Yech! A particularly creepy telemarketing sleaze just called. When I picked up the phone, a live human spoke, not an infuriating robo-marketer recording. He sounded like an older man — just my age, lots of common with me, right?
Right away he started in on a pitch for some sort of “emergency call” system. He was peddling those gadgets you wear around your neck that are supposed to summon help when you fall or have a stroke over your fried eggs or whatever. He didn’t get far enough to tell me exactly what gadgets or how overpriced they were, because before he could draw a breath I was telling him my number is on the National Do-Not-Call list, he should be ashamed of himself for harassing old ladies with nuisance phone calls, and he ought to get himself an honest job. He was protesting that he had an “honest job” as I hung up on him.
Honest job, my ass.
If your parents are getting on in years, or if you yourself are elderly, you should be keeping an eye out for scammers who call old people on the phone.
It was clear this guy knew my age and he probably knew I live alone. His MO was to scare me, and if I had been just a little less cagey, he would’ve had an easy time of it.
Last week I did fall, in the middle of the night, and I did hurt myself. I hit my head going down and smacked my knee so hard it was awhile before I could get to my feet.
And yes. This is exactly the kind of thing that scares the bedoodles out of me. No one pays the slightest bit of attention to whether I come or go. I could lay on the floor with a broken hip until I died of thirst, and no one would notice.
Fortunately, I’m clever enough to have put three of the house’s five land-line phones in places that can be reached from the floor. And yes again: that’s why I have a land line: so I can have an extension in every room. A cell phone allows for one, maybe two phones, at an elevated price, and with just two of them, neither is likely to be sitting someplace where I could reach it if I were on the floor and hurt.
I dragged myself to the nightstand and pulled down the phone. Called my son. It was midnight. He didn’t answer.
About to dial 9-1-1, I realized that emergency workers couldn’t get in through the special hardened locks I’d put on the security doors after the late, great garage invasion, and since I’d had to smash the secret key hidey-hole with a hammer the last time I needed to raid the key stash, there are no keys to the house hidden outside. Soooo…it wasn’t going to do much good to call the rescue squad, unless I really, really wanted to have one of those expensive new low-E windows busted in.
Eventually I managed to get up off the floor. But not knowing what effect a whack on the head was likely to have on an old bat, I limped out front, stashed a couple of keys under the Burglars Welcome mat, e-mailed La Maya and M’hijito to suggest that if they hadn’t heard from me by 7 or 8 a.m., they should call 9-1-1 and tell the dispatcher how to get into the house.
The moral of the story is that today’s smarmy chucklehead on the other end of the phone line called at just the right time, and that’s what he was counting on. I’m always subliminally worried about being here by myself. But the recent fall had crystallized the obvious risk.
Meanwhile, researchers have recently discovered that people’s natural wariness of the smarmy and the untrustworthy weakens with age. This explains the ease with which con artists scam the elderly, often cleaning out Granma’s bank account.
I suppose my profound hatred for telephone solicitors serves like a flu shot against the creeps. But if I’d been another ten years older, who knows? Maybe the immunity would have worn off.
If you’re in that sandwich generation, keep an eye on the old folks. Ask them how they’re handling their money or if they’ve decided to make any changes in their investments. Keep your ears open for any sudden decisions to renovate the house or buy a time-share in an RV park.
And if you’re already an old folk? Hang up instantly on all phone solicitors. Do not speak with them, and do not be polite to them. Remember, they have already been rude to you by intruding on your privacy, so you have no obligation to speak courteously to them — nor should you. Do not open junkmail, and never respond to an unsolicited offer that comes in the mail. And always consult with a trusted adviser before making any major decisions pertaining to money, your estate planning, and healthcare.
Is it only me, or is everyone else getting inundated with scammy phone solicitations — three or four hustles a day now?
That is one nice thing about having a cell — no telemarketing. Very few actual calls, anyway, since I don’t give my number out freely. (You outlined your reasons for maintaining a landline, and I agree that they make sense. I’m inclined to keep an unused prepaid phone around in the lockbox in case of need — but that won’t be very helpful in a medical emergency.)
I just wrote a short research paper on the National Do Not Call Registry, and learned a few useful things:
-You can register your cell number, but
-Registering cell numbers doesn’t offer a lot of extra protection, because law already forbids the use of autodialers (standard practice in telemarketing) to call cell phones.
-If you receive a call from an exempted party (charity, political organization, surveyor), your best bet is to ask the caller (and possibly in writing) to be placed on their organization’s do-not-call list.
-If you have registered your number already and receive calls from a commercial organization anyway, you can file a complaint with the FTC . (You can also do this for any robocalls.) https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx
That may understandably be a hassle of paperwork you don’t want to deal with — but the options are there for you (and your readers).
I file complaints with the FTC constantly about these damn things. Nothing happens. Recently a news report said the FTC had been inundated with complaints about the “Rachel with Card Services” ads, which come from a number of outfits, some offshore, some onshore, one of them right here in lovely Third-World Arizona. Apparently there’s little or nothing they can do about it.
When the Nat’l Do-Not-Call list first came out, it really did make a difference. But as the sleazes have come to realize the the US government can or will do nothing about violations, the nuisance calls have returned.
And you can be sure that as land line service goes away — as it surely will over the next few years — all this harassment will be transferred to your cell phone, the only difference being that you get to pay for the minutes used to pester you.
I’m so glad you were able to reach your phone from the floor. I see my cell phone as my “help, I’ve fallen” device since it is always on me or near enough to me to get to even from the floor. It is truly my electronic leash.
As for phone solicitors, I don’t get many (no landline), but I always say very clearly “Please punch that button that says “Do Not Call”, thanks.” before I hang up. I worked in a calling center for my university for several months in 2002, and I loved hearing those words…it meant I never had to bug those specific people again. I got a job at the on campus bowling alley as soon as it was repaired from the water damage it took in the big hurricane in 2001…
Yeah, I know a lot of people carry their cell around in their pockets all the time. In the summer, though, I usually wear a cami and a pair of bathing suit trunks or panties around the house. Unless I tie the thing around my neck on a lanyard (w00t! beads!!!!), most of the time that I’m in the house, there wouldn’t be any pockets to hold it.
Hm. Remy’s prepaid phone idea is not a bad idea. If it were affordable to have a couple of those plus a smartphone that you used for serious communications needs, you could stash them in cabinets near the floor and hope you could drag yourself to the nearest one. This, of course, would require you not to break an arm as well as a hip, but I suspect the probability of that big a crash is low.
My complaint are politicians’ autodialers that call me incessantly during the election season. On my cell phone. At 10:00 at night! But that’s totally legit according to the FCC.
On another note – and this is actually a somewhat serious question – do you get the paper delivered? We used to joke that our 92 year old neighbor proved to everyone that she was alive every morning by bringing in the paper until one morning when she didn’t. By 10:30, the neighbors were gathered in the driveway, figuring out the last time we had all seen her. When she didn’t answer the door, we called 911, and the paramedics took her to the ER. She had a stroke and was having trouble getting out of her chair. Knowing her routine definitely helped us all get her treatment faster than might have happened otherwise. We don’t joke about the paper anymore. We’re just hoping she comes home from the rehab facility soon. =/
Argh, the politicos! Almost as bad as the commercial sleazes. This year the Republicans somehow decided I was in their camp, so BOTH sides deluged me with nuisance calls. 🙁
Yeah, I do get the paper. Only one set of neighbors is the friendly type, though. They probably would notice if a couple of papers piled up. Sometimes I loaf until 10 or 11 before picking the thing up, but…I could ask them to keep an eye out.
Probably the answer is to sell this house and move into a life-care community. But really…I don’t want to!
My mother calls her sister every morning by a certain time. If she doesn’t call, my aunt calls her. If no answer, my aunt contacts my mother’s neighbor who has a key. Thankfully, this has only happened once.
I think this system can work, but perhaps only if one is retired and has time to remember to make the call, and if one has a relative with whom one wants to chat every day.
So glad to hear you are alright. I never thought about angle for a landline, but I think most of our phones would be elevated anyway. Where was your Son? You should have kept calling him till he picked up!!!
He rarely answers calls to his cell and doesn’t seem to check voicemail messages. He has only a cell, and he apparently turns it off when he doesn’t want to be awakened or distracted by calls. So…repeated calls don’t do any good and just cause annoyance.