A large majority of the phone spam I get is about automotive extended warranties. Shouldn't we be holding that industry responsible for this? Would a campaign of "would you trust someone who spams you for insurance?", and letting the insurers compete on claims that "we'll never try to sell to you over the phone", help?
I don't think that the insurers for those extended warranties are the same as the legitimate ones that a consumer would normally go to for insurance. That's assuming there's even a product that's being sold, and not someone just calling people, pocketing the money, and running away with it.
> I don't think that the insurers for those extended warranties are the same as the legitimate ones that a consumer would normally go to for insurance.
Sure they are. It's just that the phone scammers are living off of affiliate and referral fees.
>Do any of them actually sell extended warranties? I assumed they were scammers.
Those are not mutually exclusive. From what I've heard[1], the "extended warranties" are grey market car maintenance insurance that basically exclude everything you might expect from coverage, and anything that might be covered, it's reimbursement only, they don't pay up front. The only thing it is good for is liberating people of their money.
If we're guessing that this is all fraud anyway, why would we think that a law against phone spam would be where the spammers draw the line, the crime they're not willing to commit? Won't they keep spamming, just like they're already defrauding?
Because of the amount of plausible deniability it gives to their service providers: "We didn't think it was a /scam/ just a legit telemarketing operation."
