Thursday, October 6, 2016

Scam class

How exciting to receive this wonderful news in the mail yesterday:
A perfect opportunity to have scam class in school today.  I called the toll-free number and was greeted by Brian, who was very enthused to share this opportunity.  He said, "Congratulations!  I assume you're calling to claim your free cruise!"  I said, "No.  Actually I'm a teacher, and my students are listening in to learn how to avoid scams."  He said, "Well I'm sorry to hear that, because this is not a scam!  You really have won a free cruise!"  I said, "That's great!" and listened to Brian talk about how marvelous this cruise was going to be for the next five minutes.  I had told the students in advance that he would eventually be asking for my credit card number.  He had asked for my phone number and first name, which I provided even though Noah was silently but violently shaking his head to advise against it.  Brian would pause every minute or so to say, "How does that sound?" or something similar.  Finally, he explained that we would have to pay $130 in port taxes.  He asked if that sounded reasonable to me, and I said yes.  Then he asked me for my credit card number, and I yelled, "Oh, there it is!  He wants my credit card number!"  Brian sounded confused as he said, "You don't want to go on the cruise?"  I said, "Thank you for the education" and hung up.
Guess we won't be going to the Bahamas after all.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

OK, now I need a lesson. :) What do you think it would happen? Do you think the "free cruise" company would steal bunch of money from you using your credit card number? How can they do this without going to jail quickly? I guess I need to google "Free cruise scams", but have no time now". We can talk tonight.