I just hung up on a scam caller\u2014rudely, I might add.\u00a0 Well, rudely, if you consider smartly and decisively clicking the \u201cEND\u201d button on a cell phone to be rude. (Golly-gee-whiz!\u00a0 It was EVER so much easier to deliver an indignant response to unwanted attention back in the day when you could powerfully slam the receiver of a landline phone into its cradle!)\u00a0 But I digress. My recent call went down exactly like this:<\/p>\n
Caller, speaking up to drown out background noise and voices: “Hallo, I am speaking with Cah-Ra, yes?”<\/p>\n
Cah-Ra: “Not exactly; I don’t have windows. I live in an igloo.”<\/p>\n
Caller: “OK, madam. So sorry I am to have been a large bothering to you.”<\/p>\n
\n
The entire exchange took less than one minute\u2014thank goodness, because my cell phone bill is high enough as it is. What I want to know is this:\u00a0 Who FALLS for this type of call?\u00a0 They are such obvious scams!\u00a0 Judging from all the background noise I heard during the conversation (leading me to believe that he was calling from a telemarketers\u2019 boiler room located in the bowels of an office building in downtown Bangalore), there are apparently numerous suckers in the world, ripe for the pluckin\u2019 and ready to provide a complete stranger with all the information that stranger requires in order to wipe out a bank account or go on a spending spree with the randomly targeted mark\u2019s credit card number.<\/p>\n
Because I suddenly realized that these scams really\u00a0do<\/span>make money\u2014big<\/span>\u00a0money\u2014to line the pockets of unscrupulous crooks, I now wish that I had strung this particular caller along, so as to keep him too busy to place another call for a good long while!\u00a0 I have, after all, done this very thing many times in the past, and with great success.\u00a0 Of course, I realized after each one of those protracted conversations that my keeping a pesky caller on the line was a complete waste of my time\u2014my\u00a0valuable<\/span>time\u2014during which I might have spent completing far more productive and exciting tasks.\u00a0 Why, I might have spent the same amount of time watching\u00a0American Idol<\/i>\u00a0while clipping my toenails, memorizing ten new Mandarin vocabulary words while polishing off the last sleeve of my Thin Mint Girls Scout cookies, or even by thumbing through the brand-new Yellow Pages directory while wondering how the Mount Everest of laundry in my hamper might wash, dry, and fold itself without human intervention. (I might have mentioned in the past that I\u2019m proud of my keenly honed ability to multi-task but, if I haven\u2019t, you are seeing it first, right here, right now.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n| <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n Yes, I have on occasion kept lyin\u2019, schemin\u2019, cheatin\u2019 scoundrels on the phone for the sole purpose of preventing them from preying on the innocent for hours.\u00a0 Oh, all right:\u00a0\u00a0 I have kept dozens of these sleaze balls occupied for 45 minutes (my personal record best).\u00a0 Yes, you read that correctly:\u00a0 15 minutes!\u00a0 You can do the same thing by employing the 12 simple techniques I have perfected over the years.\u00a0 Let me give you a sampling of these tried-and-true tips:<\/p>\n \n![\"scammer\"](\"http:\/\/www.dpnlive.com\/images\/stories\/misc4\/phone_scammer.jpg\" "\\"scammer\\"") scammer<\/span><\/span>Get the caller on your side; make him\u2014and, trust me, these con artists are almost always male\u2014perceive you as a human being, not as an object.\u00a0 Ask him where he lives.\u00a0 No matter what his answer is, your follow-up question should always be, \u201cOh!\u00a0 Do you know Dr. R.K. Patel?\u00a0 He is my godmother\u2019s sister\u2019s boyfriend\u2019s podiatrist\u2019s niece\u2019s math teacher!\u00a0 HE lives in _____, too!\u201d\u00a0 When the caller tells you that he does not know any Dr. Patels, you\u2019ll know for a fact that he is lying!\u00a0 Then ask him if he has been to your favorite restaurant in _____: \u00a0Micky D\u2019s!\u00a0 Now more relaxed, he will assure you that he knows the restaurant well.\u00a0 Moan suddenly into the phone and tell the caller that you have been suffering with a painful arthritic neck.\u00a0 He will commiserate.\u00a0 You now have him in your corner!<\/li>\n- Reassure him that you want to hear what he has to say.\u00a0 Is he trying to get you to buy prescription drugs from an offshore pharmacy?\u00a0 Interrupt his spiel:\u00a0 \u201cOh, I take a LOT of medicines!\u00a0 Will I save money if I buy them from\u00a0you<\/span>?\u201d\u00a0 Naturally, he\u2019ll inform you that you will save a bundle.\u00a0 While moaning a couple of times, do a quick Google search for a list of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S.A.\u00a0 Start with any drug that begins with a letter in the middle of the alphabet and skip around randomly from there.\u00a0 After you mention the name of a drug, your caller will go through his own list and start spouting out quantities available and the price of each.\u00a0 \u201cHmmmm\u2026\u201d is the best response you can offer\u2026before you jump to the next drug.\u00a0 Continue with your drug selections and your \u201chmmmms.\u201d This will eat up at least 20 minutes of his time before he gets suspicious and hangs up on you.
\nPerhaps your obnoxious caller is trying to sell you a \u201cfix\u201d for your ailing computer. \u00a0\u00a0Ask him what the problem seems to be.\u00a0 He\u2019ll direct you to go to your computer.\u00a0 No matter what he tells you to do\u2014from turning it on to going to a certain web site\u2014respond in a kittenishly helpless tone of voice:\u00a0 \u201cWhere exactly\u00a0is<\/span>the on-off button?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cCould you repeat the name of the web site; ooooh, let me spell it back to you:\u00a0 \u201cW-E-C-A-N-H-E-L-P-D-O-T-C-O-M?\u00a0 No?\u00a0 Don\u2019t spell dot?\u00a0 Just hit the dot button?\u00a0 Where is\u00a0that<\/span>?\u201d\u00a0 Now you\u2019re cookin\u2019 with gas, sister! (No matter how much this goes against every fiber of your feminist being, do play up the damsel-in-distress and the creep will be putty in your devious hands!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n- Perhaps your caller is offering you a GREAT investment opportunity in gold or silver or pork bellies.\u00a0 This type of caller doesn\u2019t deserve a stall at all.\u00a0 Just tell him he is \u201cso 1990s\u201d that you can\u2019t be bothered talking to him.\u00a0 Suggest that he go to _______, where you have it on good authority that there is a successful boiler-room operation pushing\u00a021st<\/span>Century scams, a great math teacher named Dr. R. K. Patel, and a fine dining establishment called Micky D\u2019s!<\/li>\n
- Give him a taste of his own medicine: \u00a0Ask him if he finds it difficult to keep his living space clean and organized because he feels run down and tired all the time…mainly because he is losing sleep from worry about the mounting personal legal expenses from his recent \u00a0arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol. When he hesitates (but before he can utter a single syllable), invite him to become an entry-level distributor in your SnorWax, 31 Baskets, VitaMuch, and LegalWielder multi-level marketing networks.\u00a0 Tell him that as soon as you receive his check for $1349.37, you\u2019ll make it easy for him to make $17,000 a week!\u00a0 When he questions your sanity, mutter a few newly memorized Mandarin vocabulary words under your breath, and tell him that you just cursed him with six months of flatulence, impotence, and incontinence but that you have a drug salesman on the other line who can sell him just the right drugs to reverse those conditions.\u00a0 \u201cHold, please, and I\u2019ll connect you!\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
There you have it!\u00a0 Don\u2019t you feel empowered?\u00a0 You are now\u00a0almost<\/span>sufficiently well equipped to thwart the attempts of any smooth-talkin\u2019 \u201ctelephoney\u201d to part you from your hard-earned cash!<\/p>\nFor a tiny investment of only $9.99, I will send you the remaining nine simple tricks.\u00a0 Knowledge of all 12 will make you virtually impervious to the slime-ball tactics of every ruthless rapscallion on the planet\u2026now and forever more!\u00a0 Act now, and I\u2019ll throw in my patent-pending\u00a0U<\/span>-shaped, reusable icy-hot pack.\u00a0 That arthritic neck you\u2019ve been moaning about will thank you!<\/p>\nBy Cara Sheridan O\u2019Donnell<\/p>\n This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.<\/span>” mce_’ + path + ‘\\” + prefix + ‘:’ + addy69912 + ‘\\’>’+addy_text69912+'<\\\/a>’; \/\/–><\/p>\nFollow us on Twitter – @DigiPrintNews<\/p>\n Like us on Facebook\u00a0www.facebook.com\/DPNLive<\/a>\u00a0– (click the \u2018LIKED<\/u>\u2019 button\/top of page as well)<\/p>\nCopyright \u00a9 2014, DPNLIVE \u2013 All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Letter from America I just hung up on a scam caller\u2014rudely, I might add.\u00a0 Well, rudely, if you consider smartly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-and-style","category-living-in-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9858,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9857\/revisions\/9858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.webhostlabs.net\/synergy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |