Your Car Warranty is About to Expire

It seems that an over ambitious firm is calling every home phone, business phone, and cell phone number in the United States and beginning a conversation with a recorded message, "Your car warranty is about to expire." This despite whether the number they are calling is on the National Do Not Call List. They then present the "victim" of their call with two options: 1 - talk to one of our fine sales people for more information or 2 - have your number removed from our call list.

If you press 2, they just call back in 8 hours or so. If they get voicemail, they just call back as well. So, what to do to make it stop?

The magnitude of this problem was become recently apparent as I have heard people passing on the sidewalk talking about it, people in restaurant lines, and coworkers.

Wednesday, when I had just arrived at the office (pre-coffee), one of my coworkers cell phone began to ring. He answered it and said, "oh boy, my car warranty is about to expire again." So, he pressed one this time. A woman picked up and asked him his name. He responded, "Richard Wrinkle." She said "Good morning, Mr. Wrinkle. What year and model car do you have?" Now you would think if this call was authentic, they would know what kind of car he had. so, this kind of verifies that this is a scam. So, he played along. He replied, "Its a 2009 Audi R8." She then asked him to hold and transferred him to a warranty consultant. A few seconds later, a man came on the line and said, "Good morning, Mr. Wrinkle. What year and model car do you have?" My coworker replied, "Its a 2009 Audi R8, and my friends call me Dick."

The warranty consultant then began to ask for more details, "How many miles do you have on the car?" My coworker replied, "12 miles." The warranty consultant seemed a little frustrated, "Do you plan to keep it for a long time?" My coworker replied, "Well, unless I get bored and trade it for a Ferrari or something." The warranty consultant responded, "Ok, hold on" and hung up. He has not received any further calls.

So, Yesterday when our home phone rang, and my wife said, "It's the car warranty people", I jumped to action. A female voice came on the line, "Would you like to extend your car warranty?" I replied, "Sure!" She then asked, "what year and model car do you have?" I replied, "A 1978 Ford Pinto, and it is a piece of crap." The tempo of her speech pattern quickened to almost staccato, "Ok, we will remove you number from our call list." CLICK.

So, if you are receiving these annoying calls, and chances you are. And, you've tried pressing option 2 to no avail, and you've tried reporting them to the Do Not Call List and discovered they are spoofing their caller id info, then it's time to have some fun.

Pick out your favorite old crap car, maybe an MG Midget?

Pick out a humorous name. If you can't think of one, this fine fellow has a list on the internet: http://www.ethanwiner.com/funnames.html

Make up a good story and return the annoyance back to these fine folks. Enjoy!

-Peace

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