The BBC app is now insisting I subscribe. As this service is subsidized by the government for the public, it’s just greed. Plus, my husband is British: why should he and his fellow countrymen pay when abroad, but not at home?
I got hit with a new scam. Well, new to me. Jury Duty. Anyone else?
I get a call from someone named Detective Jones - who has a thick accent I couldn’t quite place. Apparently the issue is that their are warrants out for my arrest for ignoring a jury duty summons. They were all over me with my old address in Maine, where I hadn’t lived in five years. I told them this and I got a patented scammer, “Ohhh nooo …” I didn’t really pay too much attention to what he was saying as I was busy looking up a few things here and there … like the phone number he gave me for the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department, which was legit. I didn’t accept his personal number that he wanted me to have. I was also busy just looking up “Jury Duty Scam” and sho nuff, I got hits like Berry Gordy. I was trying to think of ways to string him along, but I wasn’t really sure where he was going to try to lead me - I didn’t know the mechanism of the scam. I asked him to give me the number again and I told him I’d call him as soon as I verified everything. I didn’t wait for him to argue with me to stay on the line and I was about 99% sure it was a scam so I made sure to utter aloud, “I bet this asshole is full of shit. This must be a scam,” before I hung up.
I found a video on YouTube that basically lays out the whole scam. The first five minutes of this guy’s experience was mine as well … almost as though it were scripted, hmmm.
I’ve heard of the jury duty scam, but I haven’t personally seen it. Speaking of scams though, my good email account has been hit again with the ShinyHunters “we have your compromising data, send us crypto or we’ll release it” scam. The spam filter grabbed it, so that was nice. The big differences this time are that the sender identifies the site where they obtained my email address, and acknowledges that this is the second time they’ve attempted to contact me.
For all the good it will do, I reported it to my email provider.
I’ve received a number of pieces of spam (that went right into my spam folder) that warn me of various charges, or delinquencies, or whatever. Except the “sender” is me. For some reason, lazy and/or stupid spam bot designers have the bright idea that people will trust a source that is supposedly themselves.
(Actually, it’s probably some glitch where they accidentally put the receiver’s info in the sender field, but still, it looks really stupid and they might as well be saying, “I’m a scam, please don’t trust me.”)
I get loads of those! I also get ones that just say they’re to “you” (expanding the header does nothing), which I guess is the result of a mailing list or whatever was used to send the emails to a large group of people.
Umm, if your husband isn’t a UK tax payer, why would it be fair that he should get stuff funded by UK taxes? In that situation, people at home are paying already.
Besides, that’s not actually the case. The BBC is not directly funded by the UK government, so they can - in theory - maintain independence. The government just sets the price of the licence fees, paid for by UK residents, which are the main source of income (topped up by their commercial wing).
There’s currently a big shortfall in the BBC’s budget; the licence uptake has dropped as people move away from traditional TV, hence the fees to the US audience, and costs have gone up. They’re not being greedy at all, they’re massively in the red and just cut 2000 staff.
And if they would just offer iPlayer as a streaming service, similar to Netflix, I would happily subscribe. Because now I have to have all the local channels, which I never watch, just to get QI XL and other panel shows.
My friend, who moved out of state awhile ago, asked me my e mail.
Now Im getting the Kenneth Copeland newsletter.
If I had wanted it, I would’ve signed up myself.
For all those years when he did have a house in the UK and was paying a TV licence, but still couldn’t access iplayer?
Point taken, but fixing the budget shortfall on the backs of foreigners isn’t a great longterm plan. The education sector does this, too, all because they’re afraid to raise taxes.
I overheard one of my coworkers proudly proclaim that she was racist while taking with our solicitor. I knew she was maga to some degree but this stunned me a bit.
My inner eyebrows shot up and my fists clenched.
A huge number of people I work with are of this persuasion including the administrator so I’m on my own in enemy territory until I retire.
You’ll be in enemy territory until you emigrate to a civilized country. Which ain’t gonna happen.
We’re all in enemy territory for the duration.
At least when I retire I can be done with these morons on a daily basis.
And I can’t move to another country.
I can just hope to avoid as much of this as possible.
Yeah, that’s all most of us can do. Better of course if you live in a blue zipcode. But even then, the reality is purple-ish. And the red folks are very vehement.
I live in western PA. Deep in maga territory. 
You have my deepest sympathies. I don’t know that I’d be able to grit my teeth hard enough to go to work every day without getting fired for being too confrontational. I wonder whether there are any kindred spirits there who are loath to speak up.
Thankfully there are some like minded people where I work but I don’t think anyone would speak up unless it became remarkably offensive. I do a lot of gritting.
Today my deparment at work officially switches over to the call center section of our parent company. Today is Monday, our busiest day of the week.
So far it’s been a total fustercluck.
Fully two thirds of my group can’t even get to the programs we need to do our jobs. The ones who can are getting steamrolled by a metric ton of calls that would usually be spread out among 50-odd people. Our triage line is not working. Leadership is running around trying to get IT to fix it. IT is trying to figure out wtf happened.
I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes reading SDMB because I can’t do my job.
As long as you’re still getting paid …
True dat.
Over an hour later I am still not able to get into my programs but I have done all of the education/training modules in my queue. So at least that’s done. I would take the time to set up my work webcam but that would require one of the supervisors to be available to test it out and they’re a little busy right now.
And that, sons and daughters, is why we never break the cardinal rule of major workplace changes: NEVER DO THEM ON A MONDAY.
Oh, and the triage line is fixed which is a major win because that’s for, you know, emergencies.