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Is everything a scam these days?

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We’ve been having trouble with our landline.

Yes, you read that correctly. The old fashioned form of communication we decrepit antique humans grew up using. It doesn’t take pictures or track your location or allow you to cruise porn…. but when the power goes out? It still works without charging. There’s something to be said for simple technology.

We hooked up a landline when we first moved to this house 22 years ago and never saw any need to cancel it. It’s the number we give to businesses and doctors offices and all those annoying things you sign up for that require one. It’s our junk call line and saves our cell phones from being inundated with spam.

Anyhoo…. I’ve noticed the line has been scratchy with distortion lately, but didn’t pay it much attention. Until the other day when my husband tried to use the phone and couldn’t. Sure enough, the line was stone cold dead.

After an aggravating half an hour trying to reach a non artificial life form at the phone company, I was connected to ‘Ruby’… who said she was from the Philippines but sounded like she got there by way of Mumbai. I explained the problem and after giving her my cell phone as a contact number, an appointment was made for a tech visit. Problem solved. Great.

I thought no more about it… until I started receiving random texts from unrecognized numbers in Idaho and Nebraska and South Dakota an hour later. They said, “What’s wrong with your phone? Have you blocked me?” and “Why haven’t I heard from you?” and “Hi! How have you been?”

I don’t know anyone in Idaho, Nebraska or South Dakota and the timing smells a bit fishy.

I had to give my cell number to the phone company because the phone I was calling about was dead…. and now I’m getting fishy texts.

Is everything a scam these days?

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30 thoughts on “Is everything a scam these days?”

    1. The awful part is, they set up an appointment and the morning they were due to come I got a recorded message cancelling it due to “unforeseen circumstances”. They’re supposed to reschedule. And yeah… the phone is still dead.

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      1. Yeah I would say…according to the article i sent..that there is a pretty good chance it will stay dead. And that the local phone companies customer service line was probably snatched up by scammers, sigh.

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  4. We gave up our landline a few years ago because the only calls we were getting on it were scams, dozens of times a day. If I had a dollar for every Publishing Clearing House contest I won, I would be rich. At least on the cell phone I don’t answer any unfamiliar numbers.

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  5. i got two emails this week that i thought were a scam. i concluded that maybe there were legit but addressed to the wrong person, but i get phishing attempts all the time.

    i didn’t even know a landline could be subject to a scam. sad!

    ps if i saw correctly that you deleted a comment i just want to thank you for posting it. it is helpful to know what other people experience. but if you changed your mind about putting that info out, it makes complete sense. thank you, rivergirl.

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  6. At least your landline is (was) a legit landline. Mine was converted to VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) a few years ago, meaning if the power (or the internet) goes out, the landline goes out, and since cellphone service is lousy in my house, even that goes out through my router. I might have to go outside to make a call if power goes.

    Right now, the sidewalks in my neighborhood are all torn up to install new fiber optic cable. So far nothing has died.

    If everything is a scam, I expect to start getting more spamming for writing this comment. 😉

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  7. Everything has the POTENTIAL to be a scam, which is pretty much a yes to your question. We too have an old-fashioned landline that was converted to a VOIP. It is the number we give to people we have no intention of giving shit about, and also to important folks as a backup to our cell. We only check messages if we scroll and see a number we recognize, As for the scam calls/texts? The only thing we can do is ignore them or respond with a link to Amway.

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  10. Our lwndl8ne com0any did us a dirty this year. For years we have been using an andwering machine and know hiw to use it for all ,inds of things. But Telus decided we needed their answering service whether we wanted it or not, and added it without telling us. Our answering machine sat there for weeks with no messages, including ones from doctors and other health providers that we were expecting. Finally we called up Telus to see whwt was up one day after I phoned a doctor only to have her receptionist say they hwd been leaving a message a week and they were wondering if we were dead. Telus told us that the service was now included with a no opt out (option?). So how are we supp8sed to know when we have a message? I asked.
    Oh, you have to call the message line and give them your pin number!
    So what it the number for the message service?
    We left in a a message because there was no answer!
    I lost it! I DON’T KNOW I HAVE A NEW MESSAGE SERVICE OR HOW TO USE IT BECAUSE THE INSTRUCTIONS ARE IN A MESSAGE THAT I CAN’T GET! (Add expletives wherever you think they should go. Be generous!)
    There is no need for that kind of language , sir!
    If you don’t think so then you must be a robot! (With expletives!)
    She hung up on me, of course.
    It took another 10 calls before I got through to someone who understood the problem. I had kind of calmed down by then.
    The old answering machine beeped when we got a message. We yad to buy new phones with screens to tell us when there is a message. They just took it for granted everyone had a phone with a screen on it. We were still using the same phone I had for the past 30 or so years, a solid plastic black touch dial. with a cord attached. I liked that phone! I took out my frustrations smashing it with an axe.

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  11. Geeez!! I begrudgingly expect faceless businesses to sell my info, but not a phone company!!

    I get lots of spam but apparently it’s little compared to others… no vmails and only a few of the “Hey, is this [legal first name]?” with no info about who is txting me.

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  13. We had a landline until about two years ago. It took a looooong time for me to agree to get rid of it, and sometimes I really miss it. For example, when I’m running around the house looking for my phone (a daily occurrence), I used to just pick up my landline and call my cellphone. Voila! Granted, if the Husband is home he can just hit “find my iphone,” but when he’s not here? I’m screwed.

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