It seems like at least once a day, I get one of those credit card zero percent interest rate scam calls. These are always the same with very little deviation - usually they have been monitoring my payments for the past 6 to 8 months and due to my excellent payment history, I qualify for a lower interest rate on all my cards for life - typically zero percent. Just press “1” to speak with a rep and get your rate. You guys know the scam.
I enjoy playing with these guys, as usually the only way to get to them is for them to call you. I have a list of bogus credit card numbers, complete with the banks they are from, expiration dates, cvv's, etc... that I use to feed them with. I also always use cards generated from smaller, less known banks to make things harder for the scammers. They need to call the customer service number for the bank, pretending to be me, to make this scam work... and the number on the back of the card is usually just too small for me to read! They already know the customer service numbers for the big guys like Chase and Citi.
Note: I don't have an unlisted home phone number, so my name is readily available - although when they do inquire (if at all), I give them a different one. They usually never ask.
So today, I get a call from one of these obscure banks that I have a couple of cards generated from. A real nice lady from the customer service department asking me if i was aware that someone was pretending to be me, and trying to get information from them about a credit card. I let her know that they were scum Indian scammers doing the zero interest rate scam. She told me that was what she thought based on what they were asking and how, but wanted to make sure I was aware of it. I told her that I was so very grateful that she called and it was so appreciated.
That was a first. I was really taken by the effort of this nice lady and going out of her way to let me know something was up and to watch out. I let her know that i was aware of them, and had fed them the bogus info in order to waste their time and prevent them from scamming others who might fall for their tricks. She thought that was so great! We ended thanking each other. In some strange way, that kind of made my day!