Scam alert

So, for the past few weeks I have been receiving a call from a company claiming to be an accounts receivables company. It's nothing new for me, I've had my share of debts. This one was different, however. Every time they called they would just leave their name and say they were calling from something receivables. Their messages never had any details and it was frustrating because I kept wondering what the call was regarding. They weren't just calling my phone, they were calling my fathers house as well. How they got a hold of that I'll never know, I haven't lived in my fathers house for a good ten years.

One day I decided I would call them back. I'd been avoiding them kind of on purpose but mostly because I never seem to be near my phone when the call came in. My phone and I have become distant friends. I called and left a message, I'm guessing after they had closed, and asked if they could just leave details in the message if I missed the call again. Assuming it was for a debt I thought they would have at least told me what it was regarding to they could get their money they obviously, so desperately needed. They continued to call four and five times a day leaving a very vague message, each time was from a different person.

Anyway, I called the number back and just as somebody answered I hung up because I realized that I'd been given an extension with the last message I had received. So I called back with the extension and just as I hit call a call came in from an unavailable number. Apparently they got scared somebody was on to them or something and felt the need to hide their number. I clicked over to answer it and on the other end was a very angry sounding, robotic voiced, evil person.

Immediately he asked for me to verify my social security number. I've called real companies before and they always asked for my first and last name, date of birth, or address, for me to verify my identity, never my social. The department of motor vehicles even uses that one as a last resort now, they want your license number. Anyway, that immediately struck me as odd. I then told him that I was skeptical about the company and he immediately became defensive, talked over me, and eventually hung up on me.

In my past experience, companies are friendly to you because they're trying to get money out of you. They ask how you're doing even if and when they don't care, just to be nice. I had no problem being rude back to him because there was no doubt in my mind at that point that this wasn't a legitimate company. I did a little research online about the phone number that starts with 714 (the remaining numbers vary), and there were thousands of pages of people begging to not give this company any money. What they do is they find a legitimate debt that you have, and act as though they are collecting on it. If you're a silly goose, you pay them, but the money never goes towards the debt, they just keep it. It's smart, I'll give them that, but they're gonna need to work on their professionalism if they want to be successful scam artists.

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