There's an idea for a dystopian comedy skit somewhere in this:
> Will’s so busy leaving messages all over town that he never answers the phone when you call him back...Sometimes calls were forwarded to a host of people who went by “Pat.” They said they worked for PATLive, an answering service firm that takes calls for businesses when they’re busy or closed. Pats were taking messages for “Steven’s Office” in Alexandria, Virginia.
> Asked why there were several Pats, a Pat said: “We’re all Pat.”
> “We all go by Pat to keep it easy,” said Pat. “But we do have some Pats in the office.”
I have some friends who answered calls for PATLive a few years ago. I got the impression they didn't spend a lot of effort on vetting clients and responded to abuse in a reactive, rather than proactive manner.
Phone operators follow relatively simple scripts for most clients, taking down information so someone else can call back, but occasionally perform more complex tasks like scheduling appointments. My impression is that most of the clients were small businesses at the time; a few were government agencies.
It's easy for a scammer or robocaller to pass as a legitimate business with a service like that: just don't include any red flags in the script.
I read their "how it works" and other pages, and the sales pitch isn't bad. They should be more selective about clients though. https://www.patlive.com
Am I the only one who thinks this is bullshit? How is PATLive not also complicit in the crimes they're looking for "Will" to prosecute in?
I get so tired of these B2B service providers who get caught up doing borderline illegal shit and then just shrug their shoulders and say "not our responsibility." Everybody has these clauses doing the ass covering so they can sell services to anyone who knocks and they're never held responsible because of some bullshit contract.
WHY is that allowed? You're doing business with an individual/organization that is breaking the law, and you know it, or you would know it if you cared to look. That's gotta be at least worth a charge of negligence?
I'm just saying the "Will"s of the modern era would have a much harder time if the call centers, teleco providers, internet hosters, etc. were held responsible when they were found to be operating in cahoots with a scammer and I don't understand why they aren't.
Vet your fucking clients. And if you don't wanna do that, then shut your doors.
I'm just puzzled about how law enforcment is apparently at a dead end. Why can't PATLive be subpoenaed to provide information about one of their clients who's breaking the law?
On a related note - I've had the opposite experience but it wasn't with telecom related services - it was cloud services. A friend of mine started a business that focuses on the highly anticipated luxury clothing and sneaker releases. He basically does a proxy business that routes traffic through his network so that people can use multiple IPs that aren't banned on those retailers websites so that they can purchase multiple units of these products which are usually restricted to one per customer.
We had a lot of trouble finding a reliable cloud services provider. Even though none of this is illegal at all, a bunch of them have clauses against it in the service agreement. So we avoided those. We figured the ones that didn't have it shouldn't have any problems because nothing was illegal and it's not like we are abusing the cloud services - we're talking about a significant amount of time with nothing on the network (that we pay them for) and then a short burst of traffic that is still low on bandwidth while all the clients are trying to hit the sites up at the same time. But one after another kept cancelling our accounts, citing a violation of the terms of service. We pressed a number of them for an explanation. Many just ignored us. A few outright lied and said they received complaints from ISPs about our IPs sending spam emails. I challenged them on that because nothing of what we did or any of our client did was sending emails. And we tightly controlled the network traffic, ports, etc. So it's simply not possible, they were lying to get rid of us because their terms didn't account for it. To this day, I still can't figure out why all these providers were so against what we were doing. Eventually my friend explained his use case to the CEO of one of the companies and they signed and agreement and were totally fine with everything so I'm really perplexed.
I applaud them. Reseller middlemen buying up the releases so they can profit are awful and inhibiting that activity is a greater good for society. In the ideal world sneakers could only be sold at retail, let the people who actually want to wear them buy them.
I hate your business helping middlemen scalpers. Middlemen scalpers are just barely different than phone scammers. It may not be technically illegal, but it's a detriment to society.
That's like a PO Box location being liable for someone's fraud, or even a software or hardware provider, like Microsoft or Dell, being liable for providing assistance in the crime.
It's an answering service for a phone line. Are they supposed to magically know that the people are calling from some robocall and not because it's a semi-large real estate office somewhere? Perhaps the best way to to let them know is to inform them. Then they have a choice to make, investigate whether the accusations are true and decide whether to continue providing service. At that point, they may actually be responsible for something.
> That's like a PO Box location being liable for someone's fraud,
Except if a PO Box was being used for fraud, the person using it would be prosecuted, or at the very least the Post Office would cease providing that service.
> or even a software or hardware provider, like Microsoft or Dell, being liable for providing assistance in the crime.
Entirely different, that's a misuse of provided products by the purchaser. If you buy gas and use it to commit arson, it's not BP's fault.
> Perhaps the best way to to let them know is to inform them.
I find it incredibly hard to believe that people aren't informing them, probably at high volumes (audio volumes and quantity volumes) that they don't wish to be called anymore. If I was getting called 3 times a day by some jackwagon wanting to buy my home, the number they'd be giving would definitely be aware of that situation.
And, even giving an incredible amount of credit that maybe they didn't know, they now definitely know. What's the over under on them still providing services to "Will"? I'm guessing it's pretty definite they are, because they have no reason to not as long as his checks clear. And that's my point.
> Except if a PO Box was being used for fraud, the person using it would be prosecuted, or at the very least the Post Office would cease providing that service.
When notified.
> Entirely different, that's a misuse of provided products by the purchaser. If you buy gas and use it to commit arson, it's not BP's fault.
And how is that different than misuse of a third party service?
> I find it incredibly hard to believe that people aren't informing them, probably at high volumes (audio volumes and quantity volumes) that they don't wish to be called anymore.
See my other comment to the other reply. Also, I get a lot of calls. After the first time, I generally just hang up after identifying it. I'm not even hearing the number after the first time. Sometimes I'm mad and might want to call in to complain, but I'm not always at leisure to do so.
> What's the over under on them still providing services to "Will"?
That's not how I interpreted the article. I interpreted it as they were the answering service for one of the target lines that the number forwarded to.
For example, scam line forwards to 4-10 real agents in on the scam, one of them has an answering service. Occasionally calls forwarded to that agent forward again to the PAT service. That's not necessarily the same as providing answering service for "Will" if that's the case, and may not be immediately obvious if mixed with some other types of calls.
That said, yes, I expect they would investigate and cut ties if notified. Why wouldn't they? You seem to assume they aim to provide this service on purpose for illegal activity. Phone answering services are extremely common. Have you ever called a small medical office during lunch, or after hours at any time? You get an answering service with emergency contact numbers for personnel, in case that's called for. Legitimate businesses do not want to open themselves up to the liability of being complicit in a crime. I'm not sure we've seen anything to indicate the answering service is not a legitimate business being taken advantage of.
> And how is that different than misuse of a third party service?
Because a purchase of, for example a server, is a one-time deal. The server is then in the hands of the scammer, and can be used for all kinds of ill intent and Dell for example has no way of knowing, and even if they knew, really don't have any recourse to address it.
A third party service, on the other hand, has an ongoing relationship with the scammer, assuredly having access to some form of payment details, some kind of ongoing communication in order to fulfill the service they're contracted to provide, and provide ongoing labor to that end which assists the scammer in, well, scamming.
> You seem to assume they aim to provide this service on purpose for illegal activity.
I'm saying they're not asking questions because the scammers checks are clearing, and I don't think that's right. That's what a lot of providers do, they provide the services, and even with ample evidence that everything isn't quite on the up and up, they just keep cashing the checks because why wouldn't they? I'm not even saying they're twirling their proverbial mustache here, I'm saying companies are inherently unethical, and only act ethically when mandated to. So let's mandate it.
> I'm saying they're not asking questions because the scammers checks are clearing, and I don't think that's right.
Where are you getting the information to assert that as fact? Or even as likely?
> I'm saying companies are inherently unethical, and only act ethically when mandated to. So let's mandate it.
If a company knows it's being used in a crime, then it's an accessory to the crime. We don't mandate ethics, we create laws. In this case, how is the law failing, beyond you asserting some situation is happening without providing any evidence?
Can you actually explain what we know to have been done wrong here, even ethically if not lawfully? All I've seen so far is a lot of accusations about what must be happening, when I see (and have provided) clear examples of how it might not be the case. Or should we just punish people and companies based on assumptions now?
So do legitimate services. That doesn't select for illegality, it select for how pissed people are. I bet a bank line gets a lot of irate people being called about their late mortgage payments too.
How many of the people that call in do you think calmly explain that this is a telemarkerer, and they are breaking the law, instead of being aggressive or saying "take me off your list" or "I'm on the do-not-call list" and then try to end the conversation? The assumption that both ends of the service are connected actually allows the criminal portion to continue operating for longer, as anger is likely directed at the wrong party, and possibly in an non-constructive manner.
And this all assumes people actually take time out to call the number back. How often do you go out of your way to interact with a telemarketer that doesn't have an actual person on the line for the call? My bet is the vast majority of calls are either interested parties or so enraged that understanding what they are actually upset about (and getting them to calm down enough to explain it) is actually rather rare.
Inbound call centers breathe detailed call flow scripts, metadata, abandon rates, recordings, statistics, etc. I'm quite sure they know which of their clients are legit or not.
That depends on the type of call center. I imagine an answering service for a business (which is what we're told this is) will likely be a much less defined. For a medical or legal office (which is a common use case, I imagine), the "script" will be to try to suss out if the call is actually an emergency based on client criteria (if the caller presents it as such), and either take a message or use the emergency contact info on the account and relay the info to the client. At least, that's what it's been when I've encountered them.
With more free form types of calls, identifying problem accounts might take a little longer. That said, even if it lasts a week or two before a problem account is identified and removed, who is to say that's not plenty of time for the scammers? It's not like there's only a few call answering services around. Just cycle to a new one every week or so.
Do I think services exist that cater to illegal and semi-legal activity and try to skirt the line? Yes. I just don't think we should assume that's the case here without evidence, given how trivial it would be to do this with perfectly legitimate services.
> Will’s so busy leaving messages all over town that he never answers the phone when you call him back...Sometimes calls were forwarded to a host of people who went by “Pat.” They said they worked for PATLive, an answering service firm that takes calls for businesses when they’re busy or closed. Pats were taking messages for “Steven’s Office” in Alexandria, Virginia.
> Asked why there were several Pats, a Pat said: “We’re all Pat.”
> “We all go by Pat to keep it easy,” said Pat. “But we do have some Pats in the office.”