i know you have had such calls, "hello, this is daniel from microsoft.", "your car warranty is about to expire", "through no fault of your own, your payment has been held up at the bank", "would you like to make money from home?". . . . . . . "i'm going to help you"
yeah, sure you are.
please understand, i have been a telemarketer, legal and illegal. ( i turned in evidence on the illegal one as soon as i realized what was going on, by the way.) i am nice to the ones who are legal.
i have a bit of a twisted sense of humor so i do mess with some of them too. i had one guy guy call who didn't speak english very well. he told me my computer was "dangerous" and was going to "explode"! i kid you not. i did not pass up this opportunity to freak out and tell him i wasn't going anywhere near my computer if it was going to explode! i kept this up for about 15 minutes until real life happened again and i had to take care of kids, family etc. (i have nothing against people who do not speak the language. i live in a foreign country and my language skills are only ok to meh. i don't tell people i speak the language. i tell them i kind of speak it.)
i did lead one guy on who informed me that my auto warranty was about to expire. i kept up with him for around 15 min. until i told him i didn't know if it was the warranty on my 1965 or 1964 car that was expiring. i couldn't ask the dealer since i didn't know where it was bought because i wasn't born then. . . . he didn't think i was funny.
now, a friend of the family, a little old lady with a quick wit, used to ask if their mothers knew what they were doing for a living. she gave them a "shame on you" and gave them what for. she was just that awesome!
so, what's the point?! ok, here it is - i have really started to think about my opportunities. what can i do to not only amuse myself but also make the world a better place? so, i have started a new approach to these scammers. the last time "daniel from microsoft"called, (they are all daniel, even the ones who can't say daniel are named daniel), i told him that i knew he was not from microsoft and that he was lying to me. i told him that he was trying to steal from me and that was wrong. i told him that all the lies and theft he was committing every day for work was piling up on his head and he would be carrying those sins into the next life if he didn't repent in this one. of course, he denied it and tried to get back to his script. i was unrelenting. stubborn is one of my strong suits and !hello!, i am a mother. when you are busted, arguing with me is useless. i continued telling him that what he was doing was wrong. i told him that he was piling up sin upon his soul, he was only making his place with God worse and that he needed to repent. he gave up and hung up on me. weird.
ok, now stop laughing. this was actually hard for me to do without laughing. i had to keep reminding myself that i might actually get through to one of them. while i have started doing this because it is just a seriously awesome way to deal with these guys, but also, because i hold out hope that i will be able to turn just one.
you may think this is impossible but let me tell you a sad but true story. the, "google blog to make money" scam was going around. i had had these guys call me so i did some research. that is so my thing. come at me, i will look it up and even the playing field. the scam was that they would set you up in a googles blog and help you make money with it. it would only cost you $500! . . . by the way, this is where i started blogging. i looked it up and started two free blogs with google just to see how it worked.. so, this guy calls me, i had some divine inspiration to start asking them if they had done it themselves. this guy tells me that he had saved up and bought one for his wife! at this point, i understood that he had been duped himself and he had no idea that what he was selling was a scam. i explained to him that google blogs were free and that i had actually started two free ones just to try it out. i explained how you made money with it the legal way. i could hear the pain in his voice. he suddenly had to go and thanked me for the information. wish he had called me a week earlier, before he had put out the money. i also explained how to contact the attorney general in his state. i admit, most of these guys know that what they are selling is crap, some do not. like i said, i worked for a place that was illegal. i had no idea until they started telling me to call back and use a different name and disguise my voice. having worked for legit places, i knew the laws and turned them in.
this route might not be for everyone, you actually have to believe in the good in people and care enough for them that you truly want them to be better. this scripture says it all-
And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them—therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God.
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