I was at home watching TV and got a robocall from Apple support around noon, 3/16/20, PDT. Pressed 1 to talk to a technician. I won’t post the caller ID number because it was obviously spoofed. However, I was able to waste 27 minutes of the caller’s time. I’d like to share some techniques here.
First of all, I kept interrupting his script. When he said he was calling from San Jose, California, I went on about the corona virus in Santa Clara county and how it is affecting Apple HQ in Cupertino, blah blah blah, and asked him numerous questions. So it took precious minutes for him to resume his script.
My Apple device was accessed in the State of Nebraska, so I was asked if I knew anyone there. Of course, I said, and wasted many more minutes talking about my good friend Warren Buffet, do you know that they call him the Oracle of Omaha? And how I love steak from Omaha, blah, blah, blah. Then on to Houston, TX. Have you ever used wifi like in a hotel or public place? I went on about how I stayed in a hotel last summer and how slow their internet access was. Blah blah blah.
He had be go to my iPhone settings to turn off Content & Privacy Restrictions (I didn't). Then asked if I have a PC or laptop. I said I have a PC upstairs, More minutes wasted while I "struggled" to go up the stairs. I told him I am a 79 old senior.
Pretended to turn on my PC, but told him that it will be several minutes to boot up because I have an old PC, and how it was so much faster when it was new, blah, blah, blah. When it was finally ready, he instructed me to find the windows key right next to the Ctrl button on the left side of the keyboard. I have to say excuse me, please hold, I have to go to the bathroom to go pee pee. More minutes wasted.
Now on to being asked to press Windows key and R. You won't believe how long it takes for a senior citizen to obey simple commands like CMD. Finally, he had me run netstat and many many minutes wasted on talking about the foreign addresses, etc. and asking him lots of questions. Finally, we reached the point where he asked me to go to fastsupport dot com (remember it takes a long time when you tell him you are typing d-o-t-c-o-m). backslash his support code. I did go to fastsupport but instead of typing his support code in the command line, I just left it nul and clicked to report abuse and reported his support code. He asked if I have done the command, I said wait, I have to go to the bathroom to do a number two. That's when he hung up. 27 minutes wasted.