Quote:
Originally Posted by cromag
Just got a recorded phone call from the Internal Revenue Service informing me that I have to contact them, at the number they provided, immediately to make overdue payments or dire consequences will ensue.
Say what you will about the IRS, but I especially liked the way they are saving money by not wasting recording time with extraneous adjectives, adverbs, ... or my name.
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I shan't mention her name, but a member of my family called me in near-hysterics about this. There'd been an actual issue with the IRS some time earlier. This had been over a deceased family member, mind you, who had NEVER owed the money that they claimed she did, in the first place, much less now that she was dead, and I'd ended up sending them a note that said quasi-politely "too bad, so sad" along with the death cert [and, WHAT A SHOCK
--I got audited!].
Anyway, No-Name Relative was convinced that this was real, that they were going to come to her house and take their s**t. Honestly, I didn't laugh while she was on the phone, but I was yanking the hair out of my head by the time I got off, because her voice just kept increasing, moving up the scale. It never--never--occurred to her to check the Net, to see if it was a scam before calling me. I mean, are there real-live people who, after the initial scare, actually fall for this? Who don't at least call their relatives to check, or...? I admit--the recorded threats (at least she had the presence of mind to do that) were egregiously fugly and vitriolic, and the "IRS" is scary enough all as it is, but, still....
(Why am I asking, "are there people that fall for this?" I have had an entire book written by a client about how romance scams work, and it's mind-boggling. She wrote this book--by all appearances, a smart, reasonably successful woman--because SHE'D fallen for one, run by an Ethopian scammer. The book is incredibly enlightening, if frustrating. Romance scammers, Nigerian Princes....{sigh}, it makes me worry about the human race, on BOTH sides of the equation.)
Hitch