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I've been encountering this one from time to time, over the past several months.

You call a legitimate, toll free number to contact a business or a government agency and somehow the call gets redirected to some guy wanting to sell you a free Caribbean cruise.

It happened again today. I was calling for customer support for a product I was assembling here at home. Three times my call was redirected to the phony number. On the fourth try, I got through to the right number.

I was calling on a cordless phone and when I pressed TALK, I could here the tones calling the right number. But after the tenth tone, it paused briefly, then carried on with several more tones.

It's always the same.

"Thank you for calling. Please take some time and complete a brief survey. If you wist to take the survey please press one"

It doesn't offer an alternate button to press if you don't wish to do the survey. If you press nothing at all, the call hangs up.

So I tried again. This time, when It asked me to press one for the survey, I pressed the one.

"Thank you for agreeing to complete our survey. This is a one question survey. Are you over 55? If you are over 55 press one."

Once again there was no optional button to push for anyone under 55. I didn't press a button and the call hung up.

Third time I pressed one to take the survey and one for over 55.

"Congratulations. You've answered the question correctly. You are now the winner of a free Caribbean cruise. All you have to pay are your port fees, your brokerage fees, your ---" I hung up.

My next attempt, the call went through properly. I told the lady on the other end that someone has hacked their phone number and is running a scam. After my call was finished and she had answered my questions she put me through to her manager so I could tell him about the scam.

I've been running into this for a few months now. The first time it happened I was in Florida and calling the State Capital in Tallahassee. When the telephone was answered in that weird way, I thought that was just some gimmick the Florida State government was using.

Turkeytop wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 13, 2019 9:10 pm

I was calling on a cordless phone and when I pressed TALK, I could here the tones calling the right number. But after the tenth tone, it paused briefly, then carried on with several more tones.

Were you using a re-dial function or punching the digits in manually?

Calvert DeForest wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 14, 2019 7:58 am

Turkeytop wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 13, 2019 9:10 pm

I was calling on a cordless phone and when I pressed TALK, I could here the tones calling the right number. But after the tenth tone, it paused briefly, then carried on with several more tones.

Were you using a re-dial function or punching the digits in manually?

Manually each time.

Calvert DeForest wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 14, 2019 7:58 am

Turkeytop wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 13, 2019 9:10 pm

I was calling on a cordless phone and when I pressed TALK, I could here the tones calling the right number. But after the tenth tone, it paused briefly, then carried on with several more tones.

Were you using a re-dial function or punching the digits in manually?

Rotary phone.

audiophile wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 14, 2019 5:19 pm

Rotary phone.

Touch tone.

It's odd that the phone seems to generate additional tones after you manually punch in the number. Sounds like your carrier may have been hacked and calls going through their system are being re-directed somehow. I would call the phone company and report it, as they may have malware on their servers that they're unaware of.

Going straight to Revenue Canada!

Calvert DeForest wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 18, 2019 9:44 am

It's odd that the phone seems to generate additional tones after you manually punch in the number. Sounds like your carrier may have been hacked and calls going through their system are being re-directed somehow. I would call the phone company and report it, as they may have malware on their servers that they're unaware of.

I don't think it's my carrier, because it also happened in Florida with a different carrier. It seems more likely that someone has hacked into their answering systems to cause them to redirect incoming calls.

If you have a habit holding the button too long it might accepting it as two of same digit over a wireless phone. If you 100% sure you dialed correctly, then use redial the next time and look at number on display. My guess the redial will work perfectly.

audiophile wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 18, 2019 4:56 pm

If you have a habit holding the button too long it might accepting it as two of same digit over a wireless phone. If you 100% sure you dialed correctly, then use redial the next time and look at number on display. My guess the redial will work perfectly.

So, there's a number people can call whenever they want to take a quiz to win a free cruise. And every few weeks, I mistakenly dial that number when attempting to call a completely different number.

The phone is the only thing in common besides your fingers. Try a different phone or try redial. In fact, hang up immediately then use redial.

It has happened with my phone here in the house and it happened on my office phone in Florida. In the Florida call I was trying to call the Florida State Capital. The most recent time here, the one that prompted this thread, I was calling Kohler Industries.

But it has happened with other calls too, always when calling a toll free number. My hands aren't so old and shaky that I press twenty buttons instead of ten.

I know quite a bit about touch-tone decoders and electronics and I wouldn't pull your leg. It has do with duration and level.

So, assuming it's human error on my part. What kind of coincidence would it take for me to mistakenly call that very same number every time I make a mistake? Even though the number I was calling when I made the mistake this time is a different number than the one I was calling the last time I made the mistake? And both times I ended up mis-dialing to the same number.

I would further have to accept that the number I'm ending up at, exists for some legitimate purpose.

The fact that you hear extra tones after you dial the initial number on multiple phones in multiple locations with multiple carriers definitely suggests that the hack lies in the phone system of the agency or business you're calling. It would also mean you're not the not the only person experiencing this problem. Might be worth a Google search to see if anyone else has reported issues with these numbers.

A great resource I use is 800notes.com. You can report suspicious numbers and also query numbers you've called or answered to see if they've been reported by other posters. Now that more people have become aware of phone scams and either blocked or refused to answer calls from unknown numbers, it's likely that the scammers are finding new ways to reach their marks. I wouldn't put it past them to hack into the phone systems of legitimate companies/organizations and program those systems to "reroute" random incoming calls. Industrious little shits they are!