Fraud is all around us.
We still have a landline in our home, and the only phone calls we get (outside of the ones from our parents) are from:
People selling extended warranties
Some kind of “fund the police” recording that pretends to be live, with fake jocularity
Persons in crowded rooms speaking with non-North American accents
You know the typical fraud call. There’s a pause; you hear a busy “call center” buzz in the background. Most times, the person on the line has an accent.
One of the things that people who work at home will do is take the fraud call and engage the person in a long conversation — maybe you’re waiting for your computer to reboot, for instance. Every moment you keep that “tech support” person on the phone pretending to look at your TV’s “signal frequency,” you keep that person from calling an elderly individual who might get roped in by the scam.
It’s a public service we do.
Scams
A popular scam is the “You ordered big things from Amazon and it has charged your credit card” gambit. You press “1” so you can talk to a helpful representative — who will kindly take your credit card information in order to “fix the situation.”
As you can imagine, when I started getting recorded calls from “Discover” telling me my card (long in hibernation) had “two charges from Amazon on it that appear suspicious — push ‘1’ to talk to a representative” — I ignored it, over and over again.
That is, until one day I got an actual email from Discover showing two (smallish) charges from Amazon that I indeed did not make. This was a card I don’t use at all, so I went online immediately, signed in, and found the charges. I “contested” them (they had an actual “contest this charge” button right there), and they were eliminated in seconds.
Actually pretty efficient.
But, fool me once…
Cutting the Cord
I decided I did not need or want to have an open card that was subject to fraudulent charges (this seemed like a bit of a “test fraud” leading to bigger things, frankly), so I called their number to close it. The operator tried to hook me with a 0% deal, but I waved it off.
Done and done.
Until yesterday, when I got this:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, inside of a stamped envelope, with a cover letter, was this check for…
TWENTY-ONE CENTS.
And a letter:
Enclosed please find a check for $0.21 representing the remaining Rewards balance of your account.
So, a stamp, envelope, cover letter, and perforated check were deployed in order to make good on…
…twenty-one cents.
It came on March 31st - - so close. I wish I could say APRIL FOOL, but, alas, it’s real.
Be careful out there …