When Charities Become Telemarketers

The ones in the middle
are phone spam too.

I know that fundraising is hard. I understand that charities need money with which to pursue their missions. I would ask them not to follow the example of spam and scam telemarketers. But they do.

Looking over my phone records since the beginning of the year, I find that there are two phone numbers, both of which exceeded the number of calls that I received in the same time period on our home phone from my own husband. I actually like talking to him. When he calls me, it’s usually for a reason that I’m interested in. And he almost never calls and hangs up if I don’t answer (sometimes he calls my cell phone, because unlike telemarketers and fundraisers, he knows my cell phone number).

Although I tend to ignore phone numbers with weird names, call enough, even if you don’t leave messages and my curiosity and ire might actually get the better of me, as I entertain the fantasy that the person who keeps calling me every freaking day and doesn’t leave a message on the answering machine might actually listen if I tell them that in my opinion that their calls have crossed the line into misuse of the telephone.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Do Not Call Is Not Working

Still getting unwanted sales calls? Well, yeah.

Can we be serious here? The National Do Not Call Registry was established in 2003, and started in 2004. Ten years after, it doesn’t seem to be working. Since I’ve been working at home, I’ve been deluged with calls from businesses. Some of them are scams (they hang up the instant you ask for a return phone number), others seem to be legitimate local businesses.

According to the FTC, they’ve settled 105 in the last ten years. Oh, goody, that’s 10 a year. I think I’ve filed that many complaints this year alone. They’ve collected $118 million in civil penalties, and there has been a further $737 million in what they call “other recovery.” There were a further 34 cases for robocalls, which had $51 million in civil penalties and $198 million in that “other recovery” category.[1]

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Beware the Civil Procedure Division Scam!

I’ve been getting calls from an outfit that calls itself the Civil Procedure Division. I finally too the trouble to Google them. They’re a scam. I’m not sure what they expected me to do, since the scam works like this:

Civil Procedure Divison employee:[1]

I’m calling from the Civil Procedure Division. We have documents to deliver for [a relative].[2] Will [relative] be available to accept these documents tomorrow between the hours of 10 and 4?

The first sign that this is a scam is that when you ask for any sort of clarifying information, they hang up on you. The first time I simply denied any ability to accept documents on behalf the named relative. Then they called back, so I tried to dig for information. If you’re nice, they don’t always hang up on you immediately.

I did get a return phone number of 855–778–5234. That doesn’t give me any idea of where they are. Damn. After giving me the number, the woman hung up on me.

I tried again. No dice. Finally, I heard her say, “do not ever call this number again” before she hung up on me. Well, it’s not like they would oblige if I said that, so I had no qualms about trying again. And they hung up on me on the second ring.

I was patient. I called and in a meek voice explained I needed to deliver some legal documents to them,[3] and I asked for an address. I got the “almost” address of a Post Office in Orlando, Florida.

1703 West Wetherbee Road,
Suite 772590
Orlando, Florida, 32877

Now, 1701 West Wetherbee is a Post Office. In other words, they’re Box 2590 at that Post Office.
I’ve contacted the Florida Attorney General and the U.S. Postal Service, reporting attempted fraud in both cases. I’m hoping after today they stay off my back.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook.

---

1. I wasn’t quite certain how to characterize the caller. “Fuckwad” didn’t seem sufficiently clear in context.  ↩
   
2. They’ve been asking about a specific relative. In the context of the scam, it turns out it’s not actually important.  ↩
   
3. They lie. I lie.  ↩
   

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!