Tag: nuisance phone calls

‘You Answer the Phone and There’s No One There…’ (2020)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

What to do if you receive one of the 996 million nuisance cold calls and texts | youTalk-insurance.com

(I don’t like those little flat phones, either.)

One thing about getting penned up indoors by lousy weather–you’re there for all those nuisance phone calls.

You Answer the Phone and There’s No One There…

Yeah! You chumps in government are going to manage the climate, do away with Racism, abolish bad thoughts, blah-blah-blah… And you can’t stop nuisance phone calls?

(Maybe they don’t want to stop ’em.)

Thick foreign accent, you could cut it with a knife: “Khello! This is Brian Murphy, how are you today, we are selling Good Lucks…!”

Are nuisance phone calls the Great Pyramids of our civilization?

 

A Law That Doesn’t Work

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

BT customers can now shove nuisance calls into junk voicemail box | Ars Technica

How many unwanted nuisance phone calls do you get per day? We get at least half a dozen and often many more.

Did you know there’s a law against most of those calls? The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 forbids, among other things, most robo-calls (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_Consumer_Protection_Act_of_1991). That would be about 90% of the calls we get every single day.

Amazingly, consumers have sued over being harassed by unwanted phone calls–and won! But of course you have to know who’s making the calls before you know who to sue. A number of hefty lawsuits have gone against political fund-raisers who just won’t stop pestering you.

How many times have you said, “There oughta be a law”? Well, there is a law! You could look it up. It’s just that in most cases the law seems to have no effect at all. Those boiler rooms in India aren’t the least bit afraid of it.

Gotta love world leaders! The “climate” of the freakin’ planet, they’re going to control it! Nuisance phone calls, they can’t even slow them down.

Maybe if they shot a few of worst offenders, the rest would get the message.

‘We Don’t Have a Mobile Phone’ (2018)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of lizard and cell phone

We don’t have a cell phone. I admit there are times that it would come in handy. But the thing is, you put yourself on 24-hour call with people who have nothing to offer but annoyance. (I say “people,” but half of them are only robots so you can’t even yell at them.)

We Haven’t Got a Mobile Phone

“Hello! Mr. Du-du-gaaan, this is David–” yeah, sure it is: David freakin’ Copperfield–“with Healthcare Healthy Systems…”

No, I don’t need that.

You go into the pizza parlor and there’s a group of half a dozen kids sitting together around a table, all of them glued to their cell phones. Why don’t they talk to each other? There’s something wrong with this picture.

‘Do Not Hang Up…’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

3d illustration: red metal robot in headphones with headset calls customers with annoying ads, dials the phone number randomly, spambot, robocalls Stock Photo - Alamy

Nuisance phone calls from robots are really getting out of hand; and if our government was worth anything (LOL), it’d do something about this. Like find the responsible parties and throw them to the alligators.

“Do not hang up. This is not a sales call…”

Three times in ten minutes! They wanted “to confirm your address” so some Persons Unknown can send us COVID tests. And it’s just a robot with this commanding female voice, so you can’t with any profit curse at it, insult it, or squeak the cat’s squeaky toy into the phone.

Y’know, when the phone rings at 9:00 at night or later–like it did for this abomination–you have to respond, it might be a family emergency. And then it’s just crapola. Three times in ten minutes. Once more, and I would have disconnected the phone. The same damned shyster phoned us three times in ten minutes.

Find the robots and make the owners eat them.

‘The Newest Phone Scam’ (2017)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Frustrated Businesswoman Taking An Annoying Phone Call Stock Photo - Download Image Now - iStock

One of the reasons I have to work on my novels outdoors is because indoors the &^%$@ phone keeps ringing and it’s practically always garbage.

They came up with a couple of new wrinkles a few years ago.

The Newest Phone Scam

We get this affable-sounding robot which practically chortles when it says “Hello! Is Pat there?” Like we would actually mistake this for a human being. Maybe some poor old folks on the brink of dementia might.

It really saps your concentration when you’re trying to write.

“Hello! This is Rachel from Discover!”

Get lost.

It Must Be National Phone Scam Day

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Phone scams on the rise, scammer opens up about operation | News | newsbug.info

Some readers wonder why I find it so necessary to be outdoors when I write my novels.

Well, today the phone scammers have been out in force–every few minutes, the phone rang. Two of these, back-to-back: “Hi! This is Alexa from the Credit Card Dept.!” Like I can’t tell it’s a robot. Also, in a thick Indian accent you could cut with a knife: “Hello, Mr. Dugong! This is Harry–” oh, come now–“with Medicaid Services…” And several calls with nobody on the other end of the line, just robots mindlessly searching for phone numbers in current use.

Oh, and let’s not forget the one that goes, “This is Jidrool Stores with your call-back.” That’s deeply insulting. But it probably works against defenseless people with memory problems.

This has gone on all day.

These scammers, these parasites–why can’t anybody stop them? Why are we expected to put up with this? Life isn’t hard enough? And I know there are innocent people out there who are getting robbed: my aunts made perfect targets. Never harmed a soul in all their lives.

It’s a quality of life issue. You didn’t buy your phone just so people could use it to annoy you. It doesn’t take many of these calls to explode a writer’s concentration.

Give me the squirrels and the jumping spiders every time.

‘Nothing Works,’ Part II

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

6,862 Store Closing Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free Images - iStock

Patty’s prescription must be refilled.

The brand-new CVS store, where we were to get it… closed. Just like that.

The pharmacists at the other CVS store don’t know what we’re talking about.

Robo-call: “Hello. This is The Legal Department.” They must think everyone’s retarded. “This is amazon.” “Hi!” Thick Indian accent; you could cut it with a knife. “This is Bryan O’Shaughnessy…” No it isn’t.

OK, now the other CVS pharmacist has found the medicine, after all. I’ve got to get there before they lose it again.

Why does a sparkling new store go belly-up? Could it be because nobody knows what they’re doing? Has business become some kind of birthday party game?

Honk if you think competent people are in charge. Anywhere.

An Old Phone Scam, Tried Again

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Latest Phone Call Scams: How to Stop & Report Them

So the phone rang a few minutes ago, and I thought my editor was calling me… but it wasn’t.

“Hi, Grandpa.”

“Who is this?”

“Your grandson.”

I don’t have a grandson, so I hung up. It’s been years since we got this scam tried on us. I’m your grandson (name never volunteered), and I need bail money/need to pay off a loan/gimme yo’ money, whatever.

Obviously what they’re trying to do is get hold of some hopelessly senile Joe Biden types and swindle them out of their money. Isn’t this shameful? It’s like the whole Western world sinks to a new low every day. They hope their victim doesn’t even remember whether he has a grandson or not.

Preying on the helpless. What kind of subhuman parasite does that?

I’ll bet we get nine or ten scam phone calls every day.

And then there’s Congress…

You Answer the Phone and There’s No One There…

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

What to do if you receive one of the 996 million nuisance cold calls and texts | youTalk-insurance.com

We got five of these calls yesterday–answer the phone and there’s no one there. It’s really annoying!

Reading up on it, we find two chief causes of nobody-there phone calls: 1) telemarketing robots mindlessly dialing numbers even when the telemarketer isn’t there to pester the victim; and 2) collecting in-use phone numbers for sale to criminals who want to steal your identity or hack into your bank account.

The advice we get from all sources is, “Just hang up.”

I don’t know why telemarketing is allowed at all. Actually, one of my first jobs after college graduation was as a telemarketer for Time-Life Books. At least I was a real person whom the victim could curse at and call names. I mean, when you’ve just sat down to your dinner, and you’ve got a loved one in the hospital, you’re gonna get up and answer the phone, aren’t you? And when it’s nobody–!

These calls are up there with aiming floodlights at your neighbor’s bedroom window all night, or cutting loose with your leaf-blower at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Crimes against the quality of life…

‘The Newest Phone Scam’ (2017)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

With much of The Great Quarantine still in force, and many of us stuck at home for more of the day than usual–boy, do we get robo-calls! Every nuisance in the world has our number. And sometimes they come up with something new, like this:

The Newest Phone Scam

It’s brutal. Yesterday we got “This is your final notice” three times, and of course we got “This is an apology call,” too. In 2017 they came up with the Fake Wrong Number Gambit.

Why can’t our all-wise, all-powerful government put a stop of these? Why would we want to give them more power, when they can’t even slow down the scammers?