An email with an attachment just landed in Outlook at work titled Phone Scams: Crime Prevention Outreach to Schools. Reading off the forward list, the email has gone quite quite a long way before it finally reached staff. I suspect that teachers in MOE will be getting the same email very soon if not already, and requested to go through its materials with their charges.
So what’s the attachment about? Well, there’s been a spate of phone-scams that’s occurred recently. Even my uncle got one not too long ago, complete with panicked hollering on the other end that sounded as though a child was indeed kidnapped. So, we’re now all charged to brief our students on these kidnapping scams (among other types).
Speaking of crank calls, it’s funny because just on Friday afternoon last week I received another unwanted call but from telemarketers. Yep, the people all of us hate. It used to be quite frequent i.e. bad for me a year ago with the primary culprit coming from Standard Chartered bank. I’m fine with the occasional telemarketing call, like maybe just once a year, but after it was a regular nuisance, I wrote to the bank requesting they get in touch with me. When they called me back, they got an earful and since then agents representing Standard Chartered have stopped calling.
Anyway, the call on Friday was from agents claiming to represent ABN Amro. I was right in the middle of trying to work out a lesson summary sheet, and decided 5 minutes of time would be time well spent to give these fellows another piece of my mind. So, I wrote another one of my big and bombardistic emails to the bank requesting they cease and desist.
I wasn’t expecting them to reply, really, since the tone of that email was, well, not very pleasant. No vulgarities (really), but I was just telling them in a not very nice way to go far far far far away. So, very surprisingly, within 10 minutes I received a reply from a bank officer by email apologizing for having caused inconvenience, stating they have taken relevant steps to prevent future occurrences, excluding me from future marketing efforts, and asking for my trust in that this matter has been resolved in my favor.
Not too bad. Despite ABN Amro calling me when I’ve never asked to be call, they’ve scored points for at least being responsive. Now, if they’ll only hold up their end of the bargain now.:)
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