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So I ask this question because of my mother specifically. She is retired and widowed. But she does not live alone. My brother and her mother both live with her. But she is constantly falling prey to telephone solicitors.
She answers every phone call. She talks to everyone who calls. And she seems to buy almost everything any of these phone solicitors try to sell her. She's bought cruises (that she has no intention of using) vitamin supplements, "cures" for diabetes, etc.
When I ask why she bought these things she says it was the only way to get them off the phone.
I can't understand why she would not simply hang up the phone. Is it just politeness from a different generation ?
I put her on the Do Not Call List and I've told her to not answer the phone if she doesn't recognize the number. I've also told her she can just hang up the phone.
Is this an issue other Retiree's have as well ... either themselves, a spouse or parent/sibling ?
I"m sure it can not be unique to her.
Has she always been like this or just started?
My mom was onto the cons at one time. She got a call that told her to go to Wal-Mart and meet in the parking lot and they would give her some money. But she had to bring a good will amount of 10,000 before they gave her the 50,000. She said she would, do it, but to just take the 10,000 out and she would be happy with 40,000!
But later she was buying all kinds of stuff - mostly lotteries from overseas. We would go through her purse when she wasn't looking and toss it all out.
I have been suckered by those Microsoft "experts" too for $500. My brain gets muddled sometimes from my MS but now I have learned and I either don't answer the phone or I just hang up after saying no. I don't care if I'm being rude. THEY are being rude disturbing me!
My mother is 86, and she isn't fooled. She will call her town police if she gets a call that sounds suspicious.
She doesn't answer the phone if she doesn't know the number. That was a problem one day when my cell phone was dead and I was trying to reach her from work, lol.
Because most are trusting. Grew up in a different era.
^^ This. When you grow up in an era that didn't include phone scams and more people were generally honest, you don't learn to be skeptical.
That and thanks to our information highway, scammers know the age of the people they're calling and specifically target the elderly. When you are under 65, you don't get those kinds of calls with the same frequency.
My mom was very similar. She would have to show me the letters of marketing offers. She had no interest at all but was afraid to throw them away and would get very upset about them. I have an older sister is is that way about spam email and spam texts. She can't understand why she gets them and she can't ignore them! She makes ME delete them for her!...of course she wants her email inbox empty at all times, anyway but only gets truly upset about spam.
I have no trouble throwing away marketing stuff / spam unopened - but some people take this stuff soooo personally!
My parents have always felt it was impolite to cut people off on the phone, even solicitors.
My mother is so gullible she believed one scammer who was trying to get her social security number and pretending he was from her bank. Thank God my Dad realized what was going on and said - now wait - how do you know that is really our bank calling?
So it is not necessarily cognitive decline. My parents have always been like this - even 30 years ago.
I have to be careful to keep my wife away from car salesmen. I once had to pay off over $50,000 worth of her car loans, and the cars weren't even that good. Some people just have no sales resistance.
^^ This. When you grow up in an era that didn't include phone scams and more people were generally honest, you don't learn to be skeptical.
That and thanks to our information highway, scammers know the age of the people they're calling and specifically target the elderly. When you are under 65, you don't get those kinds of calls with the same frequency.
There has never been an era that didn't swarm with con artists.
I have to be careful to keep my wife away from car salesmen. I once had to pay off over $50,000 worth of her car loans, and the cars weren't even that good. Some people just have no sales resistance.
Ha ha ha! For us, many car salesmen wished that my husband had kept me away from them. I drive a hard bargain. One time, a car salesman blew his top and screamed at me for trying to bargain down few hundreds bucks. He babbled something about how hard it was to make a living as car salesman and I wasted his precious time with my haggling.
We left his place, went to another dealer and got the car at the price we wanted without any bargaining! I always do my research ahead of time to find out the true dealer cost, manufacturer's rebates, hidden incentives etc.
I am very thankful that my 89 y/o mother would not fall for this. That is, unless she was to suffer from some type of dementia in the future or mental disease that would alter her normal thinking. My mother now only has a cell phone and that does limit those pesky tele-marketers somewhat. Just very sad, though, to know so many are falling prey to the cons.
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