It is clearly the "Lets scam as many old lady's as we can wake up!" season .
The number of phone calls I've had in the last two days are legion!
I started by listening but after several calls on more or less the same theme I have just got rude!
Apparently my address and name are on a national register to say that I am energy efficient....but there are still more ways I could be helped....
It must also say on this register....old woman who can be talked into anything!
Those of you who have been reading my outpourings for some time will remember my angst on previous occasions when my heating wouldn't work after the wonderful green company tampered with it.
Be fair....it did save me money...I didn't use much oil for several years!
Having set out to find this "Green firm" I found they had disappeared , only I suspect to go into business under a new name so they could go on conning people.
The only green solution that actually works is I think the solar one. My tiles do very well indeed in this sunny county.
Over the last month though I have had dozens of calls about them...the original guarantees having run out!
I have now got them covered by a tile insurance firm and been told today that it was another con.
A different company wants to come along and check all is well with them.
This is the company that disparaged the first lot I fell for!
Are you still with me?
Yet another young man wanted to put me fresh insulation in my loft.
I told him I'd got it...and anyway did he know about the bats?
He said confidently that he could get rid the bats for me....at which point I'm afraid I exploded.
Anyone killing a bat even by accident could be fined quite a lot of money and anyway I like them...they do no harm and are pleasant company..I never see them!
When the next phone call came through....this is the fifth this week I was ready for them....
The young man persisted against my oft repeated sentence..."I am not interested!"
He inferred that the only reason I was not interested was my ignorance of the facts.
I put the phone down only to find a young woman half an hour later from the same firm trying to give me the same message.
The lot that are arriving today will get very short shift.
I may be an old woman but I've still got all my chairs at home...an old Lancashire expression I cherish!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
3 comments:
There really does seem to be no end to the lengths some of these dodgy characters will go to. Like you, I think of myself as reasonably alert, but, there are so many ways they can get in under your guard.
For me, one of the main dangers is that when nosy people ask me personal questions I have difficulty refraining from answering honestly.
I've just come back by taxi from shopping and realised that the driver's apparently friendly chat was quite well formulated so that I told him half my life story.
Well. a bit of an exaggeration but quite a lot.
Who knows what he may do with the information gleaned.
Must watch my tongue.
Truly, the best way to fight phone scam is to ignore them. Did you get their phone numbers? You can check if the phone numbers have been reported for scam: http://www.callercenter.com/
You may also report a phone number as scam to help increase awareness and give warning to potential victims.
We've had a flood of scam phone calls here recently. I report every one, but nothing seems to be getting done about it. The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) tell me to report it to the ICO, who send a holding reply, saying that there is little to do about it. Reporting it to the police is a waste of time and our Trading Standards have just offered someone to come to our Church and to talk to our older members about how to deal with such scams.
I'm sorely tempted to invest in phone blocking hardware - but the costs are quite high and you need to pay for User ID from your service provider to use it.
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