Dealing with those suppertime phone calls

Another sensible way to deal with telemarketers       

 

                                                       by Robert LaFrance

 

            There lives in this neighbourhood a lady who is in her ninth decade and who is the most feared person in Canada, at least in the minds of telemarketers.

            Her name is…well, let’s not say what her name is, because telemarketers aren’t the only ones who fear her. If she glared at me, I would run to the next county, then catch a plane to Timbuktu.

            One poor telemarketer – I think it was Megan from Cardholder Services – recently called Bertha (not her real name). It so happened I was there getting her husband to sharpen two axes and a bucksaw. The phone rang.

 

            She sighed and said: “I’ll answer it, Fred. If it’s that nice man pretending to be a bank inspector again, I will have to have another talk with him.” The week before, one of those fraudsters called her and by the time she got through with him, he promised to turn himself in at the nearest RCMP detachment – as long as she stopped talking.

            “It’s Megan, of Cardholder Services,” said Bertha, holding her hand over her phone. “I’ll just talk to her a few minutes.” At that moment I began a fairly significant prayer for Megan’s immortal soul.

            “Well hello Megan,” said Bertha, “and what can I do for you this evening? I believe my husband usually answers when you call four or five times a week but he’s busy. What’s that? You say your company had detected a problem with my credit card and computer interface? What can you mean by that? Oh, you say you don’t want to waste my time with a lot of explanations?

            “That’s all right, Megan. You go ahead and waste my time. I would like to know what problems I have. An older person – I’m in my eighties you know – an older person has to be careful. You’re not a bank inspector too by any chance are you? Oh, you’re not? That’s too bad. The last one said I had too much money in my account and should draw some out so he could check if it was counterfeit. That was good news.”

            After a few minutes, Bertha put the phone on ‘speaker’ so I could hear what was being said.

            “Would you explain what the problem is dear?” she asked sweetly. Megan seemed to gain a little confidence by the grandmotherly tone and started explaining. “We have found there’s a problem with your computer, and – “

            “What problem is that, Megan? By the way, I have a niece named Megan you know. She’s studying to be a nurse in Halifax – or is it Saint John? I can never get those two straight. Anyway, my niece Megan is studying to be a nurse because she wants to help people you know. She wasn’t always like that; she used to tease her little brother something awful. Why I remember the day…”

            Bertha went on like this for some time and every once in a while, poor helpless, hapless, outnumbered Megan of Cardholder Services would try to get a word in, but the flurry of words coming from the other direction was constant.

            “And then there’s my third cousin Arnold,” Bertha was saying. “He tried planting a garden one year – that’s the year he was out of work for eight months after losing his job at the potato processing plant. No, it was almost nine months, because his wife Ellen had the baby just as he started working for the fertilizer company…Oh, I’m so sorry Megan. You were mentioning about my computer?”

            There was a pause, perhaps a pause of shock at this invitation to actually speak. “Well, Mrs., er, Bertha, I just wanted to say that we have found that your computer might have a problem that might make it susceptible to a virus and our software would fix the problem and would keep your credit cards safe too.”

            “And what would it do? Would it kill this virus? Because one thing both Fred and I are very careful of are viruses and things like that. I remember his cousin Vincent over in Renous – he lives there in a barracks building with a lot of other men – Vincent caught a virus from stepping on a rusty nail - ”

            “Oh no Bertha! It’s not that kind of a virus. This is a virus that affects your computer and you can lose all your data. By the way, what kind of computer do you have? What brand is it? So we can send you the right software you know.”

            “Computer?” said Bertha. “I don’t own a computer. Or a credit card either. We wouldn’t have either one of them in the house, what with those viruses and things hanging on to them. I told Fred only last week when he said we should have a credit card…Hello? Megan? Hello?”

                                     -end-