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Several times a day we get telephone calls like this: “Hi. This is __ from cardholder services, calling about your credit card. There is no problem with your account, but this is the last notice for an opportunity to receive a lower interest rate on your purchases. Press 9 now to talk to an operator about lowering the interest you pay.”

However, if you press 9 — with the intention of saying take us off your list — the call gets disconnected. Obviously it’s not a call from our actual credit card company, but why do they hang up? How can they profit from not selling us something?

— Mike Clark, Greensboro

We nosed around a little and found two possible explanations for the repeated calls you’re receiving from a supposed credit card company.

Either way, the advice is the same: Do not press 9. Do not respond at all. If you dare, do so at the risk of ending up on a “sucker list.”

So says Joe Ridout , a spokesman for the nonprofit Consumer Action, a consumer education and advocacy group with offices in Washington and California.

Ridout feels certain this caller is trying to scam you, and the disconnections probably are a glitch.

“Certainly the intention is to trick someone into either falling for whatever swindle the caller is engaged in or persuading someone to share their personal information for a future identity theft,” Ridout says.

“Even if you are an inquisitive person and want to find out what’s behind it, the danger of playing along or trying to outsmart the scammer is that, by responding, you could be placed on what’s known as a 'sucker list,’ and receive numerous more bogus offers in the future.”

That’s right. Scammers develop “sucker lists” and sell the information to other scammers.

“You increase your chances of being placed on a 'sucker list’ as soon as you respond to any unsolicited offer,” Ridout explains.

We found another possible

explanation at www.snopes

.com, a Web site devoted to setting the record straight on various urban legends and scams.

You could be receiving the calls from a scammer trying to gain access to place long-distance phone calls on your dime.

This scam, however, doesn’t work with residential or cell phone lines, which could explain why you keep getting disconnected when you press 9. Only businesses, government agencies and others that use private branch exchanges (PBXs) to handle telephone calls can be scammed.

“On certain PBX systems (i.e., ones for which pressing '9’ is the signal to obtain an outside line, and there are no restrictions placed on outgoing calls), a scammer could gain access ... by tricking an employee,” www.snopes.com explains.

— Betsi S. Robinson