Hello, my name is Alex from Talk Talk

Yesterday I got home from a trip to the South coast, pleasantly weary from a lengthy business meeting and a personal catch up with someone that I haven’t seen for 47 years. I had barely settled when the telephone rang; “Not another one” exclaimed the Berkshire Belle as she picked up the handset, listened for a moment and then shouted “Go away!” before hanging up.

It was, she told me, the fourth such call, that one the second in 10 minutes, from someone who sounded as though they were from the Indian sub-continent and claimed to have found an issue with our broadband that they could fix if we allowed them access to our computer. It is an old scam and one that we are not likely to fall for and we were not disturbed for the rest of the evening.

This morning Tilly the blind cat went to be early after her breakfast and morning, supervised, walk and so I had half an hour of unexpected peace before the BB emerged from her bed. With thoughts of the sixties on my mind from my lunchtime meeting of the day before I pulled out the iPod and dialled up a late sixties mix. As the music played my thoughts went back to the idyllic summers of ’68 and ’69 and lost myself in the moment.

All too soon the mix came to an end and, as I pulled off the cans, the ‘phone began to bingle-bongle at me. “Hello” I say, not best pleased to have had my reverie interrupted; “Hello, my name is Alex from Talk Talk and I am calling about your internet connection”. I asked if the call was being monitored for quality and training purposes, but was firmly told that the call was about my internet connection. “You Sir are a liar and a thief”. I told him and hung up, but he was probably already gone.

I am not proud of myself. These people are getting these calls directed to them from a call centre auto dialler as they try to earn a few coins to support their families and they may not even know that what they are doing is going to allow someone to steal from their victims. “Alex” is a nicely gender neutral name so it does not matter what sex the person who gets the call dropped into their headset is and whilst the BB and I might scream “How gullible to they think we are?” the scam must still work or they wouldn’t keep trying it.

Talk Talk are our current ‘phone and broadband supplier, but we know that the calls are not from them; someone has obviously got a list of numbers to feed their auto dialler with and we will just have to see how long it takes someone to realise that they have got through to us several times and failed to con us into allowing them access. Eventually they will stop, until the next time we come up on a list; it is one of the drawbacks of modern life.