A telemarketer is a telemarketer is a telemarketer. They prey on people to get money. These scams have adapted over the years from car warranties to phone service (remember "slamming"?) to other assorted BS. They bank on people wanting to believe that Bill Gates will pay you to spam people, and they use powerful motivators. They appeal to peoples' greed and/or peoples' fears. A Nigerian General wants to share millions with you. I'll send you a check for $5,000.00, you send me your car and a money order for $3,000.00, your grandson will go to jail for 20 years in a foreign country, you'll lose your house, be burglarized and so on. Here's a pretty good recording of this scam. It's over 1/2 hour long but you can skip through it for the entertainment, but it also has some good info in it to educate people on how they work. Once they get you to download one of the programs, they can get into your computer and you will have problems. They use essentially illusions to look credible and the non-skeptical will often swallow it hook, line and sinker. I always told my clients that if it comes to you in an email, assume it's false until proven true. And when they call you on the phone, it's not much different. The sad part is people WANT to believe scams. And they want to be the first to share this secret with people so they send it on to everyone they know. Anyone can challenge/dispute any charge, just like anyone can sue anyone for anything, however it takes proof to prevail. The banks have no liability to reimburse someone for being a sucker. The easy dispute process was tightened up on many years ago because people would buy something, then have buyer's remorse and dispute the charge. There are rules with a rescission period requirement on large purchases but on smaller purchases when you authorize a charge, you're basically on the hook for it. And to get a refund, you have to go through the proper procedures. People think a credit card protects them because if they drop the TV down a flight of steps, or leave the cake out in the rain, and they can just dispute it and get the money back. You can't challenge a charge because another store put the jacket on sale two weeks after you purchased it. Doesn't work that way. It's similar to people thinking they can buy something with a check and stop payment on the check with no ramifications or even to put them in a better bargaining position. Not always so. You can have issues with criminal charges against you for defrauding an innkeeper for one thing. Attempting to evade payment of a debt is a criminal charge in many places. For instance, writing a check on a closed account. Sadly there are some cards who will sometimes indemnify suckers and that costs everyone money. They'll do it for "customer service" I suppose but again, ever since the changes in the credit laws a number of years ago they aren't as friendly about it. Most of these telemarketers are educated, at least more than a lot of the people they call. I'd suspect the caller did not say they were with Microsoft. They probably said "tech support" or something and babble something about Microsoft certification or something and people who don't know better or don't pay attention assume something different. One of the collection agencies out of Canada operate under a name similar to a law office to gain credibility and scare people into paying up, even on debts they don't owe. People need to be educated and at least learn more than the telemarketers to protect themselves or they're destined to lose.

I had a car for sale two years ago on craig's list. I had a scammer of some sort contact me via email. At first they seemed to be making legitimate inquiries about the car. The person said they were representing someone in England, who wanted the car, and they were buying it for them here in the U.S. to be shipped back to England. Then they said they wanted to buy it with a cashier's check but the amount would be over the purchase price and I would need to send the difference before shipping etc, etc. Since this was April of 2005, the scam was new at the time but I still knew it was a scam of some sort. I researched it online on the FBI's website. Sure enough, there were big warnings about the new scam. I reported this person but never heard anything from the FBI. However, they didn't use an international address. They actually used the address of a bed and breakfast in michigan. But the phone number they gave me always went straight to voice mail. And when I called the B&B, they had no idea who that person was. Since the money was to be wired to them instead of sending it to the B&B, I think they just picked an address at random that seemed legitimate. They weren't planning on getting any mail or money at that address. But having a U.S. address made them seem more legitimate, I suppose. One of the things that made me curious at the very beginning was it made no sense for anyone in England to want to buy a used car in the U.S., especially a gas guzzling Ford Explorer. So big for a country with such narrow streets and sky high gas prices. How much is the equivalent of a gallon of gas there? Isn't it around $6? And plus, the steering wheel would be on the wrong side of the car! Anyway, I never did tell the guy that I'd busted him. I wanted to see if the FBI would catch him. But they didn't do anything. No one ever contacted me. I did find an article at the time in the Chicago Sun Times on this then new scam. So I emailed the reporter to give him the details on how they'd tried to scam me. He emailed me back and I forwarded him the emails. I thought at least a reporter could make use of the info to get the news out.

"But it would seem logical that overseas locations cater to the overseas customers in that general area." It doesn't work that way. I believe Apple has some R+D in Ireland (and elsewhere, of course), and at one time also had finance and treasury people too. It's a very disproportionately large employee base given the small size of the country. These are examples (and there are many others) to show that particular functions may have nothing at all to do with the population of the country where located. Those 5500 Irish employees are in a country with a population of 4.7 million. Apple has 2200 employees (60% fewer) in Germany, a country whose population is 82 million (more than 15 times bigger). 6500 employees in the UK, the (of course) nearby English speaking country, whose population is 66 million. Who and how many are where depends on function location and other factors, there's no pattern or anything to assume. "If there was a legitimate issue with the account here in the US wouldn't it be far more likely that a US customer service location be contact, not a foreign one??" You've never called tech support or customer service for a US company and gotten someone in India? Or in the Philippines? I recently called customer support for Honeywell (the thermostat company) and spoke with someone in Mexico. They were very knowledgeable, helpful and very easy to understand but not in the US.

I have a landline that I literally never answer. I have the ringer turned off on it. But it's hooked up to an answering machine, so on the rare chance it's a legitimate caller they can leave a message. If I see the answering machine light blinking then I'll listen to the message. One day I had a message from an IRATE elderly gentleman. He was furious and demanding to know why I'd been calling him several times a day and not leaving a message. Obviously some delightful company was spoofing my number and using it as a "local" number to try to get people to answer. That gentleman called me back a few more times and left scary/angry messages on my phone. Unfortunately his caller id was blocked, so I had no way of knowing who he was. However he was getting so irate in his messages to me I almost called the cops. If you google my home phone number it comes up with my name and address, even though allegedly my number is private. (Thank you America for stripping away any hopes of privacy anymore.) I was starting to get concerned this guy was just going to show up at my door! So I turned the ringer on and hoped he'd call again. Fortunately/unfortunately that evening he did, so I answered and he UNLOADED on me. It took every ounce in me to calmly explain my number was being spoofed and I swear no one from this house is calling you. I told him if he didn't believe me, I'd really like to call the police together and file a report. He finally calmed down and almost ended up apologizing to me. Over the next few days I got a few more messages from people wondering why I was calling them and not leaving a message. Charming. So I changed my outgoing message, to alert callers to the fact my number was being spoofed and I swear it's not me calling you. TL;DR. I DESPISE telemarketers.