People are sharing the hilarious ways they wind up scammers – 23 favourites

There are two ways you can deal with scammers who bother you on the phone – you can immediately hang up (our method of choice) or you can spend a little bit of time giving them a taste of their own medicine.

And it turns out there are some supremely inventive – and very funny – ways you can wind up scammers after Redditor ChipForClicks asked this.

“What is something you say to scammers instead of hanging up?”

And here are our 23 favourite responses.

1.

‘I once repeated “uh huh, go on..” over and over until they got really irritated and then just hung up on me.’
orange_cuse

2.

“Just to let you know, by law I’m required to inform you that this is a premium phone line that will be billed directly to your provider. By calling here you agree to accept all charges.”

‘Something like that not only gets them to hang up, but they tend to stop calling me after that.’
Nethervex

3.

“Mr.Smashing Stuff, I’m calling about an accident you were involved in that wasn’t your fault.”

“Oh it wasn’t an accident, I meant to hurt those people.” The pause you get before being immediately escalated to a ‘manager’ is like crack to me.’
Smashing_stuff

4.

‘I give them a phone number one digit at a time and ask them to repeat it as a whole after each one. Then tell them they got it wrong when I’m done and start over.’
Lakanooky

5.

‘Heavily flirt.’
ismekatie

6.

“Oh hang on, let me get the <wife/husband/parent/appropriate decision-making figure>, they’ll be able to help you!” Then just turn the microphone off and go about my day.’
alexandicity

7.

‘We have a Rick Roll extension. We forward them to it after telling them about the brief hold and then check the recording length the next day to see if they’ve beaten the record.

‘Edit: It’s 1.5 plays ~ about 5 minutes. Every time they sit through the beginning of the song the second time we all begin to pray to the internet gods that they will make it all the way through to the elusive 3rd loop.’
imSkippinIt

8.

‘I once saw caller ID (land line days) with a number that I figured was a telemarketer. In a “tough” voice, without saying hello I asked, “Is he dead?” And about a beat and a half later I said, “Because if he ain’t dead, don’t you even think about coming back here.”

‘Then what sounded like a young woman on the other end said, “Um, uh, uh Bye!” Hope she had as much fun telling her friends as I had telling mine.’
About_Yeah_High

9.

‘I’ve put them on hold before. As if I’m working in a call centre. Had a guy on hold for 5 or so minutes it was quite ridiculous that he stayed on the line.’
blaedmon

10.

“So, what is your password?” “Kyarewthu. Big K, small cyrylic Ya, Polish ew, Icelandic eth, Turkish dotless i. No bot will ever brute force this.”
Odin_Allfathir

11.

‘(speaking as slow as possible) Yes, my social security number is. .. 1 … 2 … um … 3 … 4 … erm 5 … 6 … 7 …um … 8 … what’s that now? Oh, 9. It’s a 9. And the letters at the end are……….F and U.’
LucyVialli

12.

‘I ask them to confirm my information for security purposes. Breaks their script and they don’t know what to say!’
hitforhelp