Episode #195: Everything Is Cyclical These Days

Use your imagination for a caption, because mine certainly would offend most normal people.

Everything is cyclical these days, no matter whether you're writing or dealing with something that can be mildly annoying. Like telephone scammers.

This post was actually inspired by a Facebook memory from three years ago {10/28/2020}, when I was counting down the final two days to retirement {note: three years ago, October 31st fell on a Sunday so I had to retire on the last day of the work week, which was Friday October 30, 2020}, which being my humorous self broke it down by days/hours/minutes/seconds.

Anyways, it got me thinking about where life is often cyclical in nature, which led me to thinking about scammers from India. We still have a landline that often serves as 4th number backup when people can't be reached on their cell number. I'll zip right to the T.L.;D.R. of sending money to charities gets your personal info sold.

Early on in my retirement, I used to have all kinds of long(ish) phone calls with scammers trying to sell all kinds of useless stuff {e.g. Spectrum/Comcast/DirectTV/AT&T, Micro$oft, Amazon}. I first started by pretending to be gay and making passes at all of the male callers {they're extremely homophobic in India}. After a while, I switched off to giving all kinds of semi-fake information to the callers, but even that got kind of boring. So I would go into a "cyclical" phase of simply trying to make the phone call as brief as humanly possible WITHOUT hanging up on them, average length being  about one minute.

Side note: My mother ultimately wasted a bit of money in having call blocking on the phone, simply because all scammers employ spoofing phone numbers, which makes it virtually impossible to block the number.

Again, I eventually got bored being that brief on the phone {yes, I know, I need a life. I'm retired, so sue me} and started to once again, get creative with the calls. Over the past three years, I have done the following:

1} Used different voices, like a bad version of Mrs Doubtfire, Tim Conway's "Old Man" or a redneck/hillbilly/trailer park denizen. Even when I would talk in my normal voice, I was always called, "ma'am" or "miss". Sometimes I would pretend to be offended.

2} Because I would get two different types of callers: Indians and everyone else. For everyone else, I would concoct creative, if moderately plausible, stories when they ask if I was in an accident a few years ago. Of course, the stories got darker every time they called. With the Indian callers, I would do things like ask about the weather in India, compliment their voice, ask about their personal life, etc.

3} For certain types of Indian calls, the stories would get a little realistic. For example, for the Spectrum/Comcast calls, I would either tell them an outrageous amount of boxes or joyously greet them as a long lost co-worker. Twice I shocked them so bad that I managed to get a real customer service number out of them. If it was from one of those fake utilities, like for solar power, I would pose as a hapless businessman who paid all of his bills in cash, had no credit or debit cards and begged to get his rebate as a gift card. Once, I had a scammer explain to me what a WalMart card was.

Since everything is cyclical in nature for me, we are currently back on the downhill slope to dullness. Because it's so easy to tell where the call is actually coming from (pro-tip: there is about a one second connection delay in which you will hear a distinct "boop" sound, which means the call is from India) and what kind of call it is: no "boop" sound means you'll get an AI voice that needs to be dealt with before you go to the actual call, and more often than not, it's for the accident payment scam; a "boop" sound means, at least for me, a Medicare scam.

For the former, it usually takes me no more than twenty-five seconds to get through the AI, then I simply say, "Thank you for calling GEICO/State Farms/Liberty Mutual Insurance, how may I direct your call?", which in turn makes them hang up. For the Medicare scam, once they start asking if I have part A & B, I say, "Thank you for calling the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. How may I direct your call?", which again makes them hang up.

Note: the latter business stated is the actual federal agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid.

Overall, I'm having lots of fun doing this, and as always, I'm always shooting for the Golden Sombrero of making the caller deviate from their script. Haven't had any luck, but it's not for the lack of trying. If  you're really interested in seeing scammers being made to look like fools, there is a channel on YouTube called IRLRosie, who specializes in doing this, both solo and in a group effort. She is a very talented voice over artist and musician.

Hope you have a very happy Halloween this year!

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved