Credit Card Services Calls Are Back

"Card member services", "Card holder services", "Credit card services", all lead to one female robot named Rachel. Yes, the one that's been interrupting your dinner with offers of reduced debt, which FTC describes as "worthless debt-reduction services".

Rachel from "credit card story" made a big splash in the news back in 2010, when FTC got fed up with endless complaints and went after a company called "SBN Peripherals" for making these calls.

Owner of the company, Johan Hendrik Smit Duyzentkunst, denied any knowledge of this operation and claimed that someone was using his platform to place the calls without his knowledge. At the height of this telephone debacle it's been said that Rachel was making 27 calls a second, which is a whopping 2.4 million calls in a single day!

Regardless of who was responsible it seemed to work. The volume of debt reduction calls got greatly reduced and some of the calls, such as the extended car warranty ones, have all but disappeared.

But zoom to 2011 and Reduced Interet Rate calls are back and it looks like they're back with a vengeance.

The latest report obtained from the FTC (Dec 2011) indicates that she's responsible for as much as 40% of all of the complaints filed with the Do Not Call registry.

It will be interesting to see the outcome of these jury trials, but what's clear is that FTC is taking decisive steps when it comes to prosecuting companies which it thinks are responsible for illegaly interrupting your dinner.

If you receive unknown calls, report them to ftc.gov and whycall.me

Reference:
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/06/asiapacific.shtm
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/12/roycox.shtm
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/12/santa-ana-resident-accused-of-running-robocalling-telemarketing-companies.html