I've been scammed and it was so easy

All Australians know that the National Broadband is being rolled out all over the country and we have been told that the roll-out will be completed in a couple of months.  Currently the NBN is connecting people in my suburb so when I received a call to say that I was to be connected the next day I was not surprised.  I was furthermore told that this would involve replacing my current modem, which I also knew.

The man, who called himself Kevin, said that a few adjustments to my computer would be needed to accommodate the modem and I dutifully followed his instructions to change some settings in my computer.  After that he verified my credit card details by reciting the last two numbers of what I now realise was my phone number and I filled in the rest.  He then said that he would give me a code to verify the details and that is where it all started to fall apart  -  my mobile phone.   I have never been brilliant using a mobile phone, mainly because I have rarely needed it, and now I have a new one which I need to sit down and work out its workings.  In other words I have no idea how to make it work for me and I was not able to find the code.

Then Kevin told me that I would need to register my mobile phone number with my bank which I refused to do because it was night-time and I wasn't sure that the bank would be happy to get such a call at that time of night so I said that I would do so in the morning.  That is when the wheels really started to fall off the cart.  The man I spoke to at the bank said that he could see no reason why I needed to register my mobile number with them and suggested that it was a scam.

Kevin kept on phoning me and I refused to pick up but did so eventually as it was getting annoying and he obviously was going to keep on keeping on.  I told him what the bank had said and offered to phone my internet provider to check.  He assured me that my landline would be disconnected at 2.00pm so I phoned my internet provider who also told me that it was a scam and actually told me when they intended to connect me  -  and it is not yet.  

So the next time Kevin called I said that I now knew when I was to be connected to the NBN and that I would phone Telstra to find out their intentions.   That was the last I heard from Kevin. Telstra  assured me that they had no intention of disconnectiong me until the NBN had been connected to my apartment.  They also suggested that it was a scam and recommended that I contact Scamwatch, which I did.

Then I ran my computer's "system restore" back to a week ago and having checked that no money had been taken from my bank account I cancelled my credit card so I am now waiting for my new card.

I hope that I have covered all eventualities but his story was very credible, filling in gaps about my knowledge of the NBN and I was taken in at the time so it was only after I had time to think that I realised what had happened.  I just hope that the changes I made were recovered back to their original settings when I restored the system.

On a lighter note  -  The Limerick:-

The limerick's an artform complex
Whose contents run chiefly to sex;
It's famous for virgins
And masculine urgin's
And vulgar erotic effects.

The Eyes Still Have It

This morning I phoned and made an appointment to have my right cataract removed and it will happen on 19th June.  Dr C. must have been fairly certain that I would bite the bullet because there are already two intraocular lenses made to correct my vision waiting to be inserted.  I am assuming that if the right eye is a success then the left one will follow fairly rapidly.  So fingers crossed and I will be able to wear my Randy Rainbow spectacle frames without having to persuade my optometrist to have prescription lenses inserted in them.

Karma is affecting the lifts in the two apartment blocks over the Claremont Quarter.  The main lift in A Block is now out of order and hopefully the residents will not have to wait as long for repairs as we did here in B Block.

I have been entertaining myself knitting wrist warmers for those poor unfortunates who sleep rough.   D2 said that their hands get cold and, for Perth, it can get very cold at night when the wind gets up.  We have had some very cold weather recently with snow on Bluff Knoll; it is far too early in the season to even think of snow here and I suspect that there is going to be a nasty winter.

So far I have knitted four and a half pairs of wrist warmers and no longer need to follow the pattern.  I should finish the fifth pair tomorrow at the knitting group  - and even begin the sixth pair.

Not much going on in my life at the moment; coffee with friends but two of the best coffee shops are upgrading at the moment.  The Portuguese Flamed Chicken eatery has finally opened and seems popular; the gelato place is a bit of a disappointment but I have only tried one flavour and the fish and chips shop is still my favourite.

GB1 now has his drivers' license which is useful and frees his father up but not his father's car as GB1 has flying lessons twice weekly at an airfield with no public transport anywhere nearby.  I need him to work out my new mobile phone for me  -  the instructions which came with it are minimal and the online ones are not much better.  I have put in some names and numbers and am wondering if I should add Mrs 705 but if the fire alarm didn't manage to get her out of bed I doubt if a phone call from me would do so and I would save my cats before I broke in and dragged her out of bed as she is quite capable of getting out on her own.  The cats would not be able to escape a fire on their without me and the kitty carriage.

The Limerick:-

A wanton young lady of Wimley,
Reproached for not acting more primly
Answered, "Heavens above!
I know sex isn't love
But it's such an attractive facsimile."

The Eyes Have It

Yesterday I had an appointment at the Lions Eye Institute to assess the progress of my cataracts.  A year ago I was told that yes, I had cataracts but the work which had been previously done on my retinas made it possible that removing the cataracts could make me totally blind.  This is not an option for me as I have no balance without my eyesight due to damage to my labyrinths.

So last year  I visited my friendly optometrist, had him make me the best spectacles possible and carried on as normal.  That was one year ago.  During this last year my right eye has noticeably deteriorated but the left one has remained relatively stable and this was borne out by the investigations yesterday.  However this time around Dr. C. said that I could have the cataracts removed any time I cared to ask and the blindness aspect was more or less mentioned in passing which makes me believe that the technique has improved or my retinas seem to be recovering.  Certainly, from the profile which I saw they had both smoothed out markedly.

I suggested that if or when I decided to have the operation the right eye, being the worst of the two eyes would be my choice, leaving me with one good eye and if that was successful I could consider having the second eye fixed.  So I have an appointment scheduled for a year's time but since I will need a referral before I go again the timing will be up to me if I choose to bring things forward.

Today I decided that, as my hip is now nearly better I would take the train to Subiaco and do an uphill slog to the wool shop which sells a selection of acrylic yarn for the knitting of wrist warmers which D2 asked me to make for those who sleep rough, especially with winter coming.  I have only a few more rows of the purple possum to knit and the wrist warmers are quick and fun to knit so at the moment I a alternating between possum and wrist-warmers.  To be honest I hate sewing up my knitting (as do all knitters) and I am putting off the time when I have to put the purple possum together.

During my perpetual uncluttering I came across a bag in which I store things woollen and the only thing in the bag was a card on which was written: "Remember to wait while it sorts itself." I have been trying to work out what, in all that is wonderful, I could possibly have meant.

The Limerick:-

This Limerick, written by William Ralph Inge, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral from 1911 to 1934, whose pessimism earned him the title of 'the gloomy dean', was only one of many men of the cloth who found amusement in the form.  This limerick which some, remembering a comment of Sir Richard Burton's in the tenth volume of his 'translation' of A Thousand and One Nights  -  have found slightly suggestive.

There was an old man of Khartoum
Who kept two tame sheep in his room,
To remind him, he said,
Of two friends who were dead;
But he could not remember of whom.

The Lift is Up . . . and Down

Finally, after 19 days, the main lift to my apartment is up and running again.  We have all had to do a great deal of walking over the past three weeks and no doubt it has been good for us but it is nice to be able to just pop down the lift to my mail box without having to hike for eight or nine minutes to get there and back; I timed it.

I received a message from Vodaphone a couple of days ago telling me that I needed to upgrade my mobile phone so I went to the local 'everything electrical and electronic' shop and asked for a "dumb phone" which is the name for a simple phone as compared to a smart phone which does far more than I will ever use.

Adrian, who helped me through the very lengthy process of changing over from my old mobile phone said that it was very odd but a large number of Vodaphone owners were coming in and buying new phones.  I explained why we were all doing that but the joke is that they are all being transferred from Vodaphone to Telstra.  My new dumb phone is a Nokia and is not as simple as I had hoped but I will get there eventually.  I have entered the numbers of people I call frequently and worked out how to get and delete messages.

A lot of this lengthy delay was down to Telstra which refused to ratify my new phone and it took almost two hours until Adrian realised that the sticking point was that Telstra had been billing me every two months and now wanted to bill me on a monthly basis.  Once we discovered that and I had agreed to monthly billing the transaction went through.  An interesting way to spend a morning but I can't see why Telstra couldn't have just said that was the problem.

In order to pay my phone bill from now on I am expected to do it online and needed to register with a user name and password.  No problem there except that they needed to check that I was me and sent a code for me to put into the box.  The difficulty was that I had no idea how to read text messages on the new phone and by the time I had worked it out the number had expired and it had sent me another one.  I found that one in time and also how to delete it after I had certified myself.

It is difficult enough for me but how much more confusing for people who had never used a computer or mobile phone to suddenly find that they need to pay online as is happening with more and more public entities

Now a bit of light relief  -  the Limerick:-

A goddess capricious is Fame.
You may strive to make noted your name.
But she either neglects you
Or coolly selects you
For laurels distinct from your aim!

Written by Langford Reed