on debt, offshore outsourcing and the american way…

So something really odd happened earlier today. I was sitting at home, minding my own business, unpacking boxes and working on my bar and I get a call. For the last couple years, I had pretty much given up on answering my land line. its mostly just bill collectors and such. Most people I care to talk to call my cell, and those who don’t are perfectly capable of leaving a message that I can get back to them on.

But I decided to answer the phone this time. Maybe because I figured its a brand new number and the bill collectors don’t really have it yet. Maybe i wasn’t thinking. I dunno. Anyway, I answered the phone and there is an Indian gentleman (judging by the accent) who was informing me that I had been approved for a Visa Gold Card and it was on the way. They just needed to verify my address and similar information. They obviously had my phone number, but they still thought I lived at sui66iy‘s place. He wanted the new address and I told him I wasn’t comfortable giving it to him, as you see, I had no idea who he was really, and I had not applied for a credit card. He assured me that it was ok, they had simply seen a review of my credit report and decided to qualify me for a card with no application fee, and no yearly fee and the low low monthly percentage of 2.5% (or something like that). Not pre qualify me, mind you. They had actually already decided I was qualified. Now anyone who knows anything about my credit should realize that anyone who just decides to issue me credit out of no where for no reason clearly needs their head examined. So I was kinda a tad untrusting already at this point.

So I wouldn’t give him my new address or my mother’s maiden name and so he pointed out that he could just set the maiden name to my own last name as a temporary solution and he could ship the card to where I could pick it up. I told him no thank you. He assured me it wasn’t a scam and that I was already approved for some $3800 credit. I asked him what the APR was. He told me it was a monthly charge of 2.5% with no annual fee. I told him “that’s not what I wanted to know. I wanted to know the APR. He told me it was unimportant, because I’d never be paying it, I’f only ever be paying the monthly charge. I asked him again and he said its around 30%. Woohoo! what a deal. Dude, you claim that you have seen my credit report. I think its pretty obvious that I understand how credit card interest works at this point.

So I told him I wasn’t interested and he began to press the issue. So I hung up. He called right back to once again reassure me it wasn’t a scam and get my info. I again told him no thankyou and hung up again.

He called back again and I let the machine get it. My machine isn’t exactly very nice, and more or less lets bill collectors and telemarketers know where they can stick it. So he complained to his supervisor that he lost another sale. How do I know that he complained to his supervisor. Because he forgot to hang up the phone. So I was left with a 2 minute message where a very upset indian call center employee complained to his employer that he had lost another sale because the customers are just to skeptical and how its getting harder and harder to sell to people and that was the 5th sale he had lost today and he was sick of it. He seemed to be upset that he wasn’t going to make his numbers or something.

beststephi theorizes that maybe I got him fired.

Wow, maybe in doing so I opened up an off-shore position that could be filled by someone domestically. USA! USA! USA!

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