Dang.. I hung up....

I like to remember their names and then when there's a moment to get a word in edge wise I address them by their name and wish them a nice day and then explain that I am going to hang up.

They usually wish me a nice day in response and we both get on with our lives.

best regards,
mike

This happened to me too Herb.

Some A-rab called and said he was calling from Microsoft technical support and they detected a problem with my Windows 8 installation and was calling to help me with it. I don't even have Windows 8. I just hung up on him.

I also had another thing happen to me recently since we moved here to MO that's actually kind of scary.

I kept getting these calls from those people in India asking for Jerry Sumner. One call said I won a trip, another trying to sell me something, and another one saying he was a Sgt. from the Missouri State Police and he even gave me a badge number. I would get 5 ~ 8 calls a day asking for this Jerry Sumner, saying he won stuff, saying the police were looking for him, trying to sell him crap.

I hung up on the guy who said he was with the State Police because I know damn well these good old boys ain't ever lettin' one of those guys on the force. So ... I called the State Police and asked them if they were looking for a guy named Sumner. They said it must be a scam and what revealed it was the fact that he said he was a Sgt. They don't have Sgt.'s in the Mo. State Police. So I gave him my name and told him we just moved here and that I wasn't this Sumner guy.

The calls continued.

One night I was really tired and in a **** of a mood and I get a call. I freaking laid in to this lady and she finally broke character and said she was with a collection agency and Sumner owed them money. She even knew my address. So ... I told her that I was not him and if she was really with a collection agency she could look on line and see who lives at that address now and see that no Jerry Sumner ever lived here. She said she'd have the calls stopped and I haven't gotten one since.

I get mail here all the time addressed to different people. I bet I got 30 letters with 30 different names on them. The only thing I can think of is, I have Vonage. Before you sign up, before you even register ... you go to their web site and see if there is a phone number available in your area. Whoever this dirtbag was, I bet he used one of those numbers for a scam somehow, and I ended up with the number and that's why I was getting the calls.

Scams, identity theft, crime, murders, arson, is rampant here. I stopped watching the news 1 week after I was here ... it's that bad. Regret moving here now, especially after this Sumner deal.

My mother used to get them 3 - 4 times a day from an Indian call centre, usually about 'investment opportunities'. I picked the phone up one time and asked to speak to the guy's supervisor. Once I'd finished calmly explaining to him what it's like for an 82 year old woman with chronic osteoporosis to have to struggle to the phone only to find it's 'him' again, and for him to imagine his own mother in that scenario, he agreed to remove the number from his database and never call again. So far, so good.

I had one of those 'computer virus' calls too, and took a few minutes to explain where I would like to insert his computer. He hasn't called back since either.

The ones that just keep coming are the automated PPI claims ones, every day, around 5 - 7 pm.