I have been getting calls that immediately start with, "Thank you for choosing Marriot Hotels!" for a couple years now. The message goes on to say how I am getting this great offer because I am a valued customer. On a couple occasions, I stayed on the line to get a human, they ask yes/no questions (are you over 28? do you have a valid credit card?). I just replied with questions of my own, and they immediately hung up. I can continue to ignore the calls, but they are always from a random local number and I get nearly twice as many of these calls than I get legitimate calls.
I did a search and found this has been around for a while and Marriot is aware:
http://news.marriott.com/2015/05/marriott-international-responds-to-continued-phone-scam-updated-oct-20-2015/
I have deliberated about posting, but I don't see the FCC [US Federal Communications Commission] as being able to act unless I can provide them something more than the spoofed phone number. Providing the number(s) probably won't help as they are spoofing the caller ID. I know that this is a long shot, but is there anything anyone can suggest beyond creating a spreadsheet of phone numbers, dates, and times to log these calls? Would that even be useful?
It seems that something is fundamentally broken with the current phone system, if this spoofing is even possible. But that is a side topic here, the real question is, what can I do, if anything, to get the data the FCC would need to shut this down?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:59PM
It used to be quieter, there are some nifty penalties you can collect if you bother with small claims court - and debt collectors are required to post a bond to operate in most states - so your $500 per instance judgements can be collected from that, but there are probably much easier ways to make money. Once long ago I had a debt collector call on my cell phone (we had recently given up on landlines) - the minute I mentioned that they were calling on a cell line and I hadn't given them permission to do so, they went away and never came back (the disputed debt was 6 years and 10 months old at the time, so not too shocking that they finally gave up.)
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