Just got a phone call notifying me that my vehicle's warranty was about to expire! OH NO! I had no idea that BMW changed the MINI warranty from 4 years to 1 year! I had no choice but to accept their extended warranty and pay the 3,000$ (using my credit card over the phone of course).






Yeah, I just got one of THOSE calls. For those of you who haven't encountered this, you get an automated call (more than likely on your cell phone) notifying you that your car's warranty is about to expire, and this is your second and final notification. To speak to someone you press one number, to get removed from their list you press another (it really does nothing). So you get to the first representative, the gatekeeper. This rep's job is to determine if you're really interested or if you're trying to get information about the company. I failed her test. As soon as I started to ask questions about the name and address of the company all she said was "I work for Warranty Services for the car company" and that the second representative would have the information I wanted. So I started asking to be connected to that rep, and she kept requesting my phone number and name. We went back and forth until she finally hung up on me.

I looked up the phone number on the caller id, it's a residential number in New Hampshire, and the number is continually busy. This was my first encounter with these scumbags. I'm pondering what to say if they call again. I think I'll string them along as best I can to try to get the information I need. If I'd thought about it I would've agreed to all their stuff and then said "Oh, man, I don't have a credit card, can I send you a check? What's the address?" But oh well.

Has anyone else had to deal with this crap? What's your tactic for dealing with them?

 

I got those calls all the time. But they were calling me way after my warranty expired so I had a feeling it was some telemarketer or scam. I just hang up. I got the calls continuously for about a month, but now they've stopped. I'm happy I'm not the only one.

 

Yep I received a call from warranty services a week ago and they fed me the same BS. I asked to speak to a supervisor and she hung up. Turns out the phone number is from Florida. This scam also shows up on Rip-Off Report.com

 

If they call again, you should give them the vin for that 73' 914 of yours. See if they realize the problem.

 

lol i get like 3 a day at work... i just say F you and hang up (theyre always automated)

 

What puzzles me about these calls is how they got hold of my home number (unlisted) and work number too. They started just after we bought my wife's (used) car. The dealer insisted that he doesn't sell contact info of customers. Same for the credit union with the loan. Same for the insurance company. The DMV also claims that owner info is confidential. So how do these companies know the make and model of the car you just bought? It's not just phone calls - they've mailed their stuff too. Any ideas?

 

Don't know where you live, but in most states DMV info is public record. You usually have to fill out forms and pay a fee to get the info, but it's available. I imagine warranty and survey companies are constantly combing public records for their purposes.

 

I'm in Utah, and the DMV privacy statement seems like it should keep this info out of the hands of scammers, but doubtless they've found some kind of loophole.

 

last week was at my Italian grandparents house in NY. They don't speak much english. while I was there I answered the phone and it was the "warranty" service. Said the car warranty was expired. so I knew it was a scam because my g'parents don't have a car...at least for the past 3 years. coincidently, they last car they owned was a Mini Cooper . So I played along and got an agent. I asked him what the make and model of the car was because i owned ten . Next think I heard was dialtone.

 

Good one

 

I got these for a while and at first I also just hung up on them, but they started leaving longwinded messages on my home answering machine. So the next time they called I asked what the name of the company was and got an immediate dial tone - I wonder why?

The next timeI pressed one to speak to an operator and again as soon as I interupted them to ask a question I got a dial tone..........I never got another call from them.

I also wondered how they got my info since I'm on all the national and local no-call lists. I must have scared them........

 

As a telecom engineer, I can tell you that CallerID is not always true. It's very easy to spoof the CallerID system, so I would never count on those numbers being real. The person/group that's making these calls appear to be war dialing, as I'm getting constant complants from several employees. All of our individual employee numbers are not listed, which points to war dialers. I noticed this starting up really heavilly last year and then went down. Unfortunately they appear to have ramped up again in the last month or so.

Since they are clearly a scam, the only thing I can really do is just hang up on them. It's not like they are going to honor the No-Call-List or any other telemarketing laws.

 

Yeah, that's one of the big reasons why ATT and Verizon have filed suit against them, since they've been spoofing numbers. One of the reasons I wanted to get them strung along enough to get a mailing address...

 

OMG you guys are going to love this!!! We get these people calling into our lines at work, My coworker decided to have some fun with them. You won't BELIEVE what they told him!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb_3iRul6RE

 

A friend of mine is getting these calls and she doesn't even own a car!

 

Ya that is the new scam going around. If they don't say I am calling from MINI about your (insert year) Mini, it is a scam and it is happening to more then just Mini owners. My friend got a call saying your warranty was about to expire and he kept asking about what car and they kept telling like a broad base of years like 99-05 and he has a car that is like a 91 or something. IT IS A SCAM

 

We get the same calls in Canada. I get them on my cell phone every so often. Very irritating. Easy to talk circles around the people though. They are idiots.

 

I never got telemarketers calling my cellphone for the 11 years I was on Sprint. I switched to AT&T and three days after activating my plan I started getting these calls. They go through a lot of questionable steps to hide their identity, but mostly Caller ID spoofing. Which, btw, is totally illegal!

Anyway, don't get me started. (yeah, you got me started!)

 

Actually, there's no federal law against Caller ID spoofing (a bill is pending, though), and Florida is currently the only individual state where it's illegal, although a few other states are considering criminalizing it.

 

Well if anyone calls you and it sounds shady hang up on the also post your number on the do not call list I did that and I stopped receiving phone calls

 

This sounds more baffling than ever to me. If they refuse to tell you who they are or what "product" they are offering, just how are "scamming" you? The only purpose of a telemarketing call, legit or otherwise, is to extract some cash from you, but it sounds like the callers for these aren't exactly closing the sale.

 

I get them. I hang up on the automated call all the time. I never even let it go to a rep.

 

The Do Not Call list works great but this scam ignores it and there is no way to report it as they use false caller ID and never give the name of their company. All you can do is hang up.

 

Exactly. Considering they don't want to tell you the name and address of the company (violation of Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991), and they use an autodialer to call a cell phone for telemarketing (another violation of TCPA), they obviously don't care about the law.

 

Ive been getting these calls for about a year now. Last month they called and I was on the phone with them for about an hour and a half, just messing with guy on the line, stringing him on with my sarcastic answers. Then we got to the point where he asked me what make and model of vehicle I owned. I said "Shouldn't you already know my make and model if you are informing my my warranty is almost up?" He hung up.

Last week thye called again. I went to the same deal and when they asked I said its for my 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. I havent heard anything since.