My step dad bought a 20V Craftsman leaf blower and weed trimmer combo from Lowe’s and I was looking for new batteries for it for his Christmas gift. Lowe’s had a 6A 20V battery for $130. Look it up on Amazon, they had 2 of them for under $60, same thing.
The only things my wife and i dont buy online now are groceries, and with instacart, we could avoid the supermarket also if we chose.
I know we are being forced to buy more online, even from local stores. You can often get free shipping to the store but it is nice to be able to just buy it and be done. I am running into this a lot with car parts lately as well. They don’t have what I need in stock but can order it in, often same or next day so it isn’t a big deal.
I had one time I ordered parts like this from AutoZone. I got a notice they had been delayed and then the store called me. I am about 100 miles from St. Louis and apparently the hub/warehouse was in Ferguson, MO. All the riots had cut loose the night before I had watched the AutoZone burn to the ground on national news so guess my part got melted. Anyway, I had the part within 3-4 days from Kansas or something.
I’d like to buy locally, but it is 10 miles to town (20 round trip) plus driving from place to place looking for an item I want, just too costly in time and gas. I will sometimes call each business to see if they have what I want, that saves some gas if they do, a lot of gas and time if they don’t.
But still, it is a lot faster and often cheaper just to go on Amazon and order what I want with the prime delivery.
But I don’t order shoes online because that has never worked out for me, especially since almost all shoes are now made in Asia and they do not conform to the Brannock device or to my feet.
As for telemarketers, if my caller ID does not display a name that I know, the call gets screened. Back in the old days before caller ID was even available, the robo-callers did not know who they were calling so if you were interested in what they were selling, you had to give them your phone number and address. I kept the home address and home phone number of my congressman taped to the wall above my phone.
True. I am in the same boat where I live 10 miles from town. I often cut apart a cheap tool to complete a task and then replace it later rather than drive to town for the proper tool. That is why it is nice to have a few cheap wrench sets from Harbor Freight and such around.
I have definitely gotten into calling before making the trip to town. The last time it was motor oil and that was hard to find. I am probably going to start ordering off Amazon and buying quite a lot when a good deal comes along.
I had some scam call that I have gotten before come through, claiming to support the police and firemen. The last time they called, they were like “Can we count on your support if we send you an envelope?” I told them it would be considered if they sent me a statement about the charity and how the money was spent. He hung up. This same group called back last week and I told them my past experience so wasn’t their guy. They hung up.
+1
A frequent message is Press 1 to be removed from our call list.
DO NOT do that. Simply hang up and–if possible–block that number.
[quote=“David-John, post:66, topic:187104”]
It doesn’t matter if you press a button or not, just the fact that you picked up the phone shows that it is a live working line. If it goes to voice mail or or an answering machine it shows it a working line. Even if you just let it ring and ring and ring, if the calling “bot” does not get that automated message about the number being a “non-working” number it assumes it is a working line. The end result is nothing you do will ever stop the calls.
… except for blocking that number. Because these scoundrels change their numbers frequently, my call blocker sometimes fills-up, at which point I clear it and start from scratch blocking bogus calls.
Correct. The only way to stop the calls is with the phone companies. So far, they are not motivated to do so.
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They have actually made great strides if you ask me. Everyone I know still gets scam calls about pretty much anything and everything with car warranty and student loans being the most common but the rate has been greatly reduced.
Remember that robo calls are illegal except in like 3 cases. I think they are charities, businesses you have a relationship with such as a pharmacy or bank, and political (of course they wrote the laws to get an exception).
I definitely hear mixed advice on how to deal with this when they do call. Blocking a spoofed number does little to no good and might actually be harmful if you block a spoofed number that is actually important to you. I used to block but not anymore. If it is a real number, report it to your state Attorney General and the FTC.
As for just hanging up vs. talking to them… Many say to just hang up. It is a bad idea to press a button to be removed from the list. Technically you have to talk to a REAL PERSON for the do not call list to apply. Pressing 2 to be removed just confirms you are a real person and isn’t legally binding. If you press 1 to talk to a person it is supposed to be legally binding. Now since many of these calls are illegal to start with, that might not be a good option either but has been the gamble I have taken and it seems to work. I tell them to remove me from the list and then thank them for doing so. I can hear them trying to convince me their pitch is valid and that I should consider it. I just set the phone down which wastes their time and I cannot hear what they are saying either. Eventually they hang up. For the most part I am down to maybe one scam call a day on average from my phone being almost unusable with dozens or more per day at one time.
Talking to them isn’t the best advice for everyone though. I have had customers tell me they are going to call these guys back and give them a piece of their mind, only to get scammed again while doing so. Obviously talking to them is playing with fire so needs to be done with care. My answer is basically NO with no other possible options for them so they get the message pretty quickly.
I do think the FCC rules have made a big difference. It may not be perfect but it is a big help.
I still get the bots or whatever where it is just silence. I just assume they dialed more people than agents could answer or it is a probing call to see if it is a live number or not.
There are apps you can download and pay for like NOMOROBO and some included with specific carriers as well that help put a stop to this. Maybe not all carriers are as good about this as others.
As a Software Engineer Manager and Architect that works for a company that designs solutions for the telecom industry - I can tell you first hand they aren’t doing nearly enough…Not even close. They’ve known about the problem for years. They know how to recognize it and can stop it. They have chosen NOT to.
Seems that $143.77 must have been a more important sum than I thought!!
“[Amazon] plans to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs starting as soon as this week,”
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I don’t deal with that side of things but it is always good to have someone who sees how the sausage is made. I know they fought doing anything at first but were then pretty much forced into it by the FCC.
I feel the STIR/SHAKEN deal here has helped though. I am sure it could be taken a step further with a digital key of sorts that the end user of the phone would never even be aware of. I could see special hardware being built into new cell phones to recognize this key to deal with this as well. Of course that tech might have to be limited to the switch at telco offices or the box on the street at the very best due to issues with old landline phones on the POTS network and other devices that couldn’t easily be made to work with this tech. That would include fax, modems, security alarms, and possibly other items made to work with the old network. https://www.fcc.gov/spoofed-robocalls
I feel the same way about social media and other “big tech”, especially Facebook/Meta. They are basically fully aware of all the fraud on their platforms but choose to do nothing because most of the scammers are paying them to host their nonsense. They claim to care about user safety but they care about user safety much like a drug dealer cares about the safety of their users. I see some real tragic cases in my line of work where an older person has lost a huge chunk of money but the social media companies do nothing when it is reported. So many automatic filters could be applied to catch 95% or more of this nonsense before it even has a chance to go live. For example, a fake page claiming to be Wal-Mart, Amazon, Lowes, Texas Roadhouse, Southwest Airlines, Disney Cruises, etc. should be flagged for further verification by some person at that corporation. Recipe sites from Morocco and other countries on Facebook are baiting LOTS of older women into scams that are quite costly and inconvenient. I seem to be getting LOTS and LOTS of these right now.
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Any unsolicited email informing me that I won a (pick one or more…) DeWalt power tool, $50 gift card, free meal, free flight, free cruise, or… God only knows what… and that my prize can be redeemed by simply clicking on a link is immediately deleted.
Unfortunately, it does seem that there are enough people who do click on those links–and whose computer becomes infected–to keep the scammers in business. It seems that some people are unaware that you have to actually enter a contest or buy a lottery ticket in order to win.
I’m glad for your sake that this stuff produces business for you, but I still have to shake my head in disbelief at the gullibility of many people.
I deal with this problem DAILY, often MULTIPLE TIMES per day and am still shocked at the gullibility of people! The last one was someone who typed “AMEN and SHARED a Facebook post” to receive a “blessing.” They had to provide a bunch of personal and financial data as well as let the person have remote access to their computer to receive this “blessing.” You don’t have to use your imagination much to know the rest of the story…
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A had a friend–now deceased–who used to fall for that type of scam–and others–on a regular basis. It was obvious when her email address book had been “captured” by scammers because I would receive emails from her, addressing me by the words in my email address–instead of by my name. If she had actually sent me a message, it wouldn’t have started with “Dear VDC@xxxxxxxx.”
Then I would send her an email telling her that her computer was infected… again.
A lot of the big e-mail providers blacklist e-mail addresses sending out crap. I had a guy fall for something like this and his e-mail was taken over for several days, just sending crap out to everyone. I got his account back for him but no e-mails would go through to anyone he used to be in contact with. I made sure that all the new forwarding rules setup by the scammers had been removed as well. Basically he had control of his old e-mail again but it was useless so I made him a new one.
I see friends like this on Facebook. I don’t know if they are actually that dumb or have been hacked. Yes, the amount of business this generates for me is crazy. Many of the local banks are now referring me when someone falls for this as I hand out a sheet explaining how to recognize and avoid these scams as well as steps to take if you realize you have been had. The sheet does little good unfortunately.
The sheet is probably read as much as owners manuals 
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I think you are right. I see people here posting questions like “What kind of oil does my car take?” It is right in the manual or even on the oil fill cap and/or a sticker on the underside of the hood.
I have some funny stories about those papers I give out. I setup a new system for a residential customer and left 3 different sheets behind. I told there was a lot of good advice and that they should read them after I left.
Anyway, THE NEXT DAY this customer calls me in a panic. They said that they had contacted the wrong support and given someone access to their computer who tried to take money out of their bank account. They said that they had seen some paper I left about scams and started reading it and realized they had been had. Unfortunately this person lived a long way off so I have to charge a trip charge to make it worthwhile. They realized they had sunk themselves when all the information right in front of them would have prevented that if they had just read it.
The way I feel about scammers, I might set the phone down by the radio, then move the tuner off the station so all they hear is static.
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