This Is How We Deal With Phone Scammers
21 December 2007This story can serve as a warning to any business owner who is considering selling expensive items over the phone or Internet.
So it all started when some anonymous person called my shop from “IP relay chat”, or so the operator who called himself Jimmy said. This was not my first encounter with this “service”. I had already received two or three calls from them, two of them ended when a supervisor broke in and warned me that the call was believed to be of a fraudulent nature. Each of those calls were from some desperate acting person who desperately needed 50 sticks of 512MB of RAM or some other expensive computer part overnighted and they would pay by credit card.
Despite the valiant attempts of the heroic supervisor, Mr Raymonds wasn’t going to be thwarted so easily. It was going to take something more, luckily I had what it takes.
Mr Mark called about an hour after the “IP relay” call. He had a thick Indian accent and I assumed he was a telemarketer. He introduced himself and asked for Paul. I told him Paul wasn’t in, and asked if there was a message. He asked if we took credit cards, I said yes. He told me he was interested in buying some laptops. He asked if we had an e-mail address. I wasn’t about to give him our real address, so I gave him spamhole@paciii.com. He can spam that one all he wants, we don’t really check it.
He called back 10 minutes later. He again asked if Paul was available and I again told him no. You would think he would get the hint at this point, nope. He not only sent the same email twice, he continued to call. I asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted to speak with Paul. Each time he asked for Paul and refused to speak with anyone else. Most business owners would get mad and tell him off, but I decided to have some fun with him.
By this time everyone working there knew what was going on. A friend of mine was hanging around and took the next call. The conversation on his end went about like this. “Hello?…What? I can’t understand you….What? Speak english!…I can’t understand you!…What do you want?…What? Speak English!…Hello? Hello?…Yeah, he hung up on me.”
I’ll give you one guess what he did next. No, he didn’t run to his mommy, though he probably should have, instead he called right back. This time I gave it to a one of the girls that worked there. She was having a bad day and wanted to have some fun with him. She broke into her best (or worst) Chinese accent, keep in mind that she was half yelling as well.
“HULLO?…WHAAA?…WHOO?…WHA YOU SAY?…HOO?…WHAA?…OHHH, I DUNNO….WHA?, OHH, FOOK YO!…HAAA?…” He hung up at that point and called right back “HOO? WHAA? WHOO?…NO, YOU CWAZY!….WHA?…AHH, FOOK YO!…HOOO?….HAA?” She told me he was yelling over and over that he wanted to speak with me, she also thought that he may have lost his accent a little. He called back two more times before he finally gave up for the day. I think he ran to his mommy.
When I got home that evening, I decided to see if he had really sent his e-mail. I present to you the e-mail that he sent to me, twice. I have added my own comments, for comic relief. If you would like to send Mr. Raymonds an e-mail his address is m_r_90_90@yahoo.com.
Dear Paul,
My name is Marc Raymonds, and nice talking to you on the phone. [Yes I thoroughly enjoyed hearing you get a chinese cursing.] Hope you are all doing fine. [fine as frog hair.]
Well, I just want to find out if you can help me purchase Notebook Computers with some of the specifications below:
* Intel P-M Centrino Processor or Intel Core Duo or Intel Core Duo (2) Processor or Intel Core Solo [So pretty much any Intel processor but Xeon?]
* 1.86ghz to 3.72ghz of Processor Speed
* 80gb to 120gb of Hard Drive
* 512mb to 4gb of Memory Size
* 15.4″ OR 17″ Screen Size
* DVD Supermulti Dual Layer Drive, etc.
[I don’t even have a computer this nice!]
I will be very grateful if you could email me back with some quotes on either Toshiba, HP or Dell Notebooks. You can also quote me on your available specifications and brands if incase you do not carry or deal with the above specifications and brands.
[So in other words, you’ll take anything?]
Remember to email me with your complete contact details [would you like my social security number too?] and also let me know the different types of credit cards you accept in your office.
[How did you know I love taking credit cards from anonymous people over the phone, especially when they have fake Indian accents?]
Thanks very much and am looking forward to hearing and ordering from you.
[Hope you have a lot of patience!]
Kind Regards,
[Aren’t you mister manners.]
Marc Raymonds.
After we gave him the runaround, I was a little worried that he could possibility be a legit customer. However, when I thought about it, there was no way a real customer would put up with our crap. Once reassured, I looked forward to his next call.
He finally called back several days later after hours. This time I admitted to being myself. Mr Marc immediately demanded that I e-mail him. I wasn’t in the mood to go twenty rounds with him and definitely wasn’t about to send him an e-mail from one of my legit accounts. Instead I BSed him. I asked him why he wanted me to e-mail him. At that point the call ended.
I figured it was over until the phone rang again. Polite Mr Marc lost his manners, and went straight back to telling me to e-mail him. Again I asked him why it was so important that I e-mail him when we were already talking on the phone. He told me that he didn’t have any minutes on the phone he was calling from. Really now, then how has he been calling me over and over again? He ignored the question and continued to demand an e-mail until he hung up again. I’m pretty sure he was doing it on purpose.
By the third call I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere and decided to be more direct. I listed a few of the reasons why I wasn’t planning to do business with him. Incredibly he still ignored me and told me he wanted me to e-mail him. At that point I told him that I was not going to e-mail him since we were already talking on the phone. He hung up again, but this time he didn’t call back, go figure.
I mentioned above that I had several reasons why I was going to tell Mr Marc to kiss my ass. There’s a total of eight listed below:
- Yahoo e-mail, m_r_90_90@yahoo.com. That e-mail address is not at all suspicious.
- No phone number, ever. Maybe he works for the CIA.
- Indian accent, a bad one at that.
- Large purchase over the phone with credit card. Just the thought of it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
- Wants all my contact info. Hasn’t he heard of Goolge?
- No minutes on his phone but called eight times in one day. What’s you’re definition of ‘no’?
- No legitimate customer would put up with what we did. Unless he’s a masochist.
- He could buy directly from dell or hp for less. Despite popular belief, I do not get a better deal than everyone else, the greedy bastards.
Oh, and Marc, if you’re reading this. I have your laptops in, just let me know when you would like to pick them up, thanks and kind regards.
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