The worst phone spam ever- Law enforcement charities

So, I feel that our first responders, especially the Police, have been getting an unreasonably hard time over the last few years in public opinion, with the actions of a very very small minority being portrayed as the norm.  Back in early December, I got a call from such and such police charity asking for a donation.  I've never given to any Police charity in the past, but said yes I'd be happy to donate a certain amount, but I was hesitant to do so over the phone as there is no way for me to know you are a real charity.  I asked to be sent a letter, to which I would return a check.  Biggest freaking mistake ever.  First, I've never received the request or anything through the mail.  Instead ever since then, I've been getting an average of a call per day from every police, fire, and other first responder organization out there.  It's like the message went out 'we've got a live one here boys!'.  No amount of 'take me off your call list', 'put me on your do not call list', 'I'll report you' threats make a difference, they just keep coming.  Now, I'd love to just stop picking up the phone, but I'm out of work looking for a job, so don't want to risk missing a potential call.  I'm sick of it.  Mainly here to rant, but has anyone got any suggestions? 

P.S. I block each number, but as they seem to use people to call for them, everyone has a different phone number.

Only suggestion is some sort of phone screener. I've started using one and am pleasantly surprised that no one at all has taken offense when screened, including existing and potential customers.

Not likely to change until phone carriers get fined $1 per spam call.

I feel your pain.

We have one guy who must call all of KY for some Police benevolence charity. Great speaking voice...you can imagine him as a police captain or something.

But yea, those are all scams/close enough to scams I'm going to call them scams.

Some people I know got in a better position in life and gave some $$$ to a charity that meant something to them (the cause, not necessarily the charity)

Shortly thereafter they were on every charity mailing list known to man.

Icky stuff.

Second worst offender.  I get probably 2-3 calls a week from police or fire charities.  I get 2-3 a day trying to buy my house.

Once I asked my fireman buddy about this - got an earful......

jamscal said:

I feel your pain.

We have one guy who must call all of KY for some Police benevolence charity. Great speaking voice...you can imagine him as a police captain or something.

Same thing in Minnesota, the same guy always calls and I think he's a professional voice actor.

This is why I don't give out my cell number to most people. I have an office phone that I pay someone to answer. My admin does a good job of handling most calls and heading off the spam so I only have to deal with the important stuff. 

I have had some success with telling donation seekers that my charitable donations are set up at the beginning of the year and the budget for the current year is already spent. 

In reply to stuart in mn :

They're just recordings/ai at this point.    So I say ransom E36 M3 to them to see if they can cope.  
 

phone voice: "Being a police officer is hard and we at the benevolent society...."

Me " I wonder what pants made of pickles will feel like"

phone voice " so you would know how hard being a police officer is....."

Where i am, in Canada, the fire department doesn't cold call.

It's a scam, every time.

That's why there's the boot drive. Out there, actually talking to people.

Sorry, I don't have any suggestions.  I did talk to some of these people a while back, and they did just call bomb for a while.  EVENTUALLY, it dropped off, and have not heard from any of them.  It took a while though....

If you can you need to see the documentary: Telemarketers.   I covers this exact situation (police charities telemarketers).

The basic highlights are that the pass through to the actual charities is VERY low, as in like 10% (don't remember exact %).  They used to have to actually tell you what it was, now they just lie.  It's essentially a scam, almost complete BS.

The other sad reality (at least where this one was done and in regard to police) is that the police unions (at least the ones shown in this series) have zero interest in stopping it.  Why?  Because, for zero effort on their part, they get money rolling in, that they can use for whatever they want.  Spoiler, it seems like pretty much none of it goes dead patrolman's family, or whatever they are selling.

Here is a small summary of it (there might be a better one out there):

HBO’s ‘Telemarketers’ Exposes a Billion-Dollar Scam the Cops Are in On

Docuseries from Adam Bhala Lough and Sam Lipman-Stern, along with the Safdies, shines a light on the huge grift that is the telemarketing industry

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/telemarketers-hbo-docuseries-scam-police-safdies-1234797078/

Back in "the day" (mid-90s), I was building out a call center in Huntington, WV and a floor or two above ours was a huge operation that did these kinds of calls.  Very nice offices, very well-dressed folks, driving nicer cars, and we had a tough time competing with them for labor for our market research operation.  After seeing that operation it was pretty obvious that most of the money they "raised" went to the "profit" line item and very little went to the people for whom they were purporting to raise money.  I never give them a single dime and never will. 

Another plug for the HBO show. Very entertaining and educational. What a bunch of absolute degenerates.

A very long time ago, I had two different fire charities tell me they were the "real" one.  So I stopped them all.

I don't want to be political, but I find it really hard to accept that our first responders and our veterans need any charity help at all.  We should be taking care of them, *completely*, as a country.  They are all government employees, and they all help all of us.  They should not need any charities to take care of them.

(and maybe they do, already, and that also points out that they are all scams)

I get these all the time , 

also " licensed contractors" "licensed painters" "licensed roofers" etc who all sound like they are working out of a boiler room , 

throw in the medicare , solar , realtors ,  etc and my phone gets 5-10 of these a day , 

But I have had this phone for 25 years  so need to answer it , 

And of course if you try and call them back , the numbers are out of service ! 

And lets not start with the Cars for Kids scam ......

In reply to alfadriver :

That is one of my questions also.  Don't police and firefighters have some sort of insurance for that sort of thing? That is kind of the point of insurance.  I can see how they might be more expensive to insure because of risk, but that is why they need it, and that is how insurance works.

Also of note, for things like this, this site can give you some useful info if you do want to donate.  Generally always WAY better to somehow go direct to who you are trying to help of course.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/

Years ago when I was job hunting I got a google voice number. That is the number on my resume. That number is in my contacts as Google Voice. 
if that number of calling me it shows a Google voice and I know it's about a job. 

Professional fundraisers.  The police may get 2o%. If they are lucky.

But they won't put an end to it because it's still free money. 
 

Give directly to your local responders. 

Couple tricks I use- 

I don't have a house phone. This obviously isn't a solution for everyone, but it works for me. Haven't had one in like 20 years. 

My area code is nowhere NEAR where I actually live, by about 1600 miles. One of the most common tactics is for callers and number spoofers alike to use local sounding numbers so you answer them. ACTUAL local to me is usually 321 or 407. My phone number suggest 952/612 etc. So, if I see one of those area codes pop and I don't have you programmed in- or you don't have a valid callerid signal for me, you get the no paw. If you actually want to talk to me, you'll leave a voice mail. 

Text spam like we've had a berkeleyton of lately due to a certain event that's due to happen around the first part of November automatically gets blocked. Don't care who it's for or who it's from. 

There was a period where I was a member of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). I had a customer who offered to sponsor me for membership as thanks for how I helped him. And I ain't gonna lie; I'm pretty sure that badge on the back of my car got me out of at least one ticket. But anyway...

Membership resulted in getting those calls. After about five years I dropped the membership. I already had the car badge anyway. The calls stopped. 

ddavidv said:

And I ain't gonna lie; I'm pretty sure that badge on the back of my car got me out of at least one ticket. But anyway...

aircooled said:

The other sad reality (at least where this one was done and in regard to police) is that the police unions (at least the ones shown in this series) have zero interest in stopping it.  Why?  Because, for zero effort on their part, they get money rolling in, that they can use for whatever they want.  Spoiler, it seems like pretty much none of it goes dead patrolman's family, or whatever they are selling.

Stuff like this is why people don't trust cops. And yeah, it's systemic.

I have someone offering some economic relief or something like that and is driving me insane. They call multiple times a day, non-stop. 

I am about to throw my phone away. 

Yep, the biggest problem with giving to charities is that every one you donate a few bucks to suddenly decides that you're the next John D. Rockefeller who could set them up for the next century if they just harass you with enough calls and emails to donate more and more...

If no amount of asking them to stop helps, the last line of defense is the same one that works with phone scammers - waste their time. Pretend you're taking forever to find your credit card, give them fake credit card numbers, stall with ridiculous stories. Then make sure they know that you wasted their time before you hang up, because they wouldn't stop calling. This should get them to blacklist your number and ideally share that blacklist with their friends.

I hang up on cold sales calls. All of them. It's easy. 

In reply to OHSCrifle :

This, my wife is far too polite. She listened to a salesperson talk at her for ten minutes because she didn't want to interrupt. 

When we still had a regular landline we'd get those calls constantly. I switched to a voip phone I haven't had a single one in about 8 years. I rarely get one on my Cel phone