1. Phone Hold Music Ethics. DirecTV, which has bedeviled me, annoyed me and frustrated me for 30 years, had, all during that time, the worst on-hold music in human history. It was a scratchy recording of a high-pitched flute repeating the same unresolved bars over and over again. This selection was particularly crazy-making when DirecTV would, as was their wont, keep me waiting for ten minutes or more after telling me my wait time would be “less than two minutes.” Today I had an occasion to call the service again, and, mirabile dictu, the hold music is now a clear, crisp piano composition by Schubert. Small victories is all I have these days…
[Update: It wasn’t even a small victory! The new music was a tell: I was engaging with a fake DirecTV scammer. Irony: the lousy hold music helped make me check out the caller.]
2. More DirecTV…For weeks I have been getting robo calls from DirecTV telling me to call a phone number. Sometimes I would get ten such calls a day. As a matter of principle, I refuse to continue robocalls or the new AI calls in which a female voice begins with “Hello?” so I hang up, sometimes with a tart, “Bite me!” Finally I decided to call the number I had been getting ordered to call just to complain about being harassed. I then learned from the agent in Bangladesh or somewhere that because I had set some kind of record for legitimate complaints over the past six months (loss of signal, interruption in service, installment of equipment, incompetent agents, etc, etc.) I was receiving a special promotion to keep me from ditching the service like so many other subscribers apparently are. It will save me about 50 bucks a month for two years, so I’m not complaining. At least for now.
[Update: yes, this was a scam. I hate and distrust DirecTV so much that the ridiculously complicated script I was being read and the confusing payment process seemed consistent with my usual interactions.]
Direct TV wanting a gift card sounds like a scam. I would be careful.
Came to say the same thing! This gift card business sounds very sketchy.
At a minimum, try calling from a number on your bill or their website to confirm this is legitimate.
FYI: Direct TV & Apple Promotional Offer | DIRECTV Community Forums; apparently the scammers call direct TV in the background to get your information to make it seem more legitimate.
100% scam. I wouldn’t waste my time any further on it.
Also, a warning for Jack and others: my understanding is AI is so advanced now that after just 3 seconds of hearing your voice, they can replicate it fairly accurately. Do not interact with these callers, at all.
Any call I’m unsure of I’ll answer with a gruff ” ‘lo”. One syllable, nothing more. At the first hint of spam, which is usually when I hear that distinctive tone telling me the call is being transferred from robocall to live 3rd world agent, I’m gone. Even that’s probably too much.
Exactly, the Apple Gift card scam is very well-known.
Yet, people fall for it.
Don’t fall for it, Jack.
-Jut
Even Apple opposes the scam: https://support.apple.com/en-us/120933
-Jut
Ditto. Any institution, organization or company that wants to be paid with gift cards, especially with gift cards from a specific company, such as Amazon, is a big red flag. There’s something wrong here.
There was. Between the helpful comments, the mysteriously changed music, and a few other clues, plus a call to DirecTV where the AI told me they would never ask for payment with a gift card, I avoided the trap. Barely.
It is illegal to do it fraudulently, but caller ID is based on early 1990’s phone technology, when people were naively trusting and security measures were not considered. In today’s age, spoofing a caller ID is trivial.
Companies are trying to retroactively adapt caller ID to have stricter security measures, but it will cause some the function to stop working on older landline phones, mostly directly hurting the older population more likely to have a landline phone. So the uprade process is stalling out.
6) I got tired of the robocalls too. So, I bought a VTech IS8151 which screens calls automatically. It has an approved list and directory. So, anyone you put in the directory or approved list is passed through like a normal call, all others have to state their name and push the pound key after an outgoing message to the effect. This is still a land line and your probably using only your smart phone but I think there are apps available even for smart phones. I have a flip phone but my wife uses a smart phone – we don’t get many calls on them though (I hardly even carry my flip phone).
We were getting anywhere from 12 to 17 calls per day and they were all scams with the exception of a very, very few. In the 3 or 4 months we’ve had the Vtech, our phone has only rang about 4 times.
“I have a flip phone but my wife uses a smart phone – we don’t get many calls on them though (I hardly even carry my flip phone).”
Same here…H/T from a FELLOW LUDDITE!
PWS
No, still have a land line for business calls.
#3 – it happened about the time they also started selling button up shirts designed to be worn untucked. There’s a saying in east Texas about someone or something useful- “handy as a pocket on a shirt”. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I use the pocket of my shirt almost daily for temporary storage of pens and small items I don’t want to lose.
I never answer a phone call unless the caller is in my contact list. If you answer the call of a scammer, the scammer knows that your phone line is active, and they will try again the next time. Robocalls are often fully automated, as soon as you take up the phone they redirect the call to an operative who needs to make the sales pitch, which is why you often here a silence followed by “Hello?” There is also the risk that your voice is being recorded, which can be impersonated for fraudulent purposes using AI tools.
Thanks to robocalls and scams telephone etiquette we had forty years ago has completely vanished.
Chopin’s minute waltz is the most common hold music I hear from spam and scam callers. Most of the time they impersonate my phone carrier, but I used to get a lot from “Your TV service” whereupon they ask for the name on my remote control so they then can adopt something familiar.
Email me the number you were supposed to give the gift card numbers to, and I’ll get it delivered to “scambaiters” who will record themselves wasting the scammer’s time for YouTube clicks during the time it takes the notice of fraud to be processed by their phone company.
1. Yes, the Hold music was indeed the Minute Walz, not Schubert.
2. 888-590-8005. The number that the fake calls from DirecTV told me to call was 888 455-2240.
This has been very enlightening!
So sorry for the tough time you’re having with DirectTV. We’ve had pretty good experience the last three years converting to streaming through Hulu, which includes Disney. We also pay for a couple of services like Netflix and Prime. We save around $100 monthly from Comcast which we used for over 40 years. Hope your problems are resolved soon.