Ever gotten the “Anne from Card Services” calls?

Yep, those. They tell you that they can lower your interest rate, if you just (yep, you guessed it) give them your credit card number.

At first I hung up on them, but one day I had time and I figured I’d see what their game is. So I faked sounding a little “slow”, and they apparently thought they’d found an easy mark. They were even quite patient when I pretended not to quite understand their instructions properly.

Eventually, I gave them a fake (but plausible sounding) Visa number. The next thing they ask for is the telephone number for the bank on the back of the card, to “verify” the number. I was more than happy to give them the telephone number, 1–800-225-5324. Otherwise known as 1–800-CALL-FBI, their tip line for frauds and scams.

So, they put me on hold to do their “verification”. I actually got the satisfaction of hearing a “What the—?” before the line quickly dropped.

Didn’t get too many of those calls after that, for some odd reason.