Phoney Phone Survey calls

[Kornman00]

Have you ever received a phone call from someone claiming to be from University of <whatever> performing a phone survey to get the opinions of people in America on topics of today? Or just a survey on anything?

Have these calls ever come up as "private number"? (Assuming you answer such calls)

Have these calls usually been past 8pm EST?

Did they ask you any questions at all prior to these supposed survey questions?

Did they tell you "thank you" then proceed to hang up?

Woman, or man?

I just got a new phone service, only a couple days old, and I've received two phone calls from two people claiming to be from two different Universities wanting to do a survey.

One was yesterday (Uni. California) and I told them to call me back (was in the middle of some shit), they asked for a good time to call back and I told them try again today, but they never called back. Fishy senses tingling now. However, their number (http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-866-566-5188) was listed and when you call it, it claims to be a survey company or whatnot.

The second one was today (Uni. of Harvard or something else with an 'H') but as a private number. I let her talk her spiel then asked how she got my number to begin with. She said their machines automatically generate it. Then she goes on to say that the conversation may be recorded for quality control purposes, asks if I'm 18 and if I live in a certain area of the country. At that point she tells me 'thank you' or something and hangs up, sending my fishy senses into a frenzy, raising red flags up and down my spine. Social engineering isn't new to me, so I have to sit here and wonder if this was a phoney phone survey and what kind of information those two questions, along with my number, could possibly provide?

So, has anyone else experienced such cases? Yes, I know, 'why would you pick up a private-number to begin with?'. Curiosity killed the cat, sue me. You live, you learn. I called my provider's service line and since the number comes up private, there isn't much they can do (so they say). I asked them if this happens a lot and the guy said he didn't know of any other occurrences of such phone calls. So it could have possibly been legit but the woman had to get off to go to the bathroom and just made a bitch move all like "bye bye".

[EX12693]

I got a call once from some company saying that there was a survey for Ms. Inga Batesole. Inga is my dog.

[sleepy1212]

We get these pretty frequently. No one in my house answers the phone anymore. ever. So I don't know what they want just that we get calls from schools all the time. I assumed it was telemarketers calling to sell me a degree from home type shit.

[=sw=warlord]

Last time I personally got one of these i was playing halo 3 with rob zombie blasting out the speakers, told them I was busy doing some very important work and they told me they would call back later, one year on still no return call.
Though few friends have had similar ones, one was for working accident claims and another was something to do with if they were a foreign student they could be able to clam through immigration, pretty amusing considering he's a born national.

[sevlag]

pretend to be a retard
make their time with you hell
???
profit

[Limited]

Never had one from a University.

Although last week I had an Indian guy from up claiming to be fr UK claims. He asked if a car accident registered from this address in the last 3 years. No accident has ever been reported from this address, no car from this address has had an accident. I said no, he goes "think hard, maybe even minor ones that were not claimed", again no. I was pretty pissed at this point the guy wouldn't take no for an answer and I had feeling it was a scam. I told him to ring back after 6:30pm.

He didn't, but he did ring the next day, I had plan of attack, this time he told me he was from "the law firm" and asked me same question, I said to him, hold on one moment. Paused for 5 seconds and said to him "I have to let you know I am now recording this conversation, what is my cars registration". I heard him whispering down his end "he's recording this!!" and another voice told him to hang up.

Don't think I'll be hearing from that guy again.

[ThePlague]

I keep getting phone calls on my cell phone from people talking about my debt, and credit cards, etc. Thing is, i'm still 17 so I don't have any of that shit. I never seem to be there to answer the phone though, so it doesn't bother me much.

[Bodzilla]

you just say "wow that sounds interesting! tell me all about it"

then put the phone on the table and walk away...

telemarketers btw only need about a 1 % succuess rate to make a profit, hence why theres so many.

[ChemicalFizz]

Yes I got one of these very recently. I feel bad just hanging up on telemarketers who sit in a cuticle all day doing these calls, so I usually give them a listen, or just never pick up the phone. Except this woman just said "thank you" after I answered a single question, and I thought she was going to continue into a whole list of survey questions.

By the way, I answer private numbers all the time.

[Phopojijo]

@Korn
There's two major possibilities:

A) They found out you're not in their prime recruiting demographic and hung up because time is money.
B) They added you to a telemarketing list for advertisers for ((Male, {~age}, {General location})).

[Limited]

Do you guys in America get those bloody phone calls, that last about 1 second, that basically a robot is ringing you only to see if your in, they hang up straight away. If you answered the phone, within 15 minutes you get another phone call with a telemarketer on the end.

[Llama Juice]

^I used to on my home phone ages ago... back when land line phones were relevant.

On my cell I get the occasional BS call, if you tell them that you'll kill yourself if they call again they stop.

[Cortexian]

Canada has a National "do not call" list, all our numbers are on it. We only get the occasional call from the States, in which case I just act extremely intrigued until I figure I've got them going off on some long rant, put the phone on the table and go back to whatever I was doing.

[sleepy1212]

Canada has a National "do not call" list

US has one too but it's total BS