Thursday 5 May 2016

Nuisance calls and naivete

I had one of 'those' telephone calls this morning.  The gentleman (I use the term in its loosest sense) on the other end of the line claimed to be from the Telephone Preference Service, the service to which we subscribe in order to block those unwanted cold sales calls.  I was immediately suspicious because:
a) my caller had a strong accent that originated from the Indian sub-continent;
b) it was only 8:20am;
c) the TPS are not the sort of body to make unwanted telephone calls.

My interlocutor asked if we receive unwanted telephone calls, to which I responded in the affirmative and told him that his call was unwanted, especially at that time of the morning.  he carried on talking but when I repeated - loudly - that his call was unwanted, he simply put the phone down.

I might have contacted the TPS myself to complain about this call, but the caller ID told me that the number was unavailable so there seemed no point.

I do have a modicum of sympathy for those young people (and I imagine they are young people in the main) in places like India who, desperate for a job to earn money, work in those call centres from which so many nuisance calls originate.  But I have no sympathy for the companies that employ them.  Nor do I have any sympathy at all for those people who use emails and telephone calls to con people out of money.  I sincerely hope that I am not and never will be sufficiently gullible to fall for the sort of trick I heard about only yesterday.

This involved a gang on men who telephoned elderly people claiming to be from the police.  They told their intended victims of problems with their banks and persuaded them to draw out their funds and hand them to the "police" for safe-keeping when a gang member called at the victim's house.  I find it incredible that anybody could be naive enough to fall for that - but one woman aged in her 70s drew out £130,000 and handed it over!

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