It seemed like a typical business call – except that Microsoft Support was calling me! I’ve been online for 16 years and not once in that time has a support service called ME! So alarms started going off immediately.
Here’s what happened next… Click to watch the video.
Darrell Williams: What formatting company do you use for your ebooks? I love your books and the way it’s...
Janet Wahl: Hi Jeanette, Thanks for your response. My books are “textbooks” or books that will be used...
Caroline: Some great tips here, the point about unsecured wi-fi is so important as it poses so many security risks....
Jeanette Cates: Thanks for your comments, James. Personally, I’m torn. While I understand the value of...
James Cochrane: Hey Jeanette, I think the new system is fairer to authors who produce high quality and lengthier...
Card member services drives me crazy. They call from strange area codes so I don’t recognize them and then say “nothing is wrong with your account” and then to hold… I have gotten as many as 6 calls a day on my cell phone….drives me crazy to run for the phone for a scam call!
Oh, I’ve gotten those, too. But if they can’t tell me which card and the account number, I just hang up. This was a new one for me.
And just a time and stress saver – use caller ID on your phone. Makes it easy to screen. We also have a multi-handset phone, so we keep a handset in several different rooms, rather than having to run.
Finally, I rarely answer the phone during work hours or dinner. My family calls my cell if they want me and everyone understands that I use the phone for MY convenience, not theirs. So I’ll call them back as soon as I take a break. Otherwise phone calls can break your focus.
Of course, if you have a business that is phone-based (mine is email-focused), then it’s kinda important to answer. Just depends on your online business model!
Great info – good thing I don’t answer the phone either. I did lose money once to a guy (many years ago) who said I could get some personalized pens with an order for something or other. I tried to say “no” but he was very very good. He won, I lost. However, my biggest loss was a laptop computer through eBay – a guy supposedly in Italy wanted to buy my laptop and begged me to sell it outside of eBay to avoid the customs charges (or whatever) because it was the holidays. The escrow set up he had looked VERY legitimate so I was trying to be nice and did it through that escrow and not eBAY – needless to say I never say any money and he got my laptop. There doesn’t need to be a sucker born every minute because statistically speaking I can “sub” for a good number of them 🙂
Thanks for alerting us Jeanette. We can always count on you to take care of us.
Terrie
Wow, that’s some scary stuff, Terrie. I tend to be pretty skeptical – and like you, have been burned several times. That’s why I try to put out the alert when I am nearly fooled again.
Thanks for sharing your experiences.
My cell phone gets a lot of those credit card calls as well – When I ask, “Which account?” they say either MasterCard or Visa. When I ask which one, since i have a couple and I do not get an account number I hang up.
Here is the next thing I do – I add that phone number to an entry titled, “Tele-Marketer”. I have quite a list of numbers under this entry.
Now when one of them call me, I know I am not missing an important call from some number I do not know!
Thanks for the MS spam call alert! I did not know that was happening! I will be on the look out!
Be Well.
Paul.
What a good idea, Paul! I’m sure a lot of readers will take your advice and set up a Telemarketer label on their cell phones.
I don’t get many telemarketers on my cell, but I do get a lot of realtors. You see, my number is just one number off of a major real estate investor’s – so I get people to set up showings, inquiries about properties, etc. In fact, my answering message now says “This is not a real estate number.” But turns out a lot of realtors don’t listen to the welcome message – and leave call-backs anyway!
Isn’t technology wonderful? 🙂
This scam is world-wide. I run a team of 40+ South African-based editors. One of my very experienced team members got just such a call and sadly responded. She literally lost control of her computer. She had to get serious intervention help and had days of frustration to get a working machine again.
So I can only agree: be careful.
Desray J
Desray – thanks so much for sharing that! Too often we think it only happens to us – so it’s good to be reminded how much we share – the good AND the bad! 🙂
While I was lucky to avoid this phone scam, I can just imagine what a mess it would be to clean up!
Always appreciate your stopping by –
Jeanette