I got one of those spam calls saying I was prequalified for a loan. I was bored so I answered and once they did their opening pitch I asked, “How much am I prequalified for and what is the rate?” Turns out I had to give them all this information to verify me. “No, you said I’m pre-qualified. So how much am I pre-qualified for?” Turns out they needed that information to find out. I said, “You obviously have all that information if I’m pre-qualified for a loan.” After wasting 20 minutes of his time, it turns out that all they had was my name. phone number and address and that no, there was no loan in existence that I had pre-qualified for.
tl;dr I was not pre-qualified for a loan.
I’m amazed they didn’t just cheerfully split a hair: ‘no, you’re pre- qualified; not qualified, that hasn’t happened yet.’
They kept using that word. I don’t think it means what they thought it means.
We live in a world when you can “pre-board” an airplane – which as George Carlin pointed out – means that you “board before you board”. So you can pre-board with the confidence that you’ve been pre-approved for a loan or, as I was recently informed in an email, pre-approved for a prestigious credit card. And if you think about what all this bullshit really means, you can be preemptively pre-annoyed.
“It’ll be just enough for you to afford that new restaurant ‘service fee’ line item!”
I wasn’t going to talk about this because it’s not for certain but I’ve just been informed that I may have won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.
When i get a call and I don’t recognize who the call is coming from or nobody says anything, I always say, “Hello”. (I don’t say “Yes” at any point during the call, since they may want to record that and claim that I said “Yes” in reply to their question if I wanted their offer, whatever it is.) If they say nothing in reply to “Hello”, I hang up. If they start talking about what they want to sell me, I say “What do you need?” At the point after that when it becomes clear to me that I don’t want to give them money or take a loan from them, I hang up without saying anything. That way they’ve only wasted fifteen seconds of my time rather than twenty minutes of it.
I was driving so no loss of my time
You talked on the telephone while you were driving?
Hands free. Not sure what the problem is.
I pick up but if I don’t recognize the number I don’t say anything at all. A computer will just hang up. A human will attempt to talk to me.
Congratulations! I think I did one better, though, when I was able to dodge the law enforcement agents who were on their way to my house because I had committed Social Security fraud. It has been few years since that incident, and I guess I am a fugitive on the run, but I check the wanted posters at the local PO and my face never appears…
I got an email like that, but I ignored it because I don’t need loans anymore. A very kind Nigerian gentleman is going to send me several million dollars. I’m just waiting for the transfer now that I’ve given him my bank account number.
I would never talk on the telephone if I wee driving. The fact that it’s a hands-free call is irrelevant. It’s interrupting your concentration on driving.
I think it’s like that old saying about the Lottery:
You can’t win if you don’t play.
Must any passengers in the car remain silent as well? No radio either?
Not quite in my experience. Sometimes I get calls where no human or computer answers my “Hello”. It will just stay silent for awhile. It may stay silent for a long time. Sometimes the human will say something that I don’t understand at first. After hemming and hawing for awhile, they say something that makes me realize it is an important call. I don’t remotely have the all the important numbers memorized, so I can’t possibly recognize the numbers.
I hardly ever have any passengers. I don’t listen to the radio or to CDs unless I’m on a highway with no turns coming for quite a while. I keep the distractions as small as possible if a have any turns coming up soon.
I got a call from someone who, after asking if I was the owner of the home at [my address] asking if I had any interest in selling it. When I replied, “Not a bit” they then asked if I had any other property I was interested in selling. I said no and hung up before they asked about my [non-existent] car’s warranty.
This is a good example of truth in advertising. It’s also an example of the sin of omission, because the other half of the truth is:
You can’t win if you do play, either.