I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like early morning phone calls, they rarely bring good news. This one rang at 6 am, and thanks to call display I realized as I picked it up that is wasn’t anyone I knew, but a unnamed number. Relieved, I still answered it with a whisper because we had overnight guests and I didn’t want them to be woken up.
Hello? Do you know what time it is? I asked.
“Ma’am this the is the computer center”, a foreign voice curtly berated me, “we run 24 hours a day.”
“It’s 6 am, why are you calling me?” was my grumpy reply.
“Ma’am it’s a urgent call about your computer.” Warning bells are going off in my head by now, and I am starting to boil over like unwatched pot.how dare they call so early, and wake everyone up.
“Do you have a laptop, or a PC ma’am?” Well… I am thinking, wouldn’t you know that if you were legit?
The questions are circling in my head, I know that this is a scam, they ask for money to purportedly stop a virus, or some story like that, I am angry that they dared to call so early, and I wonder how many poor sleepy people they have dragged into their clutches by waking them up too early. I’m a morning person, and fully awake at this time, no wool is pulled over my eyes.
“I am hanging up right now, and calling the police about your scam” I tell them, despite the fact that I do not know their number, or real company name, and I tell them that I do indeed have their number on my phone.
And apparently I called them a few choice names before I did it… according to my husband. Well they deserved it.
I can hear background voices during the phone call, berating those innocents who answered the early morning calls, and are probably now being fleeced, and separated from their hard earned money. This makes me even angrier… it’s so unfair the deviousness of a few endangering those who are not wary enough.
Recently a family member was almost taken in by someone impersonating a relative claiming to be in jail in a foreign country… please send funds to get him out ASAP. The family member was so convinced that the scammer was for real that he was about to go to the bank and wire money. We were fortunate that we were there at the time… who knows what would have happened. The police were called, and we also let the newspapers know about it. Turns out they targeted many seniors in the area.
We read, and hear about these scams all the times, and it’s a shame that a few bad people choose to live by preying off others…
Have you been encountering any stories of scammers lately? It certainly seems to be a booming business around here.