coming out of my shell

coming out of my shell
Showing posts with label phone scams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phone scams. Show all posts

Saturday, January 6, 2018

I hate the telephone

I dislike talking on a phone. My working years were filled with jobs where I had to use a phone on a regular basis. I adjusted, I endured, but I never got over my aversion to picking up that "thing" when it screams noise at me and I do not know who is on the other end.

The worst is actually initiating a call. I really have to force myself to do that. Left to my own devices, I won't.

We had a landline the first 2 years we retired; however, Central Florida is a wild and woolly place. The number of strange calls one receives on a landline during the day is alarming. Especially when the bad guys figure out you are retired. They want your money, and they are willing to nag and negotiate all day, every day, to trick you out of it. Even if I didn't pick up, I could still hear the rings and messages. I finally blew up and had it disconnected.


Now I use my cell phone. I hate talking on that even more than a landline because I figure it will give me a brain tumor. Plus, you can't tuck a smartphone between your ear and shoulder to talk. You have to hold it, and you have to hold it for a long time. Consequently, you are complicit in giving yourself a brain tumor.


Actually, I rarely answer my phone or check my messages. Dodging a phone call is both liberating and delightfully perverse.
Good times!

I am happy to make arrangements to chat with loved ones. Family and friends have learned to text me first to let me know when they will call. With advance warning I WILL pick up the phone, although I have to find it first.





Saturday, October 17, 2015

On being disconnected


We gave up our landline phone recently.  We disconnected it and now we rely on our iPhones to communicate with the outside world. I have had a smartphone for almost 2 years, but I rarely turned it on before. 

I liked having a landline telephone. I do not particularly like talking on a cell phone.  The sound quality is not as good and I have this nagging fear that talking on wireless will eventually give me a brain tumor. But having the landline had become so unpleasant that we really had to get rid of it.

The people who owned this house before us went bankrupt and defaulted on their mortgage. Apparently they skipped out on a lot of other debt, too. After we moved in (a little over a year ago) and got our landline phone installed we started getting harassing and threatening phone calls from their creditors demanding to talk to those people who lived here before us. They asked for the previous owners by name, and they would not believe me when I said I was not that person nor did that person live here.

I could not figure out why the horrid bill collectors were calling OUR telephone number. We neither kept nor received the same number the previous owners used.  I guess the creditors must have used a reverse phone lookup, looking up the house number to find out what the current phone was for this address? That is the only thing I can think of.  But if those bill collectors are so clever with the Internet why couldn’t they find the telephone number for the previous owners?

For over a year we lived with the previous owners’ problems. We stopped answering the landline phone when it rang, instead relying on Caller ID to screen our calls. We continued to get creditor-related calls for the previous owners almost every day. Of course we also got the usual scam telephone calls daily simply because we are retired people who are home during the day. We were under siege.  Over time our phone situation began to drive me a little crazy.

One evening a few weeks ago I had to scramble out of the pool and run dripping wet into the house to grab the landline phone, thinking it must be a family member or a friend.  Who else would call in the evening? I did not make it in time, but the caller left a message.  My reward was a message from a nasty bill collector threatening me (actually not me, but you get the picture) with all sorts of legal actions. She left a return phone number. I usually know better than to call back – it gives them the idea that I am an easy mark. But I snapped.  Like a raving maniac I called her screaming and yelling, roaring that the people they wanted did not live here (and plenty more). I am not proud of myself.  I know it did no good, but I had a year's worth of pent up rage.  I was shaking when I hung up. It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.  Life is way too short for this kind of nonsense.  The next day I called our service provider and had the landline disconnected.

Disconnecting the landline phone did not save all that much money, so there is no windfall incentive to make me happy it is gone. I am only happy not to get the damn calls all day. I hate being forced to do something against my will. I resent not having the landline, but there you go.

I am adjusting to the iPhone. Now I charge it every night, turn it on every day (!), and keep it close by me at all times. I text now, too.  My daughter is delighted that I read and answer her texts in a more timely manner.  My tween granddaughter, who reportedly still exists but has not been seen in weeks, recently texted me from the depths of her darkened bedroom. It was thrilling. T texted me at the grocery store to pick up something he forgot to put on the list.  I messaged him some photos of our grandson riding a horse at the pumpkin farm yesterday.  And I took the *@!# picture with the phone!  If I get in an argument I can prove I am right wherever I may be as long as I can get a signal to google the question.  This is pure magic, people!  I urge oldsters everywhere to make the leap.  I have even texted a question and received an answer from my son-in-law, MV.  My grandson, N, will occasionally FaceTime me. This whole smartphone thing is much better than I thought it would be. I suppose it was past time for me to enter the modern world. Of course I entered it against my will, kicking and screaming all the way. But what else is new?

Monday, May 11, 2015

Who ARE these people?


I spend my days desperately trying to avoid hackers and phone scammers.  They know I am a retired person and they are absolutely determined to come between me and my money.

Multiple phone scammers call our house each and every day.  I no longer answer the phone if I cannot identify the caller.  Instead, I look at the phone when it is ringing to take a look at the name and/or number of whoever is calling us. I pretty much know that any call from area code 407 without an identifying name displayed is from a hardened, psychotic criminal. Who else would be calling me from central Florida? My daughter and husband text me. My son-in-law and his parents email me. My 3 year old grandson has recently figured out how to contact me via Facetime on their iPad (sometimes as early as 7:30 am if his parents are out of the room), and my 11 year old granddaughter tries to avoid communicating with me via modern technology at all costs. Those are the only people I know in Central Florida. I think I am safe in assuming everyone else is psychotic.


The other day I picked up on a phone call from a number with a Southern Florida area code.  That particular number had been calling every day (sometimes more than once a day) for weeks and I have to admit I was curious to see what this particular scam was going to be.  I did not get the satisfaction of yelling at someone because it turned out to be an automated call.  It was malicious Mr. Robot Man telling me he had been trying to get a hold of me to settle our account (never saying what his business name was) and if I did not get back to him he would have to take me to court.  Then Mr. Robot Man gave me the choice of either pressing 1 to call him back or 2 to leave a message.  Hilarious.  If only I had magical powers to create a third choice:  press 3 to send unbridled bolts of crackling hot electricity through the phone lines to burn Mr. Robot Man's sorry robot circuits to Hell. 

The phone rang while we were eating dinner last night.  If got up and walked over to the land-line phone to see if it might be a normal human being trying to get in touch with me. I live in hope. Instead, the caller ID screen on our phone revealed it was from "Voter Consumer."  Whatever that means?  My husband said it should have read from "Consumer Harassment."  I concur. But that reminds me. As the general elections approach we will now start getting political phone calls, too! Ouch.

I also get a ridiculous amount of email spam, even though I try to filter it out. I also try VERY hard not to click on any links or open any emails from sources I do not recognize.  I am kind of proud of how distrustful I have become. But they are so tricksy, those computer scumbags. The other day I got an email from Federal Express, or that is what I thought.  When I opened the email it said to click a link so I could track my package. Well, I sometimes order online, so I thought it was real. I clicked, dammit! It turned out to be just another trickster scam to get me to buy something I do not need nor want.  And now my big fear is that legions of demented hackers are sending pornography related email to everyone in my contact list because I was foolish enough to click on that one miserable link. Sheesh. If you get pornographic emails from me, please know they are not really from me, okay? That particular virus is THE one I have always hoped I could avoid. 

A kind and gentle man I know was victimized by that virus a few years ago.  I think there are still people out there who fear he is a raging pervert.  Poor guy.  I also know a high school teacher who was victimized by it.  Can you imagine how awful that would be? No doubt she had students in her email address list.
Just think of the horror and embarrassment innocent people have suffered because of that virus. In my alternate universe the person who created it would have his/her knuckles removed and then be forced to write "I am sorry for the trouble I caused" 100 times before getting them back.  Yes, in my alternate universe knuckles can be removed and then re-attached.  There are amazing surgeons there.

I suppose now I should just never open any emails I get. Where will it all end?  Mr. Natural (old R. Crumb alternative comic character and mystic guru) would have answered, "In the grave, my boy, in the grave."

Wow, I just now got an email from Wells Fargo Bank telling me that a hacker has been trying to hack into my account and if I would just click on the link they provided they would reinstate my account.  Funny thing is, I do not have any business dealings involving Wells Fargo.  True story, just happened.  Unbelievable.

It is odd imagining this is how some people make a living or get their kicks, by deceiving and humiliating innocent people. You have to wonder why they do this?  Of course, they are probably some of the narcissistic sociopaths I wrote about last time.  Or maybe they hate old people because they had mean grandparents who pinched their childhood cheeks and wrote them out of their wills.  Perhaps they were raised in damp caves by drug addled parents who never hugged them or gave them any encouragement.  Or, I suppose they could just be the spawn of the devil?  Who knows.  Armchair psychology is an imprecise science.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

This is what happens when I try to buy a car


I need to buy a new car.  Mine is dead and has been sitting in the driveway for a couple of months.  T and I are sharing his car.  It is not an ideal situation, but I do not have the energy to devote to buying a new car.  In early December I tried to throw myself into a car buying situation, assuming I would sink or swim.  I sunk.  I applied for a loan and it was approved.  Then what?  Where's the car?  You mean I have to actually do some work to find one?  Do I have to interact with salespeople?  Do I have to talk to strangers?  NOOOOO.  The loan officers were worried.  They could not understand why I was not buying. They called and left urgent messages.  I would not pick up the phone.  I was filled with dread whenever the phone rang or I received an email.  Finally they offered me the services of a car concierge who works for the credit union to make things easy for buyers.  I would not answer his phone calls, either. 

In fact, I ignore most phone calls because Florida is filled with scam artists who sit around every day calling retired people trying to trick us out of our money.  We actually started getting these con-calls the same day we got our land line telephone installed, so I can only imagine the cable company providing our phone service is routinely selling new phone listings to scumbags.  Nice.  Consequently, I stopped answering the phone months ago.  Sometimes, when I am in just the right mood, I pick up and tell whoever is at the other end of the line to take my name off their list and never call me again.  I use my best cold-hearted bitch voice.  That is always kind of fun.  

This aversive reaction is a direct result of working in an office for so many years.  I OD’d on communication a long time ago.  So what if I have been retired for over a year now.  I still have not recovered.  I may never recover.  It is the principle of the thing.  The thought of having to do anything that resembles office work (including answering the damn phone) makes me want to run off screaming into the night. Every time the phone rings my stomach turns.  If I have an administrative, real-life issue I must suffer through, or a deadline I have to meet, I freak out.  I ignore it, procrastinate; all the things I could NEVER do when I had a job.  It makes me feel so good to ignore things.  By the way, if you want to reach me, call my land line phone or email me.  If I am home and I can see it is you, I will pick up the phone or call you back.  Do not even think about calling me on my cell phone.  The ringer is turned off and I rarely turn the cell phone on unless I am stuck waiting in a doctor’s office and need to play solitaire.  My cell phone is purely an ornamental status symbol.

Getting back to my car buying experience, I finally emailed (note I did not use the phone) the bank, car concierge, and salespeople and let them know I changed my mind.  I said I would reapply in the New Year when “things settled down for me.”  Ha!  I guess I showed them!  Maybe if I put this off long enough T will give me his car and then he will go through the effort of buying a new car for himself.  It is so crazy it might work.