scam alert on mobiles

[Andrew]

We could call it email, and Tim Berners-Lee decided not to make a fortune out of it :-).

Alternatively, employ a full time PA or secretary.

[Johnny B Good]

+1

Also for those who simply can't resist the urge to know who these mystery callers are, the best way to satisfy curiosity is simply to do an internet search. It's extremely rare to find yourself qualifying as "Victim Zero" in these scams so you'll likely find a lot of hits which describe the nature of these callers or perhaps even identify the legitimate organisations to which these pertain.

[Paulk]

Doesn?t work with the scammers that use fake caller IDs that are designed to look like a local call, deliberately.

It's extremely rare to find yourself qualifying as

[Johnny B Good]

For those scamming schemes described by the OP, they won't be using a faked CLID. In the case of calls using faked CLIDs, you can expect to see various reports listed in the "Who Called Me?" forums and such like (it's been a while since I last bothered to satisfy curiosity - life's too short to waste on an activity that no longer has novelty value).

[Roger Hayter]

We are violently agreeing. A lot of people, especially in business, don't use email properly and underestimate its value. It is precisely as a non=-real time system that it is valuable.

[Chris J Dixon]

One of the advantages of email is that it can retain an audit trail of the conversation, which should help if new respondents get involved.

What really annoys me is those companies that include no quoted material at all, so I sometimes have to reconstruct what was previously said to demonstrate their lack of understanding or failure to address the original question.

Even worse are those who don't offer an email address, but insist on an online form.

Chris

[Brian Reay]

Until the phone companies are forced to pick up the bill for these calls, nothing will be done. It can?t be beyond their systems to stop this nonsense and trace the culprits.

[Tim+]

I sometimes suspect that?s deliberate so that you don?t have a copy of your message.

Increasingly often in my experience companies (and councils) completely ignore emails. It would seem that if you only try to contact them via email ?you?re not trying hard enough? and are considered ignorable.

Tim

[Jethro_uk]

That would make sense if ...

only if you have a shit website, build by idiots. Email obfuscation is at least 15 years old ...

*If* emails sent by webform generated an acknowledgement, I'd be less sceptical.

Nowadays it's more efficient to use Twitter. They really don't like negative tweets.

[Rob Morley]

And that's another ---===<<<whoosh>>>===--- :-)