Dialing Free Phone Numbers

Careful Dialing Free Phone Numbers. There's a Whole Con Industry that Hopes you One Number Wrong

Everyone does it from time to time; cell phone keypads are so small and close set (not to mention, smart phones sometimes are all screen with no physical buttons) that sometimes you happen to dial the wrong number. When that happens, either you realize your mistake when the wrong person picks the phone up on the other end or a message tells you that the number you dialed does not exist. You just forget it and dial again, right? Not if you make your mistake trying to dial free phone numbers. When you make a mistake with a toll-free number, you could unwittingly be playing into the hands of a con artist who wants to make a bit of money ($5 usually) off you. It's quite a common kind of scam that con artists use to take advantage of our phone systems.

So how do they make money when you dial the wrong free phone numbers? Anyone can go to the telephone company and buy a toll-free number. Con artists try to buy numbers that are pretty close to some popular number - like the one for an airline or a popular car rental agency. When someone mistakenly dials a number and reaches them, they hear a message that says that they need to press some key on their keypads to receive information on a service they need to buy. If you make the mistake of pressing that key, you get a message that tries to sell you some kind of service. Thousands of people across the country who don't stay alert to the way a call they make doesn't seem to go like it is supposed to, end up actually doing whatever the voice on the other end says. Because they don't really think about what calls to free phone numbers like that are usually supposed to be like.

Actually, there are businesses out there that make a pretty good living with free phone numbers like this. Often, these are con businesses and not just individual con artists. They buy thousands of numbers up that resemble other popular free phone numbers and then wait for people to make one mistake and call them instead. And then they hope that they will pay up when they ask them. So what do you about this? The first thing to do is to be careful to dial the correct number any time you need to dial toll-free. If something doesn't seem like what you would expect from the number you are dialing, all you need to do is to hang up and try again. You can always check the number out in any free phone directory service. If you feel that you have already been had, you only need to do check your phone bill for some kind of questionable charge, and then file a complaint with the Public Utilities Commission or the Consumer Protection Office.