exposing scams and wondering about random things

pretty photo i took at esbjerg harbor yesterday - more like this to come as soon as the internet arrives

the internet has promised to arrive at our house today at the most precise time of between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. - it's 1:19 p.m. as i write this, still via my highly unstable mobile connection - made even more unstable by it being a cloudy day, and there's no sign of those jokers skilled technicians. but since a blog post is bubbling in my head and standing in the way of me getting anything of substance done, here are a few things i'm pondering as i wait for the real internet to come:

~ i'm not keen on energy-saving lightbulbs. there, i said it. i miss the soft light of the old-fashioned kind. i know they're not good for us and for the environment, but can't someone please make an energy-saving lightbulb that lasts as long as it claims it will and also gives off some kind of soft, glowy light? i replaced the lightbulb in the lamp by the bed yesterday and it already burned out this morning. that's not cool and was by no means the 6 bazillion hours that phillips promised on the package.

~ are TED talks just the new sermons for the secular? don't get me wrong, i love TED in many ways, but i'm getting an evangelical vibe from them of late.

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i have for you a sordid tale of a collection scam that's apparently made its way to denmark. i wrote previously about an insidious scam that student loan debt collectors had going in the US. this one is much more small scale and probably much more lucrative for its perpetrators, as i guess it probably works most of the time. we had a magazine subscription to a garden magazine. we stopped the subscription and had a final bill to pay of about 245 DKK ($40). this bill ended up on my desk, where other papers piled up on top of it and i'll admit i forgot all about it. for a couple of months.

one day, last month, i was going through the stack of papers on my desk and found it. looked at the due date (a couple of months previously) and thought, "shit, i'd better pay that!" so tho' it was a thursday evening, i opened up the netbank and immediately paid it.  

lo and behold, five days later, i receive a collections notice from a company called advis on the subscription, now adding an additional 480DKK ($83) to the amount of the bill i had already paid, for their "collection costs." on a bill that was paid. so i wrote to them at the generic email address that was provided and asked them to please check their records, as the bill was already paid the previous week. five days is ample time for a payment to be registered.

they responded that it had already gone to collections (suspicious timing in my view) and so i needed to pay the extra 480 to avoid court. really? i find that to be utter bullshit, so i have continued to dispute the claim. 

i find the timing very suspicious as well as the amount - double the amount of the original bill, and on an item, like a subscription, where i imagine that there are many people who forget to pay the bill on time. it's a small bill, you lay it on your desk, thinking that the next time you sign into the netbank for something a bit more significant, you'll also pay that one. and then, like me, the paper disappears down a pile and you forget. 

i imagine the collections trick - sending it out as soon as you realize the customer has actually paid (what was admittedly an overdue bill) - works pretty well. people feel guilty that they forgot about it and they just pay the additional amount. the original non-payment of the bill wasn't due to a lack of funds, more due to the general insignificance of the amount and feeling it wasn't worth the whole getting out the code thingie to sign into the netbank just for that. i imagine that doubling the original amount as "collection fees" also represents an amount that people will swallow. and it probably works most of the time.

but i find it to be utter bullshit. there was ample time in this electronic age, for the payment i made to have been registered in their system. i believe the system is designed to kick out these collection letters to try to get more money out of people, to prey on their guilt. are things really that bad in the publishing industry that they have to resort to this? it strikes me as one of those "businesses" that arise in a time of crisis. and honestly, i think it's crap. so i'm continuing to fight it. the next step in my fight is to send them a link to this post. after that, i'm going to a DR program called kontant, that exposes consumer fraud. i can't be the only one who has had this little scam played on me.

bitter lemons

like many people, perhaps even most people, when i went to university, i took out student loans in order to pay for my studies. eventually, the day came when i stopped gathering degrees (that took awhile) and the student loans, sadly, entered the repayment phase. by that time, i lived in another country.  and it took a good eight months to consolidate the various loans from the various universities i had attended and to convince the good student loan administrators that not only were other countries but yes, sometimes people, even american people, will choose to live in them. and in those said countries, it might be much more efficient to do a regular bank transfer, as opposed to writing a check (which was a very archaic and unused system in a good portion of the world, even already in the mid-noughties).

the whole way along, i had dutifully kept all of the various interested parties informed of my address and contact details. and i had all of the paperwork on all of the loans with me, so i am absolutely certain that, after a stack of letters half a foot high, they were all eventually consolidated into one monthly payment which i continue to dutifully make to this day (it's set up with my bank to transfer automatically), a good five years on. but, as i said, it took awhile to convince these amero-centric folks that i lived abroad and that i needed an account to which to transfer the payments.

during the time that took, some (but strangely not all) of the loans entered default and must have ended up on a list of defaulted student loans. however, those loans are all part of the consolidated package i succeeded, in the end, in arranging and they are no longer defaulted.

then, 2009 comes and the crisis takes hold in earnest.  and suddenly, my parents begin to receive letters addressed to me (tho' never with my correct name) and plaguing phone calls, asking for me. leaving cryptic messages about student loans, but never going so far as to state any amounts or even lenders on said loans, nor what universities they were from. the letters are quite clever - they look very official and while they don't actually claim to be sallie mae, the official federal student loan consolidation folks, they imply that they are working on sallie mae's behalf.  which i know that they are not, because i can see my own records and check on my loan repayment status via the real sallie mae.

so it seems that there are lot of unscrupulous companies out there, who somehow got their hands on some very old information - both address/phone-wise and default-status-wise and they are actually trying to scare my aging parents into, i can only guess, giving them money! all of these companies - which have different names and which have their supposed vice presidents call and talk to my mom, seem to be based in wilmington, delaware. leaving me to think that must be the place that's sucking all of the happiness out of the universe (and here i thought it was the thai airlines lounge in the airport in manila).

what kind of desperate scam artists would do that? prey on someone's elderly parents - trying to scare them - with veiled threats of how much trouble their daughter is in.  even the letters are extremely vague - referencing "your loans" and although they have arbitrary amounts listed as well, absolutely none of the loan numbers or amounts match any of my records. plus, there's the fact that all of my student loans are consolidated and in repayment.

i can only guess that i'm not the only person out there who this is happening to, and i can only hope that other people's parents are as resistent to the threats as mine have been. i guess it's an indicator of how desperate times are that unscrupulous people resort to such tactics. and sadly, i fear it also means that they work, because the letters and phone calls continue to come, badgering my parents. simply because way back when i took out student loans, my permanent address was at their home. and as soon as one of them is told they are on a do not call list, the company name changes to a new P.O. box in wilmington, delaware and the calls resume.

and it seems that the only thing i can do about it is apologize to my parents that they have to endure it and assure them that all of my loans are, in fact, consolidated and being repaid.  i don't know what else can be done...there are a lot of websites out there, with similar complaints - i even read of a canadian woman who had never had a student loan in the US in her life being badgered by these companies. but anyway, i thought i'd write about it here, because bringing the issue into the open can maybe help a little bit.