Brought back to the current stream of FaM posts by this morning’s scam phone call. Seriously: EVERY DAY here’s another goddamn scammer on the phone, trying to trick me into this or trick me into that.
Yes, usually I do hang up on them before they get very far into their pitch. But truth to tell, some of them have surprisingly persuasive intros…so you never know whether you’re hanging up on someone who matters, or hanging up on yet another crook.
Don’t get old, whatever ya do!
Seriously, that has become a kind of jokey by-word for me..but truth to tell, it gets more and more to the point as the days go by.
And also seriously: as I do get older, day by day, I wonder more and more how much longer I’m going to be able to hold the mob of crooks at arm’s length.
Some of these crooks have information about you — whether it’s recorded fact or something they’ve gleaned by observation — that makes their pitches sound surprisingly convincing. They DO sound like they know who you are and what you do in your business and shopping activities.
And they DO know when you’re older. The assumption is that elderly folks are easy marks. There actually are nuisance phone-calling lists organized by the marks’ ages. That’s why you get more and more of this sh!t as the years pass.
I may reach the point where I’m simply going to have to sign off the telephone service. But…I NEED a phone for emergencies, and I use my phone for all sorts of personal and business purposes. So…how the f**k would I manage canceling my phone service?
Really, that’s hard for me to imagine. Because every strategy I think of either has serious drawbacks or has work-arounds that will be easy for the crooks to engage.
Hang up on them all?
That means I hang up on legitimate callers with legitimate reasons for calling. Some of those are financial reasons. Some are personal reasons. Either way, I get screwed when I slam the phone down.
And if I’m gonna hang up on every incoming phone call, why have a phone at all? I have to pay for this damn phone. Monthly! So now I have to disgorge a monthly payment for…NOTHING? For a service that cuts off friends and business acquaintances, because I have to disconnect every chucklehead who calls my number?
Don’t answer the phone until you know who’s really on the other end? That entails having to sit there listening to yakety yak yak until you can identify the caller; then if it’s someone you want to speak with, grabbing the phone before they hang up. Since a good 50% to 75% of incoming calls are time-wasters, this means a LOT of your time will go down the drain while you try to identify who’s calling.
One thought I’ve had: forward my phone number to an answering service, where their operator can determine who is calling and why; if they decide it’s a legitimate call, they either forward the call to me or simply email with the call-back information.
This sounds like an expensive work-around, to say nothing of a nuisance. Also, I have no idea whether there even are such answering services. To my mind, an answering service is for businesses and professionals who need to catch important incoming calls. Not for some little old lady who wants to circumvent the scammers….
Well…hmmmmm….. There may be a simpler way:
Just stop answering the phone.
ALWAYS let it ring through to the answering machine (or, if I decide to hire one, to the answering service operator). If I hear a pitch come in on the machine, pick up the receiver and hang up. Or better yet: BLAST a police whistle into the phone and hope it scorches the inside of the bastard caller’s ear.
That poses its obvious risks, though: Think of the possibilities for revenge! 😀
But seriously: I suspect it indeed may be time to stop answering phone calls.
Do you have a better strategy?
Gorgeous, cool morning.