Tag Archives: nuisance calls

Day 27

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I had a shock on opening my bank statement when I returned home  today. I knew I’d relaxed my spending control over Christmas, but I hadn’t realised I’d spent quite so much. In fact I couldn’t remember spending anything like the amount that was missing. That initiated a search for my bank statement from last month, which I confess I hadn’t opened. I’m not good at things like that. My fear was that my account had been hacked. I worry about things like that as I get older and criminals get sneakier. It turned out that I had simply misremembered the running total I keep in my head. Normally I keep tabs on my cash by using ATMs, but since lockdown I have hardly used one. Julia and my sister, who fill the roles in my life that Bertie Wooster;s aunts played in his, are both keen on me growing up and going online with my banking, but I feel that as long as I don’t go online I can’t be robbed online. Seems logical to me.

Last year, or maybe the year before, I refused to give Amazon my phone details when they wanted to add them to my account. The reason? If my number isn’t on the internet people can’t ring me with nuisance calls. Julia gets a lot of nuisance calls from time to time. There will be none for a while, then they start again, often using software to disguise where they are coming from. Once we had a month of calls from numbers that, according to the caller ID, were coming from all over West Africa. They weren’t, they were coming from one call centre with some clever software. They haven’t quite grasped the psychology of it – if you aren’t going to answer a call from Ghana, you really aren’t going to answer the next one either, even if it does claim to be from the Ivory Coast.

As a result of being careful my mobile has never rung with details of a “parcel delivery” or news that I am the beneficiary of the the will of a deceased African politician.

I’m running out of inspiration for photos, so am reverting to the George II shilling with cunning colour effects.

 

Me Being Grumpy About Modern Life

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We had three phone calls on the landline. We know they are going to be nuisance calls but there;s always the possibility it might be a call I want to take. It never is.

Number One was a call from a man telling us that the roof insulation we had installed ten years ago was dangerous and needed replacing. His company, it seemed, would replace it for us and help us institute legal action against the original installers.  Julia asked where he was calling from and he said “London”. When she said, “No, what company are you calling from?” he hung up. To the best of my knowledge fibreglass isn’t dangerous, lasts forever (though it does go and get less efficient) and shouldn’t be replaced by strangers who ring at random.

Number Two hung up before I could get to it.

Number Three was a lady who delivered the alarming news that my Sky TV equipment was out of guarantee and needed me to take out a new warranty. I’m not sure what was most alarming – the prospect of spending money or the fact I’d got a Sky TV and hadn’t noticed.Was it possible, I asked her, that she was lying to me and was in fact a criminal trying to defraud a vulnerable, though admittedly cantankerous, old man? The phone line must be faulty as it cut us off before I finished my question.

And that, dear readers, is just one of the reasons that I hate modern life and am thinking of having the landline taken out.

On the other hand, by adept use of Amazon and Tesco delivery services I think I have managed to organise presents and chocolates for Julia’s birthday without setting foot in a shop, so there are some good modern things, just not many.

I wrote this a couple of days ago and seem to have forgotten to post it . . .

I have added “senior moment” to the tags. Julia suggested “idiot”.

Running on the Spot

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I had an email from TESCO this morning.

Dear Mr Wilson
We are extremely sorry to let you know that due to store issues, we have unfortunately had to cancel your order that’s due today. You have not been charged for your order.

Kind Regards

Your Grocery Home Shopping Team

The mildest word that escaped my lips is “unacceptable”. Fortunately, I have plenty of food in, and with a little thought can last until next week. We’ve done that before when things have gone wrong. However, this time it’s the casual way they tell you that your social distancing  efforts are all in vain and that your menu planning has been a waste.

I have just rung the company to check that it isn’t some form of clever scam email, but it is true. They have an in-store Covid outbreak. Now, if they’d told me that, I would have sympathised. But just telling mw that they had cancelled the order and are offering no alternative is asking for a negative reaction.

We will have to buy bread, milk, cheese and eggs but probably have enough of everything else. We would normally have plenty of cheese and eggs but I have been cutting back to prevent waste.

Before that, I had my repeat blood test after failing last week’s test. In contrast to last week the phlebotomist was eager to start and I didn’t even have time to sit down in the waiting area before he called me through. Good news is that I bled profusely, so no clotting problems there. Of course, that might mean I have gone too far the other way.

I have also just rung the pharmacy and my methotrexate is in. It’s taken 23 days to work its way through the system and I’ve had to request it twice. This is, of course, from the people who brought us The Great Track & Trace Debacle and Lockdown III – This Time It’s Serious.

The pharmacy, to be fair, has been very efficient – its the on-line ordering that has gone haywire. In the old days you got a piece of paper in your hand. These days you wait for a text, and when it doesn’t come you realise you have no pills and it will be another week, if you are lucky. There’s a lot to be said for simple paper-based systems.

So far it’s been a day of chasing my own tale – lots of jobs done, including getting Julia to work, and writing this post is the only thing I’ve wanted to do. And even this i just a list non-vents in the life of a boring man.

I’ve also had a phone call from someone who claims to be validating Life Insurance Policies, but it felt more like a sales call so I made my excuses and left.

The surgery just rang – I failed my blood test again.  Altered dosage and another test next week again.

And now I’ve had one of those calls pretending to be from Amazon.

There is so much rubbish to deal with before you can actually do anything useful.

Randomness & Remembering

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We had seventeen packages to send before lunch yesterday. One consisted of 200 coins, which needed sorting before packing. It was hard work, particularly when besieged by phonecalls from people with “rare” and “valuable” coins, and a couple of people with “urgent” telephone orders.

It was very tempting, but I behaved in a a cheery and professional manner and nobody was advised to go away and stop bothering me.

Then we went to Sheffield to clear Number Two son’s room. It was hot and traffic on the M1 was slow.

On the way back we stopped at a service station to empty my aging bladder. I treated Julia to a drink and a pastry while we were there, and handed over the equivalent of an hour and a half’s work for two coffees and two lemon tarts. Food for thought…

In the evening I pottered about on the internet. I was doing some research on medals when I found a picture of an avuncular old cove who, with the addition of a beard would very much resemble a whisky-drinking Santa Claus.

Brigadier Peter Young DSO MC

War hero, raconteur, historian, author and founder of the Sealed Knot, it’s Brigadier Peter Young DSO, MC & 2 bars.

The photograph appears several times on the internet so I’m hoping nobody is going to mind me using it.

They don’t make them like him any more.

That led on to the Sealed Knot Book of Remembrance, which, in turn, led to a maudlin half hour of reading and remembering.

I didn’t feel like writing much after that so I turned to writing doggerel for the daily post. I’m trying to become more regular in my habits.