They finally found me!

[Marmalady]

I'd been waiting for this call. My brother had one a few months back. I'd been quite hurt at being left out of the fun.

Almost ready to sit down to dinner, and the phone rang. Caller display shows 'International'. I answer. A very strongly accented voice tells me that he is calling from the 'Windows Centre Ma'am' and they had been alerted to several 'errors' on my computer ma'am, and was I aware of these errors ma'am?

"Errors on my Windows, do you mean?" I asked.

"Yes ma'am, if you are at you computer now then I can talk you through how to clear them ma'am, all you have to do is follow the instructions I give you ma'am."

"You can tell errors on my Windows from where you are? That's amazing!"

"Yes ma'am, it is all through our technology ma'am, all these errors on your Windows are alerted to our centre here ma'am".

"That's truly amazing... Even more so because I'm using an Apple Mac running OS X and don't even use Windows."

" *silence* "

"Nice try! Bye!"


((I should point out that I don't have a Mac.. I told a lie But they didn't know that))

[Micer]

Ha, I remember getting a call from these guys (or a version of them) a few years back. Same deal, and the biggest flag was the fact that they made it sound like it was coming from my old HP. One I hadn't used in four years and was sitting power/cable-less and gathering dust due to a fried hard-drive.

Told them it had been a nice try and to have a lovely day.

[csquared]

I got called twice. I told them I run Linux. And they still insisted!

[PepperElf]

i haven't had one of the calls myself yet but if you want you can borrow some of the lines i have prepared for them...


"Which Windows computer do you mean and *when* did it message you?"

Cos how they reply ... could be interesting. We have 3 or 4 windows computers collecting dust here. Every one of them has been offline for over 2 years. One's been offline for 6 years!

heck, I even gave away 2 of the old CRTs cos we never use them and they were just taking up room.

Everything else here is Macintosh.


but alas they haven't tried calling me. although i'm not really upset about that either.

[agirlfromnowhere]

I hope I get a call like this. I plan to string them along as long as possible.

[Aethian]

Mom kept them on the phone for over 20 minuets before she dropped the line that she doesn't have internet...

[Victory Sabre]

I'd go to windows, and try to find the problem. Now which one, the bedroom, or living room?

[Kittish]

Friend of mine has something likes TEN functioning computers in his house, I think I'd 'borrow' his set up (at least in pretend anyhow) and start asking the sca...er, caller about 'ok which one was it? well, you see, we have this one and this one and that one and and and and'. See how much time I could go thru getting them to run down just exactly which computer.

[PepperElf]

do they insist on using a landline? i saw the one video where the guy kept the scammer on the phone for over an hour, where the scammer kept insisting on calling a landline.

was never sure why - unless they wanted to use the landline number to locate the actual address, like to use for stealing the credit card etc?


although in his case they could never get the cell number right, so chances are they'd screw up the landline number too - unless they were faking being that bad in order to trick him into giving the number out?

[Moirae]

Hmm, nice scam they got going there. And dumb people will fall for it.

Really, if I don't know who a phone number is, I don't answer. If it's important, they will leave a message and I can call back or delete it at my leisure.

[Bob The Random Boy Wonder]

I got one of these calls a while back. Turns out my computer had a "critical virus" that "needed immediate repair". The bastards told me they'd "fix" my Windows Vista for the low, low price of $500. Knowing I've never had a virus in nearly two decades of computing and none of my computers were running Vista, I had some fun with them just like Marmalady did. It turns out they don't take too kindly to being asked their location and the company that employs them.

Lucky for me, I have a client that just surrendered their computer to these people, and they effed it up pretty bad. I'll be heading down to their place in a few minutes to see if the system is salvageable. If not--well, I'll have a Windows USB stick handy.

I'm definitely preaching to the choir here, but you should never, EVER tell these people anything. You are paying them to screw you. Whether that screwing is theft of personal information or just trashing your computer for the hell of it depends on the motives of the idiot on the other end of the phone. Messing with them is perfectly acceptable, though.

[Pagan]

My mom strung them along one day. Even had them call her back so that she could get the desktop booted up. Which she never did, none of their computers were on. Had them start going through their script, got up to a point where they said they saw whatever. That's when she said, "That's amazing! Because the computer's not even on and you're a scam!" Then promptly hung up.

I don't know if they've ever called me because I screen my landline and my mobile (and I'm picky who gets that number anyway).

[Catwoman2965]

I had one recently. They tried to tell me there was a problem with my "Microsoft Windows Computer" Funny thing, I didn't know "Microsoft Windows" made computers! i just said nice try, and hung up.

[Mishi]

I kept them talking for a bit by acting like a bimbo. They finally told me that I would have to take it elsewhere because it was too broken for them, and to call them when I got it back from the store "just to make sure that everything was fixed", and then hung up without leaving a number. Haven't called back since.

[fireheart]

I got called twice. I told them I run Linux. And they still insisted!

Probably because it's a PC.

To them, it goes like this:

PC=Windows, Linux, whatever.

Mac=OS X.