Friday, January 28, 2011

Y'all Have a Nice Night

The telephone rang last night just before 11:00 p.m. At that time of night it's never good news. We were already in bed and the phone is on Paul's side so he answered it.

After listening for a few seconds, he asked who was calling. The caller didn't answer, just said he was the man Paul told to call a couple weeks ago. After another few seconds, with some very carefully chosen words, Paul gave him some ideas for what he could with the rest of his evening and hung up.

It rang again. Being the curious one that I am, I reached over Paul and grabbed the phone. As politely as I'm sure he could, the man asked to speak to my husband. After hello, I never said another word. I just listened carefully because I was sure the information was important.

He went on for a minute or two offering to come by and do some renovations to the house in what sounded like a rather messy and violent way. For whatever reason, he sounded upset. Poor guy, he seemed to have a rather limited vocabulary. He used several of the same words repeatedly. I listened for a few more seconds, and hung up.

We don't have caller ID so we didn't know what the number was. After the second call, I used the *69 feature on the phone and got the number. It was from the area code 876.

This morning I Googled area code 876 and found lots of information about the scams that come from that area code which originates in Jamaica.

If you get a call from that area code asking for a return call, don't do it even if you are as curious as I am. Apparently, depending on what long distance carrier you have, the charge for the call can be anywhere from $2 to $25. I don't know if that part is true but it seems like no legitimate calls come from area code 876.

There can't be any charge for an incoming call but unless you have a few minutes and would like some entertainment, if you see one of these numbers come up on your Caller ID, you might want to let it go to the answering machine.

Y'all have a nice night now, too.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Ugh. I have caller ID, and I only answer if I know who it is or a local call, that's what the answering machine is for.
I've heard of this 876 scam too, and surprisingly it was real.

Debby@Just Breathe said...

I really hate scams like that. They obviously didn't know the time in your area!

Vodka Logic said...

wow thanks for the information. Luckily I haven't had those calls.

Anita said...

Thank you Sandy. I'll have to definitely pass this info on to my parents.

Yvonne said...

Not having caller ID, I just let everything go to the answering machine. Nice post.

 

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