A Guide To Stopping Unwanted Senior Benefits Calls

Nothing is more annoying than hearing your cell phone ring and realizing it’s an unwanted spam call. In addition to taking up valuable time from your day, spam, robocalls, and the individuals who perpetrate them are persistent. 

People often try to get hold of the requested information through calls. With a small mistake, your private information can reach the wrong hands and lead to potential fraud.

The non-stop calls from the insurance company by the health insurance provider are more annoying. We keep on disconnecting such calls. Aren’t we? Have you ever thought these calls can push you towards potential fraud?

These annoying telemarketing calls, which range from automated ads concerning political candidates to con artists posing as bank representatives, are now all too common. 

According to the FBI, fraud costs seniors more than $3 billion annually. By teaching your elderly loved ones about scams through these telemarketing calls, making sure they have access to caller ID, and teaching them how to decline unsolicited senior calls politely, you can stop scammers from taking advantage of them.

Understanding Senior Benefit Calls

Many people have been getting robocalls from a scam organization called “Medicare Rewards” in recent years.

Medicare Scams

If you check properly, you will find almost none of the calls meet medicare eligibility. Most of these phone calls are a part of medicare scams. Often these phone calls talk about senior benefits and hence fall into an easy trap.

We always say, don’t wait. Block unwanted calls!

Typically, an artificial voice that sounds like a human person answers the Medicare Rewards calls or should we say medicare scam calls.

A clear suggestion to everyone is to avoid medicare scam calls.

Many individuals might stay on the line until someone really answers, or they might not realize immediately that the voice is not real Often, the callers start by talking about health insurance plans in their favor.

These telemarketing calls can suggest that you qualify for a refund or that you are the one to receive free medical supplies.

This is untrue, and regrettably, if you hang up without answering, the con artists may continue calling you when they determine that your number is “good.”  The question might arise what to do with fraudulent calls?

Scams over the cell phone through telemarketing calls are not new.

Callers have been posing as representatives of the IRS, charities, cable companies, and other organizations for years.

Usually, they want to take money from you or obtain your personal information.

For instance, the IRS frequently alerts customers that they will never call you first. Almost invariably, it is via mail.

The telemarketing calls you are receiving claiming to be from “Senior Benefits” are telemarketing scams, which exploit wordplay to trick prospective clients.

Using different sales call strategies, they could ask you to place orders or participate in other schemes.

These telemarketing calls are being placed on you to sell you something.

It can be simple to spot scam calls by monitoring the services they provide and the offered plan versions.

Steps to Reduce Unwanted Scam Medicare Calls

To stop Senior Benefits Calls, you can follow any method mentioned below:

Register on the National Do Not Call Registry

Telemarketers should comply with the National Do Not Call Registry, which the FTC manages. Your number will be taken off to the telemarketers’ lists in 31 days if you add yourself to this list.

Every 31 days, telemarketers must cross-reference their call lists with the registry and remove any numbers from their lists that they discover there. 

To include your number in this list, contact 1-888-382-1222 or sign up at www.donotcall.gov for free home registration and mobile phone numbers. 

You should note that adding your phone numbers to this registry merely instructs telemarketers which numbers not to contact; it does not affect blocking calls. They might decide to work around the registry or opt to ignore it.

Additionally, only sales calls from reputable registered businesses are allowed to be blocked by the registry, so while it won’t halt all unsolicited scam calls, it can greatly reduce their quantity.

The Do Not Call Registry will fine the scammers up to $50,000 if they do not remove your phone number after 31 days of you registering it with the registry. 

Using Caller-ID and Blocking Features on Phones

Android Phones

Nowadays, a lot of Android phones have scam-prevention software preinstalled.

It directly means we can bid farewell to scam calls, wow! Caller ID & Spam Protection is a feature offered by Google that will provide you caller ID information if someone phones you that is not in your contacts. 

iPhones

Apple offers a tool called Silence Unknown Callers that is usable to eliminate spam.

Any scam calls or unwanted calls from numbers not in your contacts or that you have never received phone calls or text messages will be routed to voicemail.  

Dealing with Persistent Callers

You can take several precautions to shield your loved ones and yourself against medicare phone scams.

• Make a plan for communications. By this, we mean creating and communicating rules regarding what details you should disclose over the phone calls and what you shouldn’t. These steps should explicitly advise seniors to share their information exclusively with family members and reliable carers.
• Make use of call filtering and blocking tools. Installing call-blocking applications to prevent unwanted calls from unknown or dubious phone numbers may be one way to do this. Setting up “do not disturb” phone notifications is another example.
• Verifying callers and organizations. When you answer a call, and the person claims to be from a particular medicare business or organization, hang up and find out whether this is true. You will be highly surprised if we tell you it is generally nothing but a medicare scam. To find out if the caller or the cause for the call is genuine, you can examine the organization’s website or contact them.
• Report suspicious medicare scam calls. Local law enforcement, the attorney general of your state, and several consumer protection organizations can all help with this. Online reporting is available to the majority of the organizations.

Keeping the older people in your life safe from these kinds of medicare scam frauds is crucial. In certain situations, they might have cognitive impairment; at the very least, they might not know the different types of phone scammers.

Conclusion

Elderly Americans find it difficult to maintain complete control over their own plan selection and enrollment process due to the complexity of the Medicare enrollment procedure. 

We should explain robocalls and their potential risks to seniors.It is essential to advise them not to divulge personal information over the phone calls and to end the contact immediately if they don’t recognize the number. Along with not clicking on links or downloading attachments from unidentified sources, they should also be cautious of unsolicited messages.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that elderly individuals should never get comfortable or answer calls from unknown numbers. They should hang up the phone immediately and not push any buttons if they answer a robocall.

Older adults can consider using call-blocking software to safeguard themselves against unsolicited robocalls and scam calls.

Frequently Asked Questions