Thursday, March 8, 2012

Good deeds and telephone scams

Grandma Coco just returned to the Kingdom to find a message on her telephone answering machine. What? You're surprised she has one? Of course, she does. She's a Modern Woman.

The message wasn't for her. It was for someone else, obviously left in error. In the past, Grandma Coco, being a nice person has returned the call to explain that the terribly important message didn't reach the intended recipient. The last time, it was some poor little girl who was too sick to take her shift at McDonald's and was trying to find a replacement. We felt good we had helped out.

This time......the phone number that was left started out 1-876-(and seven more numbers). Immediately, we thought, "Oh, no problem....it's a toll-free number. We can be helpful and do a good deed at no financial cost to ourselves." Most other people we know would think the same thing.

Some little niggling concern was wiggling around in our brain....1-876.....is that really a toll-free number?? There are so many now and we are so tired of the struggle to keep up. We googled.

1-876 is a Jamaican area code. IF we had been nice guys, we would have been dialing long distance to Jamaica. Folks, we're just not that nice.

We're pretty sure it's a scam. We just can't figure out exactly how that scam would work. If anyone knows, please enlighten us in the comments. Please.

And for everyone who finds this message on their machine.......please, be careful. It's a jungle out there.

2 comments:

  1. If only these scammers would use their clever brains for something good...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Telephone scams or any other kinds, I think everybody should check Scam Detector, an app that Apple released recently. They have hundreds and hundreds of scams exposed, in several industries. For those interested, the app has an online presence as well: www.scam-detector.com

    ReplyDelete

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