Welcome to My World

On Fridays I help out at a local business (in Melbourne, FL), and among my duties is answering the telephone when calls come in. The shop gets a lot of telemarketing calls; AT&T is by far the worst offender (they call daily, even on days when the shop isn’t open; on days where someone does answer, they will call up to three times per day), but occasionally others trickle through, too.

Bad news for them. I hate telemarketers. A lot. I am a merciless asshole on a telephone with a telemarketer. I am fiercely proud of this, and I make no apologies for the way I treat telemarketers. I am never rude, never raise my voice, never curse, and in fact I don’t even interrupt. I do, however, ask questions, and get more and more inquisitive as the conversation progresses. I ask the right questions (“who are you?”, “who is your actual employer?”, “what phone number can I call to contact you, or another agent if necessary, to further discuss this product/service?”, “what mailing address can I write to contact your organization with questions or comments?”) so I can figure out who’s being ballsy enough to ignore the Do-Not-Call registry to pester me to buy stuff I don’t need/want, and actually go after the bastards.

If I just sighed and shook my head in disbelief, you wouldn’t be too surprised, since this kind of thing always provokes that kind of reaction out of me. Still, let’s all point and laugh at “blessed” water in a 16.9 ounce bottle, yours for just $2 (not available in stores). The folks over at FARK are giving this the once-over, too, and are probably doing a better job of it than I am, but I thought this scam needed just a bit more limelight cast upon it.

Paying attention, fraudsters? Your buddies/role models over at Enzyte just got fried. A guilty verdict just came back on the company’s founder for conspiracy to commit mail fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. Bob’s not smiling so much now, is he?

From the article:

Some former employees, including relatives of Warshak, pleaded guilty to other charges and cooperated with prosecutors. They testified that the company created fictitious doctors to endorse the pills, fabricated a customer-satisfaction survey and made up numbers to back claims about Enzyte’s effectiveness.

What? You mean an male enhancement product that everyone says works great really doesn’t work? Naturally, we can assume that the purveyors of every other male enhancement product out there would never stoop to such shameful depths to sell a crummy product.

Sigh. Who am I kidding? Of course they would. These guys just got caught. Still, chalk one up for the good guys with this guilty verdict! This guy will be exploring “natural male enhancement” for years whilst in prison. I hope he enjoys it.

For years, I’ve participated in a barely-legitimate, yet remarkably popular (and probably well-known) spam-for-pay “program” wherein advertisers pay some pittance to the organizing company, which in turn sends me spam that, oddly enough, I’m supposed to filter into a special folder so I can give each and every one enough attention to click the “redemption” button that gives me “tokens” (that’s not the word they actually use for them, by the way) that I can later redeem for gift cards and such.

In terms of “something for nothing,” now that (thanks largely to GMail) I’ve gotten this thing nearly completely automated, it’s paying in spades. I’ve probably been sent over $200 in gift cards from these people in the past 5 years or so I’ve been a member and I’ve never spent a fucking dime at any of the sponsors’ web sites.

You’ll note I’m not mentioning their name, linking to their web site, nor using terminology that could uniquely identify them. First I don’t want anyone thinking I’m trying to score “affiliate” brownie points with them by sending referrals, but second I don’t want them to sue me or cancel my account — I like getting ten bucks worth of free gas every few months even though that amounts to three gallons or less now).