The scourge of modern life

Yesterday afternoon I arrived to stay overnight on the south coast with my 92 year old father in advance of accompanying him on a visit to a consultant at a local hospital today.

He seemed on pretty good form despite not being particularly clear in our conversation about who might have visited him over the weekend, or since, and/or what he had been doing generally.

No change there, then.

Then his carer walked in with a different topic of conversation and possibly a confession.

At some point in the last three days he had fielded a phone call on the land line apparently from the house’s internet provider asking him to go to the computer and check something or another.

At this point I immediately spotted a potential fly (or should I have said ‘rat’?) in the ointment: surely he was not going to tell me he had meekly complied with the instruction and done as he was bid?

He had meekly complied with the instruction and done as he was bid.

They had asked him to do a few things – presumably the better to enable them to install some fraud-enabling software or malware upon our family computer. So he did.

He was then advised that there had been a bish and he (or was it the household?) were now due a refund of £130. Which they then purported to send to him – the news of this he later passed on to my father with great glee and excitement, adding that a refund and/or compensation for something was now on its way.

A few minutes later [I could see where this was going] he was called again and guess what?

They were sorry, but the previous compensation payment of £130 had been a mistake. Instead – it so happened [there was an explanation of sorts given to the carer, but I didn’t quite follow it] that in fact he (the carer) now owed them £800 and would he now mind very much sending this amount to them forthwith?

It was at the point when the person on the other end of the line asked him to send the £800 to a bank account in Nepal that – the carer told me – he began to sense that something wasn’t quite right …

“YES, CHARLIE – YOU’D BEEN SCAMMED, YOU IDIOT!” I heard myself exclaiming in exasperation, frustrated that he could have been so naïve.

It is a fact of modern life that, in the area where my father lives, all sorts of scammers, fraudsters and ne-re-do-wells regularly pepper the village residents with phone calls at random, sometimes even unlikely, times of the day purporting to be peddling everything from window double-glazing, to re-tarmacking of the driveway, to pensions, insurance, fantastic investment opportunities and God-knows-what-else.

We have had the phone line provider ramp up the ‘call filtering’ software to max several times  over the years and yet still these monsters get through – and keep trying to part innocent homeowners from their hard-earned cash.

These bastards must have obtained (or is it bought?) my father’s  – and other people’s – phone numbers from sundry lists of contacts collected and made available at a suitable fee by utility companies, charities, electoral or church registers and possibly even the various well-known tramps dispersed around the neighbourhood.

What irritates me exceedingly is that they don’t mind what time of day or night they pester you. It can be any time from 7.15am in the morning to 9.00pm at night (by which time, mostly, I have gone to bed and therefore have to wake, get up and struggle downstairs to the sitting room telephone in order to take their calls).

Worst of all are those calls from call centres based in Mumbai and similar that run roughly as follows:-

“Is that Mr Ingolby?”

“It is a Mr Ingolby. Which one do you want?”

“Mr Ingolby, we’re just making a few call to ask if you’d mind taking part in a survey …”

“Let me stop you there. I’m not interested in buying anything – what are you trying to sell me, anyway? …”

“I assure you, Mr Ingolbly I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m only conducting a survey …”

“Go on then, and be quick. I haven’t got much time.”

“Do you have a bank account [ it could be ‘stocks and shares’, or ‘a private pension’] …”

“No, I’m sorry – you’re trying to sell something. If I wished to consider buying anything I would have chosen what it was and rung several purveyors myself, thank you – not responded to the any old con artist working from his back-bedroom in Isleworth …”

“I can assure you, Mr Ingolby …”

“Goodbye – and please don’t ring me again, especially not at 8.20pm in the evening when I’m in the middle of watching Holby City …”

[click].