Saturday, July 29, 2006
CAVEAT EMPTOR
At around 3:00 p.m. on Friday, July 28, I was awakened from my usual afternoon nap by the insistent ringing of the telephone. To my surprise, a certain lady named Nathalie called me up personally from somewhere in France and introduced herself as a sales representative of a timesharing holiday company called the Inter Travel Service.
In her rather sweet and velvety voice, she told me that her company was launching a very highly attractive holiday program for Belgium as their contemporary featured country among the 25 members of the European Union to a handpicked numbers of its inhabitants in order to take advantage immediately of their special promotion at 250 euros instead of 1000 euros if I close the deal before July 31. Their supposedly exceptional offer would consist of a week full-board stay in one of their recommended multi-starred luxury hotels in any of the member countries of my choice. As a piece de resistance, she was more than too kind than generous to add the ones that are so far and exotic as the Canaries and the Balearics, being parts of Spain. Why did she forget to include Greenland which is also a part of Denmark as I’ve thought then! At that instant, I wondered if I were still asleep and dreaming or just half awake and being lethargic or incoherent. Suddenly, I completely realized that I was more than fully awake and in the process of concluding a business transaction. Anyway, I told myself what have I to lose? So, I left her do all the sales talk while I listened to her soothing and lilting voice and just let myself be carried away in what seemed to be a wonderful dream and wallow on the pleasure of what would it be like to be in those faraway horizons. For an experienced traveler like me who had only known modest accommodations on bed and breakfast and fast food, I thought that I’d certainly be out of my mind to resist such a once-in-a-lifetime offer and to just let it go by without savoring the pleasure of staying in a 4- or 5-star hotel even only for an overnight and enjoying the finest of the haute-cuisine, for a change! How mighty too good it is to be true and fabulously awesome, isn’t it?
Our talk went on and on spontaneously very fine by her innocuous questions and remarks about my name, origin and interests as if we were two good old friends from somewhere and sometime in the past. However in the course of her presentation, she asked naively me in such a rather offhand manner if I pay by credit card. Far from being too wary by the way how she rephrased her question, I gladly told her without any trace of hesitation that I always use it as my mode of payment whenever I travel. But all of a sudden, I felt my ear started to turn red and my blood pressure accelerated so unexpectedly that my vision began to blacken out as she started to become more and more curious and personal on the particularities of my credit card. She asked me to search for it in order to reconfirm the exact validity date which she thought I could have given her a wrong one by a slip of my tongue in the height of my euphoric state. It was then that I recalled all of a sudden the resemblance of the modus operandi I read in an old article that could have been circulating online for some time which I’ve also posted earlier in the blog entitled “New Credit Card Scam.” Without being too rude to cut her short from any further discussions so abruptly, I couldn’t help but to become so pissed off to tell her rather bluntly that I don’t communicate any details concerning my credit card and that I was no longer interested in her offer. In a total disgust and irritation, I just banged the phone and then took it off the hook for a while before putting it back again as I tried to cool off and calm down with the thought that she would ring back again. Personally, I never felt so mad in my life before at that instant.
A few minutes later, she called me back in order to inquire if we were cut off by accident. When I told her in a seemingly subdued voice that I hanged up, she tried to explain quite tactfully that she works for a serious company which would never dare to scam on anybody. Before I could hit the ceiling and bang the phone again by listening on the epilogue of her presentation, I told her to email me their proposal so that I could study it conscientiously with a cool mind. I wished however I could have said that I would show it first to a legal and financial expert or refer it directly to the local consumers’ right protection authorities.
Thinking about the incident in retrospect, I had the strong suspicion that she would try at all costs to get my account and pin numbers had I continued to play her game up to the end. Little by little, I discovered and extrapolated the possible scenario of such a strategy on how she and her collaborators had carefully planned and timed their operation up to the last minute by taking into account the ultimate date of their offer and the closing hours of the banking services before the weekend so that they could have enough time to make a clean getaway before their victim could finally realize that he was ripped off. On the other hand, I strongly doubt if the lady has given me her real name or that of somebody who works legally in the company whose name she must have taken at random from the site listed in Google or MSN. Perhaps I could be wrong, but it’s better to stay on the safe side than regret later. ¶ 10:09 AM
In her rather sweet and velvety voice, she told me that her company was launching a very highly attractive holiday program for Belgium as their contemporary featured country among the 25 members of the European Union to a handpicked numbers of its inhabitants in order to take advantage immediately of their special promotion at 250 euros instead of 1000 euros if I close the deal before July 31. Their supposedly exceptional offer would consist of a week full-board stay in one of their recommended multi-starred luxury hotels in any of the member countries of my choice. As a piece de resistance, she was more than too kind than generous to add the ones that are so far and exotic as the Canaries and the Balearics, being parts of Spain. Why did she forget to include Greenland which is also a part of Denmark as I’ve thought then! At that instant, I wondered if I were still asleep and dreaming or just half awake and being lethargic or incoherent. Suddenly, I completely realized that I was more than fully awake and in the process of concluding a business transaction. Anyway, I told myself what have I to lose? So, I left her do all the sales talk while I listened to her soothing and lilting voice and just let myself be carried away in what seemed to be a wonderful dream and wallow on the pleasure of what would it be like to be in those faraway horizons. For an experienced traveler like me who had only known modest accommodations on bed and breakfast and fast food, I thought that I’d certainly be out of my mind to resist such a once-in-a-lifetime offer and to just let it go by without savoring the pleasure of staying in a 4- or 5-star hotel even only for an overnight and enjoying the finest of the haute-cuisine, for a change! How mighty too good it is to be true and fabulously awesome, isn’t it?
Our talk went on and on spontaneously very fine by her innocuous questions and remarks about my name, origin and interests as if we were two good old friends from somewhere and sometime in the past. However in the course of her presentation, she asked naively me in such a rather offhand manner if I pay by credit card. Far from being too wary by the way how she rephrased her question, I gladly told her without any trace of hesitation that I always use it as my mode of payment whenever I travel. But all of a sudden, I felt my ear started to turn red and my blood pressure accelerated so unexpectedly that my vision began to blacken out as she started to become more and more curious and personal on the particularities of my credit card. She asked me to search for it in order to reconfirm the exact validity date which she thought I could have given her a wrong one by a slip of my tongue in the height of my euphoric state. It was then that I recalled all of a sudden the resemblance of the modus operandi I read in an old article that could have been circulating online for some time which I’ve also posted earlier in the blog entitled “New Credit Card Scam.” Without being too rude to cut her short from any further discussions so abruptly, I couldn’t help but to become so pissed off to tell her rather bluntly that I don’t communicate any details concerning my credit card and that I was no longer interested in her offer. In a total disgust and irritation, I just banged the phone and then took it off the hook for a while before putting it back again as I tried to cool off and calm down with the thought that she would ring back again. Personally, I never felt so mad in my life before at that instant.
A few minutes later, she called me back in order to inquire if we were cut off by accident. When I told her in a seemingly subdued voice that I hanged up, she tried to explain quite tactfully that she works for a serious company which would never dare to scam on anybody. Before I could hit the ceiling and bang the phone again by listening on the epilogue of her presentation, I told her to email me their proposal so that I could study it conscientiously with a cool mind. I wished however I could have said that I would show it first to a legal and financial expert or refer it directly to the local consumers’ right protection authorities.
Thinking about the incident in retrospect, I had the strong suspicion that she would try at all costs to get my account and pin numbers had I continued to play her game up to the end. Little by little, I discovered and extrapolated the possible scenario of such a strategy on how she and her collaborators had carefully planned and timed their operation up to the last minute by taking into account the ultimate date of their offer and the closing hours of the banking services before the weekend so that they could have enough time to make a clean getaway before their victim could finally realize that he was ripped off. On the other hand, I strongly doubt if the lady has given me her real name or that of somebody who works legally in the company whose name she must have taken at random from the site listed in Google or MSN. Perhaps I could be wrong, but it’s better to stay on the safe side than regret later. ¶ 10:09 AM
