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.
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