FTC nails the "Your Warranty is Expiring" robodialers

They finally tracked down the bastards. You know, the guys who ignore the do not call list, and play prerecorded messages claiming your warranty is about to expire on your car. When I had one of them call me, I asked the rep for the name of the company he was calling from and his contact information. He replied, "Very funny," and hung up immediately. Too bad - I would have liked to string him along and find out if their warranties would cover full throttle dyno pulls and entering various SCCA races, on my newest car, which happens to be 14 years old.

AP News article

YES!

For once, the govt gets it right. Only took em 233 years. Now if they can only get this Detroit thing right too, maybe we will be on to something

GREAT!!! Finally some payback. All of us at work has been getting these calls on our gov't issued blackberrys. We knew it was probably illegal but not much really we could do but hang up on them. I usually listened to end and punched 2 to be removed from the list. Didn't stop it but it did seem to slow down. I have seriously thought about punching 1 to talk with a service rep and tell them that I am seriously concerned about the warranty on my 1963 MG Midget and/or 1970 Opel GT is about ready to expire.

I have gotten a few of those calls. Finally I decided to talk to the guy. When I told him my Sentra was 13 years old and had 200+k miles, he hesitated and finally said they could not do anything for me. Funny, I have not had a single call after that. Maybe that is the magic bullet for dealing with them.

Yeah, they keep calling, even though we tried to get a warranty for the Bezerkley.

Tommy Suddard wrote: Yeah, they keep calling, even though we tried to get a warranty for the Bezerkley.

Any chance that call might could be posted here as an MP3?

One of my customers is also a neighbor like 4 doors down. His wife got one of those calls, she bought a $2000 warranty even though 1) her car is still under the base 36/36 warranty and 2) they bought a service contract through us at the time the car was purchased. She showed me the paperwork, I pointed out (gently) that she already has all the coverage she could ever need. So she called to get the contract canceled, they wanted the last 5 repair orders showing dates and mileages before refunding her money. They did NOT ask her the current mileage when she bought the plan.

Bastards.

They usually call when I'm driving, that's when I tell them I don't have a car. "but our system shows you own a car" oh really that's weird.

Man those things piss me off.

My dd truck has 400,000 miles on it. I doubt they'll warranty it.

Our calls tapered off in the past month or so, but now they are on TV. Maybe Vince from Sham Wow got another gig?

Maybe Chuck Shumer's good for something after all...

I just another one of those calls not more than 3 hours ago.

Same here. Got one around 10:00 this morning.

Got a couple of calls from one of these guys:

Rep: "May I have the info on your car?"
Me: "Shouldn't you know that already?"
Rep: [click]

Another Rep: [after asking the above] "We just need to verify your vehicle information for security reasons."
Me: "1987 Mazda RX-7"
A. Rep: "Whoah! You're on your own, man!" [click]

Yeah I love the hang up thing, like that doesn't make you obviously a scammer

I got one of those at work! I had fun with him though. I told him I was so glad he called and I told him all about my car and the mileage and how much I loved my car and how I was wishing I had a longer warranty on it since it just got totalled last week and I wasn't sure the guy that hit me had insurance. That was about 20 minutes into the conversation LOL. There was a very long pause.

I've been getting those calls on my home and cell-phone. Finally talked to an actual human, and asked the guy which of my car warranties was about to expire, the Ferrari F-360 or the Porsche 911 GT-2. Told him I knew the current warranties expired a year apart from each other, but I couldn't remember which was was about to run out.

I was hung-up on... Only to have the calls start again the next morning. Just got two more calls on Monday.

Never gotten one of those calls. All of my cars are teenagers, so I'm looking forward to it... :)

Thing that annoys me about this is that FTC ignored the thousands of complains by regular folks, and refused to take action. Only when "important people" fussed did they take action, and right quick.

So remember, you are nothing.

Yeah, ft, that got me too. I complained on them (via the FCC) on each phone that I got spammed on. The calls only stopped when I waited for a humanoid to come on the line and told them to put that number on their do not call list. My phones were on the national do not call list already, of course, and they are not allowed to spam cell phones anyway.

I got one of those calls on an emergency elevator line once. I was going up to my wife's office, had my helmet on (was riding the motorcycle that day), and I couldn't figure out what I was hearing. Took the helmet off, and it was the recording. Unfortunately, modern elevator phones have only one button, which you press in an emergency. My wife has since heard at least one more call in the same elevator.

The only cars I have with less that 100,000 miles are my two Spitfires. I bet they won't talk to me about those.

Wanna bet? I've gotten calls about my Spitfire. They mentioned it specifically. They data mine through the vehicle registration databases. I've no doubt they are quite willing to sell me a worthless vehicle warranty on the Spitfire.

I've also gotten the letters and postcards in the mail for all my vehicles, including the mileage (either from the initial registration or the emissions inspection). Some of the language is hillarous, like when they say my warranty on the Volvo 740 has expired 270,000 miles ago, and I should renew it. OK.

hahaha, a warranty on a 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit L. hahaha!!!

We've had a couple more calls from these fools yesterday & today. Fortunately they keep calling while we're gone to work.