Yesterday I got a call which my phone told me was SPAM CALL so I didn’t answer. Then I got a voice mail. I decided to listen just to see which spam (Social Security having me arrested? car warranty expiring?) and heard: “You Fuck Shit”. Huh? (for the record, no I don’t.)
This is embarrassing - got a call on my cell this morning, purporting to be from the local electric company (but caller ID was a local-ish number, no name). “Service disruption in 30 minutes to an hour”, press 4 for info.
To my everlasting shame, I pressed 4. Got a gentleman with a very light Indian accent who claimed that I was in arrears. When I said that was bullshit because I’m in auto-pay, I got disconnected.
Worried that I was disconnected for using bad language I spent way too much time tracking down my account info and bank records to make sure I have actually been paying my bill lately (since them stopping the auto-pay is not out of the question).
I still have power, so no worries.
A robocall for an emergency service disruption is not out of the realm of possibility( though I’ve never heard of one). Tying it to “you’re past due and you have an hour to pay” is a dead giveaway, autopay or not.
I believe that PG&E in Northern California might robocall to warn of disruptions when they shut off power to an area because of fire danger. But it will say PG&E, not a local number, and they give details.
And they never would shut off power due to any kind of billing issue in an hour. Never been through that, but I’m pretty sure they send lots of letters.
It could expose them to serious liabilities. There might be someone on life-support for example.
Anyone else getting a whole bunch of phishing attempts from “amazon.co.jp” in the past few weeks?
You mean their offer to ship me to Tokyo for ¥1000 was a scam?
My county has a Code Red system that you can sign up for. They provide severe weather warnings as well as possible power outages. Caller ID says “Code Red”. I also get text alerts at the same time.
I’m getting multiple “Lending Tree” calls each day, and all of them are live callers. I’ve got time to waste, so I do my best to waste theirs.
Yeah, we have a city emergency system, too, but not for paying your bills!
Just got a call on my cell; caller ID said “scam likely” but I picked up anyway. It was an Indian woman with an accent so strong that I couldn’t understand what she was talking about.
I expect she didn’t understand what she was talking about, either.
We still laugh about the customer support specialist named "Hellomynameis Rrrrrrogyah".
“Sorry… was that Roger?”
“Oh, yes of course that is it… Rrrogerrr.”
(poor guy, his mouth had never made those sounds before)
[me laughing] “I’m betting your parents did not name you Roger…”
“Oh, no, sir. If you would prefer you may call me Santosh.”
You got a call from Santosh Clowws?
Cool.
so - you just told this person that you had no home security system…
Hadn’t thought of that. Maybe I should get a gun.
I’m retired and hardly ever go out anyway.
I once had someone come to my door alleging to be from alarm system company ADM who asked if he could come in and he would show me all the areas of my home vulnerable to theft.
Yeah…no. I mean, he might well have been from ADM but still, that’s all kinds of questionable.
Did he mean ADT, or was Archer-Daniels-Midland going to protect your garden? 
Of course I meant ADT. Where’s our facepalm emoji?
Yep - this is the way it’s always worked when the CC company questioned a charge. Actually, they usually stop the NEXT purchase, not the questionable one.
Oddly, they’ve never caught anything that WAS unauthorized - like the time I happened to notice that apparently I’d been dining in New York, along with buying gasoline several times and using the card to pay to park the car at a meter.
But the time I bought 11 pairs of shoes at a time in NJ (I am not from NJ), the charge went through just fine, THEN they locked the card and we had to contact them to get it unlocked. To be fair, that was a pretty out-of-the-ordinary purchase. The time the bank locked the card because I’d been making multiple back-to-school purchases around the area was more eyebrow-raising. And banks differ as to whether they even notify you that the card is locked - usually I find out when I try to use it again.