i've had a weird afternoon on the phone.
my friend gave me a fifteen-year-old radio shack voice recorder kit, which i was figuring out how to build into a noisemaker for my hackerspace's TARDIS. the datasheet enclosed had some basic information, but it said that for a more detailed discussion of what to do with the part, you could call radio shack's faxback servicce at 1.800.323.6586.
i don't have a fax number, but i was curious about whether the faxback service was still running. that part was from what i could only imagine to be the latter days of faxback anyway; the datasheet is copyrighted 1995. i called the phone number from my cellphone, and got this weird message saying that if i pressed star, they would send me a text message with information about the phone number. curious, i hit star. sure enough, by the time i hung up the phone, there was a text message in my inbox. it said:
25434: reply Y now to find info on the # you are looking for. # Info Svc $9.99/month Msg&data rates may apply for 20 lookups/month. Support/Terms? www.numsvc.com
of course, my scam-alert was on high by now. clearly the number wasn't owned by radio shack anymore--they're kinda sketchy sometimes, but they've never stricken me as THIS sketchy. it was weird enough, the idea of the phone number's owner sending me a text message with the new information instead of just giving the new number to me over the phone. but, having to pay $9.99 a month to get this and nineteen other "lookups"? that seemed preposterous. i let the text message sit in my box, and commented to the other people sitting around the space at the weirdness that had just ensued.
one of the people there suggested i should try it from a land line. well, i don't have a land line, but thanks to my shiny android phone i can make outbound calls from google voice. so, i tried that. the system didn't pick up that it was from a cell phone, and didn't tell me the new information was available by text message. (silly them...google voice will happily route text messages...) instead, they told me that the number had changed for my calling area, to 1.800.712.6600.
(a 1-800 number changing from my calling area, to another 1.800 number? ohai, bullshit detector. not that it wasn't already blaring, but it still did nothing to quiet it...especially when i get the funny feeling that if i had paid for the service from my cell phone, it would have just routed me to that 1.800 number that calling from a land line would have given me for free. still, i am not stupid enough to pay $9.99 a month to some scammy "service" to verify this hunch.)
so, i called that new number from Google Voice, and it was most definitely not the new number for radio shack faxback. i was greeted by a familiar voice, telling me that if i am calling from a cell phone, i should press * because there was some new information about the number that they could send me over text message. (ah, there we go. even if you're not calling from a cell, you call the new number and they still try to sell you that sketchy lookup service, whatever it is.) then, some canned music started, and there was a voice telling me that if my cell phone ringtones were wiggity-wack, i could text some number and he would sell me new ones that weren't.
i somehow survived until the end of that message, and it took me to a menu dubbed "free 411". it offered business, goverment and residential listings, as well as entertainment, weather, and contest content. of course, before and after grabbing any of the content, it played ads, and you could "take advantage of this special offer" by pressing that pesky * key.
calling the second 1.800 number from my cell phone directly, without google voice, gave me the same content--unlike the first number, it didn't dump me directly into text message hell.
after calling around, i surfed to the website in the text message i had received. it was extra-skeetchy.
numsvc.com had very little content on it, and only described the "service" as:
The number information service provides information and verification on telephone numbers you are looking for and saves you money!
it doesn't say what kind of information or verification it provides, or why it would save me money. most of the info on the site is how to subscribe, or how to stop it (since i bet they have gotten a lot of complaints about that). it's probably a bad sign that the "support" page has exactly, to the letter, the same information as the "opt-out" page.
so, in short, i got no faxback fun, but found a phone scam that reminds me way too much of internet domain squatting.
one side note: the old faxback number i called showed up in my call log as 1.800.323.6586, but showed up on my phone screen while i was on the line as 1.312.725.2013. however, both times i called the number (from my cell or from google voice), a voice told me it was unable to complete my call. very strange...
