Medicare open enrollment runs from October 15 to December 7, and that is the stretch when you should expect more calls about plans, benefits and cards. The pitch borrows whatever is already on your mind: taxes in February, your health plan in October, the ballot in the weeks before an election. A script that mentions the right thing at the right time sounds relevant, and relevance is what keeps people on the line. I keep a notebook, so I can say this from my own calls, though not as a statistic: the same opening pause and the same cheerful voice show up again with a new subject. The mistakes below come from that pattern. Each has a fix, and the fix is usually smaller than the mistake.
Nine mistakes the calendar sets up
Believing the IRS is on the line
Instead: Hang up, then look up the IRS at irs.gov, typed by you, and check your account there.
Tax-season calls claim a problem with your return, a refund waiting for you, or a debt that must be paid right now. The IRS guidance I know says the agency generally starts contact about a tax issue by mail, and does not demand payment by gift card or threaten arrest over the phone. If a recording says otherwise, it is not the IRS.
Calling the number in the message to sort it out
Instead: Look up the agency or company from a source you typed yourself.
The number a recording gives leads back to whoever made the recording. If you really do owe something or really have a benefit waiting, the real agency will have a record, and you can reach it on the number on your card, your statement or its official site.
Taking a deadline in a recording seriously
Instead: Treat any deadline measured in minutes as the sign to hang up.
A fake deadline is the oldest trick, and it works because the pressure is the product. A real notice from a government agency or a company arrives in writing and gives you time. The same logic applies to “press 1” prompts, discussed in should you press 1 or 9 to get off the list.
Treating every fall plan call as help, or every one as spam
Instead: Ignore the call and contact Medicare or your plan on the number on your card or the official site.
Some open-enrollment calls are legitimate: insurers and brokers you have dealt with may contact you. Many are unwanted sales calls. A call that says you qualify for extra benefits without naming your plan deserves care. How to sort health pitches from the others is in insurance, solar, loan and health robocalls.
Assuming Do Not Call covers political calls
Instead: Expect them anyway, and judge by what is asked.
Political calls are generally outside the Do Not Call Registry, so registering does not stop them. Rules for prerecorded political calls to cell phones differ from the rules for sales calls, and I will not claim to summarize them precisely. A political message that asks for money or personal details by pressing a key deserves the same caution as any other call, and the consent rules show where these exceptions live.
Trusting a call about where or when to vote
Instead: Check your state or county election office website directly, then report the call.
Calls that give wrong information on where or when to vote do happen. The election office site is a page you can type yourself, and it will not be wrong about its own hours.
Forgetting the quieter seasons
Instead: If you are waiting on a package, check the retailer's order page or the carrier's own site, typed yourself.
Before the holidays come package and delivery messages, and in summer come home improvement, solar and travel offers. The package ones overlap with text scams, where a link asks you to reschedule a delivery. A recording about a package you never ordered is the same trick with a voice.
Lecturing a relative instead of agreeing on a rule
Instead: Share one rule that is easy to remember: nobody real asks you to act in the next ten minutes, and anything important can wait while you call back on a number you already have.
In many families one person ends up fielding these calls, and a lecture rarely helps. Write the rule on a card by the phone, then walk through one example together, such as a tax recording, and practice hanging up. Practice sounds silly, and it works, because the hard part is not knowing the rule, it is feeling allowed to end the call. If a family member already acted on a call, stay calm, help them contact their bank or card company, and report it together at reportfraud.ftc.gov.
Waiting for the season to prepare
Instead: Do three small things before the season starts.
Know how you would check your tax account on the official site. Keep your plan's member number and phone number somewhere you can find them, so you never rely on a number a caller read to you. Find the official election office site for your county and bookmark it. Having those three things ready turns a rushed call into a ten-second decision to hang up. The area code on the screen will not help much either way, since campaigns often show local-looking numbers, though the number check will read the code if you are curious.
Why the first sentence keeps changing
Dialing is cheap and a script costs almost nothing to rewrite, so whoever runs a campaign can change the first sentence overnight and keep everything else. That is why the calendar helps you predict the subject but not the shape. The shape is always the same: an unexpected message, a reason to hurry and a request to press, say or pay. It also explains why the same pitch can come from many numbers within a week. Whatever the topic, report the call at reportfraud.ftc.gov with the time, number and opening line, and the listening habits that work in October work just as well in April.
Sources
- IRS, pages on scams and how the agency contacts taxpayers
- FTC Consumer Advice, scams and robocalls
- FCC Consumer Help Center