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Wednesday 15 October 2014

An accident

It's happened to us all. "You've had an accident within the last three years", he said. Uh. Another spam phone call. Fortunately, I wasn't too busy, so I decided to play with him a bit.

He went on and on. I couldn't really make out what he was saying; the combination of a strong accent, a poor phone line and my usual difficulty of hearing (yes, it's another of my disabilities, don't make fun of me) meant that at the end of his spiel, I didn't really know what he'd said. But then he stopped and it was my turn.

"I've already sent you the paperwork."

That stopped him. Totally. And he passed me over to someone whose accent wasn't quite so strong, and I could actually understand what he said. He was concerned about the paperwork, he said they hadn't received it.

I can't see how he knew; he seemed to know immediately. He didn't check their data, he just knew. So I said, maybe I sent it to the wrong address? "What address did you send it to?" So I gave him the address of another spammer who I'd talked to recently. And then I asked him, "What's your address, what address should I have sent it to?" And he gave me an address, "171 Garrets Lane, SW17 1WX". I feel sure that he made up that address; well, that's fair enough, one fake address traded for another. Oh, and his name was Jack Dawson, and who am I to question whether someone with such a strong Indian accent would be likely to be named Jack Dawson. I was about to use the name of Abdul Abulbul Emir. Pot, kettle.

So he suggested that he send a chap around to hand deliver another form. "No need," I said, "I already send the form back to you. Didn't you get it?" He explained that they have ten offices in England and four in Wales, and he didn't know all the addresses. And he asked for the case number, but I didn't know it, because I already sent off the form. "I'll send you another copy," he said, and proceeded to recite my address, which would be disturbing if I didn't know that they buy voter registration lists. "No," I said, "that's not my name. And that's not my address either" and I got ready to give him the name of  Abdul Abulbul Emir  and the address of another spammer.

But he went a different way. And wanted to know what I'd put in the form I'd filled in. "When was the accident?" he asked. "It's all in the form, have you received it yet?" I think he was getting a bit frustrated now. "No, we haven't received the form." "Well, maybe we should wait a bit and see if it turns up," I said. He wanted to make an appointment, a date and time that he could send someone round. "No need, " I said, "I've already send you all the details." "In the form you sent in," he said. Yes, he's got it. "That's right," I said, and hung up on him, because I was suspecting that he was about to hang up on me, and it's always best to get your retaliation in first..

Then I did 1471 and he'd called from 0845 1541750 so I filed a tps complaint and wrote up this blog.

Not as much fun as the people trying to fix my computer, but I have to take whatever I get offered.

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