Ford: Do Not Call as this citizen fed up with phone scammers

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Ashley is my new best friend. For weeks, she called me daily, sometimes twice. One memorable day she called three times.

I call her my friend because she has been incessant. She calls to warn me that my Amazon Prime membership will be automatically charged to my credit card on file. Our regular conversations (if you can call them that) start with: “This is Ashley, from Amazon Prime.”

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On the days I don’t hang up at that point, she continues with her robocall spiel. I have no idea why I am being “warned” about the charge or, conversely, why I have become one of their favourite customers and therefore deserve due care and attention.

When I did once let her finish her scripted call, she announced I could cancel my subscription by pressing 1. I did not press the number. My membership goes smoothly. I have not been over-charged.

On the other hand, I have not fallen prey to inducements, warnings, scare tactics or threats.

On the day I received a call from Constable So-And-So from the Calgary Police I suggested in a variety of four-letter words he try the scam on someone else and hug up the phone.

Within days, I received the “Hi, Grandma” call from my “favourite grandson” who had been in a horrible accident and needed money. I laughed at the absurdity of it all. Why? My husband’s grandsons do not call me Grandma. Nobody does. But it’s easy to understand why so many seniors are hooked by this scam. Who would not respond to a frantic call from a needy relative who was in dire straits? If such seniors are lucky, someone at their bank will smell a rat and stop them from withdrawing a wad of cash.

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Then there are the myriad calls (some at 5 a.m.) where there is no one immediately on the line. My theory is if you are a real person making a real call, when I say “hello” you respond immediately. When there is a noticeable lag, I hang up. And no one calls at that hour unless someone has died, albeit all of the Chinese language calls came at that hour. Thankfully, these have stopped.

Such calls are more than annoying, they are infuriating and they prove that the much-heralded Do Not Call list is a joke. When the Federal Trade Commission launched the list in June 2003 (to be effective Oct. 1) there were cries of hope. I called the number that day. At last, we could be free of annoying telemarketers. We were “warned” there would be a 31-day lag before the calls would cease.

I’m still waiting for calls to stop. After more than 20 years, I’d trade what we now have for the occasional telemarketing call. The list has so many holes in it, that it puts sieves to shame. Interestingly, it was designed to be that way.  For example, political parties, candidates and riding associations are except from the Do Not Call list, as are surveys, charities, and newspapers soliciting subscriptions.

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With apparently, more than 240 million telephone numbers on the list, one would hope it would work better. But in what I hear in a pious and supercilious tone — OK, I made the tone up because it read like that — we are told the rules only apply to calls “from real companies that follow the law.”

Just in case nobody gets that loophole, we are also told: “Being on the registry won’t stop calls from scammers making illegal calls.” I can’t make this stuff up.

In exasperation, through the Internet, I asked the Federal Trade Commission what is the point. Why compile a list of so many telephone numbers when nothing stops the scammers? I am advised thusly: Don’t speak; don’t press any buttons and don’t follow any directions. Gee thanks, that’s truly helpful, I respond with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Ashley has stopped calling me every day and the Mandarin or Cantonese dead-of-night calls have ceased.

I await with trepidation the next level of scam calls and secretly hope the two women in charge of this “business” – Mary Ng, the minister of trade, and Sara Wilshaw, Canada’s chief trade commissioner, are as bombarded as we ordinary citizens are.

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