance for scammers. In fact, had it been a slow day, I would have kept him on the line just to mess with him. I figure, if I'm wasting his time, he's not trying to rip off someone else. In fact, I make a game out of it at home, seeing how long I can keep them going

[MoonCat]

Ha, last time I got one of these guys at work he accepted that I couldn't transfer him to anyone who bought office supplies for the company....and then told me a slightly off-color joke before saying goodbye ;D

[Racket_Man]

I hear you on that one.

Back in my IT days EVERY company I worked for gtt hit with the copier, printer, computer tech scam thing on the phone ( the receptionist usually forwarded the call to me in the smaller companies) and/or in the mail in the form of a "bill for services" or a "bill for upcoming maintenance" OR a "bill for printer ribbons (that we NEVER ordered)".

[Luna Baby]

We get these calls at work. They usually try to tell me that they are from "our service department"except that doesn't work. Not only do I already know they are lying, but if they were from within our company, it would come through my phone as an extension to extension call, not an outside line coming in. I usually get hung up on just as soon as I ask, "Where did you say you were calling from?" I wish they'd stay on the line long enough for me to actually play with them. I think it might be a little fun.

[Estil]

Forgive me if I'm sounding like an idiot for asking this but what exactly was Bill in the OP trying to do?

[EricKei]

We got these idiots regularly back at accountingfirm. Sadly, the owner refused to pay forCaller ID -- in the late aughties o_O so we couldn't just ignore them. It was that way at least 2-3 times a month for all five of my years there. Ditto the FIVE calls, all on the same day, EVERY MONTH, from Death Star Phone Company trying to get us to move back to their horrible business service that we had cancelled several years before I ever got a job there.

Estil -- it's a common scam. They're generally trying to sell overpriced replacement printer parts or toner, while posing as the printer manufacturers themselves. They try to bully low-level people into placing orders, offering "manufacturer brand" toner (and selling it for, say 5% off of retail) but sending half-filled crappy knockoffs that might not even work; they don't give real company names/addresses, etc. Another take would be offering a case of toner for "$300" but then not specifying that they mean $300 per cartidge in the case, not $100 for the whole case. Things like that. When the buyer tries to get a refund, they end up SOL unless they take the place to court, which is unlikely to happen due to the cost involved...

The Do Not Call list doesn't help, either, as businesses cannot sign up for it for some inexplicable reason, and these guys don't care that they're breaking the law anyway.

[KellyHabersham]

The Do Not Call list doesn't help, either, as businesses cannot sign up for it for some inexplicable reason, and these guys don't care that they're breaking the law anyway.

I didn't know businesses couldn't sign up for the DNC list..........I put the church office number on it when I worked there, because I was getting tired of sales calls. (no caller I.D. on our phone system, so I couldn't ignore calls)

[Dytchdoctir]

Forgive me if I'm sounding like an idiot for asking this but what exactly was Bill in the OP trying to do?

It's called the toner scam, or the copier scam.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/supplies.asp

[nutraxfornerves]

Back in the 1980s, my employer got caught a very successful version of this. This was in the days before most office buildings had security at the entrances. Two guys march into the accounting office & announce that they are there to fix the copier. They are not wearing uniforms or even name tags. No one asks to see a work order, or ID, or even yells out "who called repair service?" They just point out the copier, while murmuring "I didn't even know it was broken."

The "repairmen" fiddle with the copier for a few minutes, then announce that they can't fix it; it has to go back to the shop. They talk the staff into helping to carry the copier out the back door and stuff it into the back seat of a sedan parked in the alley behind the building. Not a truck or a van, but a sedan. With no logo on it. It doesn't occur to the office geniuses to ask for a receipt, a contact phone number, or even the name of the repair company.

There is a sequel. A few months later, an alert genuine repair guy is servicing a copier at a church. When he looks up the serial number, he finds it marked as "stolen." The minister had been delighted to find such a cheap copier in a newspaper classified ad, and he was naive and innocent enough to not even think of questioning its provenance.

My employer had already gotten the insurance for the copier. The insurance company, now the technical owner, didn't want the thing, so they worked out a deal whereby the copier was donated to the church.

[EricKei]

Kelly - Aye...but I won't tell anyone if you don't Just keep in mind that DNC does not stop calls from charities, the government, political callers , and anyone with a legitimate business reason to call you, including pre-existing vendors, collection agents, any place that has a business relationship with you such as the power company, etc. I THINK it can still block marketing calls from legit business entities, tho.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

We used to get this. I got to go into dramatics on the phone - 'But our rental includes the toner with the price per page copied. We have to buy our own toner now? This is terrible, let me talk to (full name of our rep) immediately, our contract was supposed to be for three full years!'

There was a worse one that some of our branches fell for, but some caught, and since all the bills went approved to same head office for remittance head office caught before any checks were issued. A phony company advertised in the yellow pages, and once they received a bill they duplicated the format/look and sent one to almost every company in the yellow pages online in Canada (yellow pages had just gone online, probably easy to get a computer program to take all the contact info off the websites and make it into a mailing label/address line in invoice). Looked like a yellow pages bill, but for the wrong amount and the return address was completely different. Bad Bad Scammers.

[protege]

The Do Not Call list doesn't help, either, as businesses cannot sign up for it for some inexplicable reason, and these guys don't care that they're breaking the law anyway.

We're actually on the Do Not Call list, because a certain local newspaper (*cough*Post-Gazette*cough*) phone-bombed us one afternoon. We got about a dozen phone calls trying to get us to subscribe to their rag. Never mind that I once worked for the Press--their competitor--but they decided that No really didn't mean "No" and kept calling.