Owning a vehicle in the United States has a lot of perks but it comes with certain troubles as well. Car warranty calls from fraudulent businesses not only happen to be annoying but harmful as well since the representative on the other end of the line is trained to be highly convincing.
So, what should be your best course of action in such scenarios? How can you make sure that you don’t get bothered by these unsolicited calls on a regular basis? Well, we have some tips and tricks to help you with the same. But before that, let’s walk you through the purpose of car warranty phone calls.
A car covered by a reasonable warranty gives the owner peace of mind since it covers various repair & replacement costs for a specific term. The importance of a warranty for a car owner can’t be denied and this is something that scammers tend to take advantage of.
Such scammers pretend to be the sales representatives of a credible third-party warranty provider or dealership and give you a call so they can alert you about your vehicle’s warranty term approaching its end. Once the scammer has your undivided attention, they will offer you a way to “renew” the warranty on your car.
They will try to acquire personal information from you such as car registration number, credit card number, bank account number, etc. What makes them sound convincing is the fact that they have all the details relevant to your car i.e. make, year, model, etc. But how is that possible? Well, there isn’t a shortage of data-collection companies.
If you fall into the trap of these scammers, you will be sold a poor warranty contract that doesn’t provide the coverage justifying the price on it. The worst-case scenario is that not only will you not receive any contract but the personal information you shared with the scammers would be used to cause you financial harm.
If you are bothered by unwarranted warranty phone calls and would rather do something to put an end to it, we happen to have some helpful tips and tricks. But before you can utilize these tips and tricks, you will need to ensure the presence of certain things.
These things include patience, research ability, a computer/laptop with an internet connection, the phone number of the business from where you are receiving such calls, and most importantly, a Caller ID. There are various Caller ID applications that you can buy or download.
So, once you can confirm that you are equipped with the aforementioned things, you can implement the following methods to stop getting unsolicited car warranty calls.
As soon as you realize that the call you picked up is from a scammer, note down the number, including the area code. This will help you avoid calls from the same number in the future.
Also, for what it’s worth, make it a practice not to answer calls from numbers with unknown area codes. But what if the call is important? Well, you can let it go to your voicemail and proceed accordingly.
In order to join your good books, the scammer may offer to put your number on their business’ Do Not Call List, so you don’t receive any additional unsolicited calls from them. While it sounds tempting, it can lead to more problems down the line.
Since these scammers’ intentions aren’t good from the get-go, the aforementioned offer would most likely result in the company sharing your number with other similar businesses so they could reach out to you instead.
An effective way to stop receiving unwanted calls from car warranty scammers is to have your name added to the National Do Not Call List. For this, simply access DoNotCall.gov, retrieve the National Do Not Call Registry, and follow the instructions.
In case you manage to acquire the name of the business/company bothering you, share the relevant details with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) or Federal Trade Commission (FTC). For those of you unaware, FTC tackles issues of abuse/harassment done by businesses that utilize the national telephone system to commit questionable acts.
It’s also a wise move to reach out to the Attorney General of your state. In case several other people file the same complaint against the company bothering you with unsolicited warranty calls, there’s a chance that the Attorney General will end up filing a case on behalf of the people facing trouble due to such calls.