renth

I was woken up at 12.30am last night be a caller proportedly from the Census Office asking if this was the "Heggarty" household. It isn't BTW.

He then asked me for the number at the top of my census form. I asked to speak to his boss who very quickly came on the phone, telling me that he was calling from Perth and that "this was the only time they could reach people".

I told him I didn't believe he was who he said he was and told him to piss off.

My census form has been collected BTW.

What do you reckon that was all about then? debt collectors after former tennants at this address maybe?

I'll ring the ABS to report it.

arkon

Could have been a sales pitch for something but you never gave it a chance to get started. They are the masters of telephone cold calling here. In the UK it was easy to tell early on and tell them to bog off. Here they start with some patter that sounds like it's coming from an official source and you start to pay attention, then after a few minutes they start to try and sell something. For example, I'm calling to let you know there is something wrong with your telephone line...........

Anyway we get so many crank calls I've got a whistle now!

Wol

We moved a month ago and got a new number - TG!

The old one was one digit away from the local pizza house. You have no idea how many Aussies can't hit eight numbers correctly! Every night we had several calls from would-be pizzaeaters: conservatively some thousand or so over the rental.

Probably 25% were quite abusive when we said they had the wrong number and should call 486*9* 1313, as if it was our fault.

The daily cold calls were almost light relief!

Buzzy--Bee

What you should have done is take their order for a pizza, said it will be delivered in 15 mins, the pizza shop would soon have woken up to all the lost customers when their pizzas never turned up!

Friends of mine had the same problem with a plumbing shop - "yes, of course we've got a 3/4 inch vaillant boiler fitting, 10 in stock £2.99 each" - plumbing shop soon sorted that out!!!



Buzzy

moneypenny20

There was a report on local news there about pretend census callers, saying they were checking the door to door collectors and could you provide certain details. All a con to get private info out of people. Similar to scum who email you pretending to be your bank and asking for your pin number.

Wol

Yes, we used to do that whenever we felt the urge! (I always meant to mosey on down there after 15 minutes and observe the fracas, but always bottled out!)

The gambit we adopted was, whenever the phone went after 5pm, to answer with "NOT the Colosseum pizza house" - which would throw the more thinking of them! Unfortunately, there were not too many of that sort...

mr mover

i,m amazed you even picked they phone up at 12.30 am, we screen our calls through the answering machine, great when you get the sales pitch and they realise they are talking to a machine ......................... mm

Wol

In the States they use taped messages - your AM picks up and when you get back the AM is full of finacial advisors and police charity requests - none of the messages that your friends want to send!

renth

I thougt it could be a family emergency in the UK, I was actually releved when it was a bunch of scamming wan*ers.