Irritating Telemarketing Phone Calls from Bank of China

For the past one month, I have been receiving telemarketing phone calls from telemarketer representing Bank of China.

The first time when I answer the call on 27 November this year, the other party did not greet me by my name and therefore I knew it some kind of random cold-call from these low-life telemarketing firms. I told the other party that I’m not interested in the credit card and loan facilities that she is promoting for Bank of China, but she keep on pitching her sales pitch like a parrot despite me shouting into my phone that I’m not interested. Finally I ended the call by hanging. In fact after this episode, almost every interval of 3 to 4 days I will receive the same irritating phone call at around lunch time from the same phone number. What I did was to answer the phone by hanging it up after one second. This happened today after my lunch too.

After coming to office from lunch, I decided to Google the phone number that was displayed by my phone caller ID. To my surprise, I’m not the only one who receive the telemarketing call from this telemarketing firm out to irritate the hell out load of people!!!

While viewing my call logs, I noticed that I have answer some phone calls from strange numbers. And I remember when I answered these calls, there was a silence before a computer generated “Goodbye” was heard the call dropped.

Screenshots of strange phone numbers

Few days later, I received the first call from that low-life telemarketing firm.

Screenshot of first call from the telemarketing firm

So what have these strange numbers that I answered got to do with the telemarketing firm’s cold-call? Here’s my analysis.

These calls are made randomly to phone numbers in their database to determine if the phone number is “live”. If the number status is “live”, it will be assigned to the telemarketing firm’s call agents to perform a cold-call to push for sales.

After further digging in Google, I found out the firm that is responsible for these cold-calls. The low-life telemarketing firm is Capital Hub & Enterprise Pte Ltd.

Apparently, this low-life telemarketing firm have been irritating people’s life since 2011.

The number so far used by that this low-life telemarketing firm are:

1) +65-62551674

2) +65-62599613

3) +65-65840034

If you are using a smartphone, you can download various call blocker application and add the listed phone numbers in the blacklist to prevent these numbers from reaching you.

On a last note, Google was pretty amazing, with my search for Bank of China Capital Hub keyword. Guess what I found? I found this bitch who is working in Bank of China (Capital Hub). If you are a victim from these irritating calls from Bank of China (Capital Hub) add this bitch as your Facebook and spam her! 🙂

Pyramid Scheme Scam from the Philippine?

Was smoking at below my office block a moment ago and this Filipino guy walk up and starts to chat with me. It’s started with how’s my day at work, he seems friendly. Then he asked me if I want to quit my job or have an extra income by joining a new startup which can guarantee me up to SGD$10k income per month.

He then proceed on to tell me what the startup company is dealing and their operandi modu, basically I have to sign up as a team member of the new startup which is based in Philippine. And in order to become a team member of this new startup, I have to pay SGD$450.

To earn the promised SGD$10k per month, I will have to introduce friends, relatives and strangers to sign up with the startup company in order to earn the SDG$10k. When I ask him if there’s any selling of products involved? His reply was no, just get people to join the program and each person who join I will get some kind of introduction commission.

Immediately I stub out my cigarette and went back to my office. This Pinoy is definitely a scammer looking for people to join some kind of pyramid scam based in the Philippine.

With the current bad state of econoony out there, there’s bound to be more of these scammers and confidence tricksters out on the street hunting for prey. So just be aware of any offer that is too good to be true.

Beware of Credit Card/Insurance Roadshows

This blog post is related to my previous blog post titled, Irresponsible Credit Card Marketeer, and my friend’s Boon blog post titled, Telemarketeer from ef****n sucks.

Those who are reading this blog post, how many times have you encountered phone calls from credit card or insurance companies after signing up for a credit card during a roadshows? If you do, the reason is because after you have sign up for the credit card, your personal data in your credit card application form, your IC and your payslip/IR8A form details will be harvested by these telemarketing companies either to be reuse internally for another of their sales team or to be resell to 3rd party (e.g. credit card firm, finance companies, insurance companies and what-not).

Boon’s wife have an unfortunate encounter with a telemarketer from eFusion after she applied for a SCB credit card during a roadshow. You can read more about it here.

And according to my friend Desmond, who is working in Citibank. The issuing bank is binded by a privacy and confidentiality clause in the application form. So they cannot resell or release your personal data/particulars on the credit card application and related documents you submitted for the credit card application to another 3rd party without notifying you.

Let me post my replies with regards to these roadshows on Boon’s blog,

“Hi Boon,

Got to say this, NEVER apply for a credit card from a marketing or tele-marketing company, no matter what kind of attractive freebies, annual fee wavier or vouchers during any these scumbag roadshows or cold calls. You will get the same benefits when you apply directly from banks.

The reason why I advice my family members, relatives and friends to refrain from getting a credit card from these scumbag telemarketer is because once they received your application form and confirmed your identities when you submit your ID and payslip or IRA8A. They will sell these data to 3rd party.

Even though there’s a confidentiality and privacy clause in the application form, it’s only cover the issuing bank and not the marketing or telemarketing company. So there’s a high possibility that they want to sell your wife’s info on the form to a 3rd party.

Isn’t strange that they asked for your wife’s qualification? Which credit card company will be interested to find out the qualification of a credit card applicant? More over in most credit card application form qualification field are omitted.

And to Anonymous, a big fuck you! to you. I bet you are from one of those scumbag telemarketing firm.

Everyone who read my reply, spread the word around. Your privacy is not protected with these telemarketing companies.”

“Let me ask you this, what is so decent for a rubbish telemarketing like eFusion to mine the personal data of an innocent credit card applicants personal data and resell it to a 3rd party?

Does the innocent applicant knows that his or her personal particular will be sold to a 3rd party?

Does the innocent credit card applicant know that the roadshow are organised by a telemarketing firm instead of from the issuing bank?

Does eFusion and other similar telemarketing firm know the meaning of this word “PRIVACY”?

Those who are reading this reply and against your personal particular data being mined for marketing purpose. Is your data worth the less than $50 of freebies? Is your privacy of importance to you? If yes, shouldn’t we stand up against such unscrupulous practice?”

If you are really in a desperate need for a credit card or insurance, please do not sign up for one during a roadshows no matter how attractive the freebies or offer are unless you want to be harassed with phone calls from these unscrupulous telemarketing/credit card/insurance companies.

If you really need to, you can either take the application form and fill up the details yourself, attach your IC, payslip or IR8A form, seal it and then mail it out to the issuing bank or go to the issuing bank website to apply online.