This is getting pretty annoying.
I never get them on my regular phone, but, I get them at least 2 or 3 times a week on my cell phone. If I answer my phone by accident, why do I have to use my minutes to pay for this?
I thought there was a law about calling cell phones for advertising.
Concord Call Center Sells 'Fraud' Auto Warranties (Video of story on this link)CONCORD (CBS 5) - You've probably gotten the annoying call more than once saying your auto warranty is about to expire. It's estimated that more than a billion calls have been made to home and office and cell phones.
It's hard to know where the calls are coming from, because the callback numbers are often disguised. But CBS 5 Investigates found one place doing telemarketing on auto warranties in the Bay Area.
Those recorded calls often warn that "this is your final courtesy call before your vehicle is reclassified."
They're calls Vicky Joslin of Paradise received often both on her home and cell phones. "That our warranty, our auto warranty was about to expire," Joslin recalled.
But in Joslin's case she didn't just hang up, she took the call and later, got the name of the company, called Pacific Guard Warranty.
CBS 5 Investigates found that company is registered in Nevada and uses an office address in the East Bay, in Pleasant Hill. But that address turns out to be a mailbox inside a private mail services store.
So where is that company located? It's actually hidden away in a tiny office in a building in downtown Concord.
The sign on the door said "Access USA", but employees working there told us it's actually the office for Pacific Guard Warranty.
"We've actually been told don't give (customers) this address, they might come up here and do something to the office," said former employee Iris Franco Mitchell.
Mitchell said the office managers prepare employees for upset customers.
So where do those auto-dialed calls come from?
"I would say over 50 percent of our calls come from India," Mitchell said.
She said those automatic dialers call people all over the US and when a consumer takes the bait and presses the number 1, the call would be transferred to the center in Concord.
That's where Mitchell said employees are instructed to sell a variety of auto warranties; but as to the quality of those policies?
She said around the office, managers called one "a fraud policy". Why?
"If you're selling a bumper to bumper warranty or a power train warranty, it's neither," Mitchell said. "It's actually a product warranty that only covers like 34 parts in your car and you pay $2,500 for it."
She said customers don't know that. Take the Joslins, for example. Since the factory warranty on their van actually had expired, buying the plan sounded like a good idea to them.
Vicky Joslin said the representative on the phone told them the policy would cover "bumper to bumper" for 10 years. So they agreed to pay $2,200 for that "extended warranty."
But Joslin said 6 months later when the van needed repairs and the couple called to submit for reimbursement?
"It wasn't going to cover us, we didn't qualify," Joslin said.
She said because the company told them they'd have to prove that every repair or service ever done on the van had been done at an "authorized" shop.
"We could not even change a sparkplug on our van without negating the policy, so that's when we realized well, they've lied to us," said Joslin.
Joslin believes what they really bought was "Nothing. We're giving them money for nothing".
Mitchell said customers called to cancel constantly.
"They are saying 'I cannot cancel this. Why are you taking my money? I told them I didn't want this,'" said Mitchell.
Mitchell believes "It's a scam, I think it's a fraud, I think that no one should waste their money."
CBS 5 Investigates wanted to talk to the man who several employees identified as being behind that telemarketing operation named Christian Westbrook.
He did not return calls or respond to a business card left at the office and a man who answered the door there said Westbrook wasn't there at the time we visited.
When CBS 5 found him sitting in his car in a nearby parking lot, he refused to talk and drove away.
Meanwhile, Mitchell has quit working at the office and said someone needs to take action.
"Something needs to be done, because I don't see any regard, any regard for the consumer here and I am concerned about that," she said.
The Texas Attorney General's office has now filed suit against Pacific Guard Warranty and two other California companies for making what it calls harassing calls to residents of Texas.
The Federal Trade Commission also filed lawsuits against two auto warranty telemarketers last week.
Make these peoples identities public! I imagine they did not like being on TV.
