spugbrap’s blog

I’m having an annoyance right now from some evil marketing company, possible in Maine, or maybe the UK. I don’t really know. They call my grandcentral.com number, and since I’m getting fed up with it, I sent a message to grandcentral support today. Here is that message, which describes the problem I’m having:

I’ve received this call from 5 different numbers over the past 2 weeks. They show up on my grandcentral.com account as coming from the United Kingdom, with a +44 prefix. Here are the numbers:
+44 2074225790
+44 2088082763
+44 2088981403
+44 2088093629
+44 2074413433

When I pick up, the recording is in mid-sentence, and says something like “This is your final notice for an interest rate reduction. Press 1 to speak to a live operator.”

The first couple times, I just hung up.

The second and third times, I tried pressing 1, and got put on hold, but I was on the road and my call got dropped.

The next time, when I pressed 1, I got put on hold for over 6 minutes (all the while planning to place THEM on hold as soon as they picked up), then finally the hold music stopped and the call ended quietly. Nobody ever answered.

The last time, today (2/15/2008) at 1:46pm, I answered quickly, and hit 0 which made the greeting message repeat. It said something like “Hello, this is Heather with Account Services! This is your final notice regarding an interest rate reduction on your credit card! Press 1 to speak to a live operator, or press 2 to stop receiving these notices. Since I’d already shown them that I’m alive by pressing 1 on previous calls, I pressed it again this time. I was on hold for less than a minute, then someone answered, saying “Do you have a balance of $3000 or more on one of your credit cards?” (or something like that). I said “Please hold for the next available operator” and put her on hold. She hung up before I got around to picking back up (I was going to wait at least 2-3 minutes, if possible).

Anyways, I’ve marked all 5 of these numbers as spam on my grandcentral account, and changed my preferences so spam numbers get BLOCKED rather than going to spam voicemail

The problem is, they call from a different phone number each time! I’d like to block ALL numbers that start with +44, or even starting with +4420. I do not expect or care about any legitimate calls coming from numbers that match those prefixes.

So, do I need to just let them keep calling me, and just send them to voicemail, and deal with the fact that they’re going to keep calling me? Or can you block them all somehow?

Every time I get a call where they just hang up, or from a company that’s annoying me, I go to whocalled.us and look up the number/post info about it. Usually the numbers are not listed there, yet, but I’m mentioning this site because if we all report evil spammer companies there, as a community, it will become a more valuable resource over time.

The only reason I ever pressed 1 at all is because I wanted to find out what company was behind this evil automated phone call crap. Since they mentioned credit card interest rate reduction, that narrowed down the possibilities to 2. If I could find out which company was responsible for this, I would cancel my card, and complain publicly about their horrible marketing scheme. At this point, though, after hearing that live operator ask a stupid question, I know that it’s not from any of my credit card companies. It’s just some evil marketing company, and/or scammers. I hope grandcentral is able to help me out with preventing future calls like this!

Last night, when I was taking the trash out, I noticed that the trash can in the garage was making a lot of noise. As I went to pull the drawstrings on the trash bag, I saw little worms crawling around the outer edge of the bag. Upon further inspection, I noticed that there were hundreds more crawling around inside the bag. Then I realized what they were: MAGGOTS!

So, I went about trying to kill them. I had a can of Lysol Disinfectant Spray with me, so I tried that first. I sprayed it all over the top of the trash bag, and sprayed a good bit into the trash bag, as well. At that point, I noticed that there were some crawling around on the floor, too. So, I sprayed them as well. But, that didn’t phase them one bit. They kept right on crawling. I carefully grabbed the trash bag and ran it outside to the curb (good thing it was trash night!). Then, I scanned the garage for anything that might kill bugs.

The next poison I saw was a spray bottle of Lysol All-Purpose Cleaner. I assumed that it was stronger stuff than the aerosol spray can I had just used, so I decided to try it on the bugs. I could almost hear them laughing, as they kept on crawling, sometimes walking directly through big puddles of it, when they could have easily gone around. They just didn’t care. By this time, there were about 20 of them crawling around on the floor (that I could see). I had to use something specifically designed to kill bugs.

So, I ran inside and grabbed a can of RAID. The can we had handy did not say anything about maggots or flies on the label, but I hoped it might work better than nothing. So I sprayed it all over the floor, wherever I saw maggots. I made bigger puddles wherever there were several of them close together. They didn’t seem to mind, and just kept going about their business. By now, I’d seen them crawling under a nearby pile of wood, and more seemed to be crawling out, than were crawling in. Either way, this showed me that they were not only resilient little bastards, but that they were probably already well established in every nearby dark place/crevice. I was freaking out, now, because they seemed to be multiplying, right before my eyes. I could see probably 40 of them, at that point.

Next, I called Lacey, and asked her to look up how to kill maggots. She read about a lot of things that DON’T work, and then found some things that supposedly had worked for some people:

- Products containing permethrin

- Boiling water

- Bleach

I looked around the garage, some more, and found a can of pesticide, in a powder form. A quick glance at the ingredients confirmed that it did have the chemical I was hoping for: permethrin! So I started shaking the powder everywhere I could see the maggots, and also tried to make a barrier around the area that I had been treating thus far, to try and contain them. Somehow, it did not come as much of a surprise when they kept right on crawling, through pools and piles of 4 different poisons.

This was really testing my sanity. I kept worrying that they were on my shoes, or might have grabbed onto the bottom of my pants legs. The barrier didn’t work at all. They were branching out in every direction, at this point. Everywhere I looked, I saw maggots. I could probably see close to 100 of them, at this point, and I knew that there were lots more that I couldn’t see. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they were nearly invisible. Their coloring was a perfect match to my concrete garage floor. Without their constant wiggling, I might not have even noticed them. I felt helpless and defeated. But I still had one trick to try: bleach.

I grabbed a huge bottle of bleach, that just happened to be within arm’s reach, and started pouring it on them. I was a little worried about the fact that I was mixing so many harmful chemicals together, but I was much more concerned about killing these evil maggots. They kept right on crawling, though! UGH! Lacey had said something about bleach taking a half hour to kill them, though, so I tried to be patient. The maggots were continuing to expand, and to hide underneath every box, piece of wood, etc. I tried to move a few things out of the way, so I could pour bleach in more places, but I’m pretty sure that every time I moved something, it just helped them spread (because they were already crawling on everything).

Uh-oh, the bleach-pesticide-pesticide-cleaner-disinfectant mix was now working its way across the garage. Apparently the garage slightly slopes so that liquid runs towards the outside driveway. But we’ve got all kinds of bikes, scooters, helmets, jumpropes, baseball bats, etc. stored in the garage, some of it in cardboard boxes. I scrambled to move everything cardboard out of the way, but I was a bit too late. So I had to empty the contents of the wet cardboard boxes, before their contents got wet. Empty them where, though? Wherever I could. Stacked on top of toolboxes, bikes, shelves, plastic tubs, etc. Just had to hurry. I didn’t want this poison mixture getting all over my kids’ stuff.

Finally, I got things pretty well moved around, so the little poison rivers could proceed towards the exit. I figured this was also helping me to spread the poison around, so if the bleach did work after a while, it was already covering a wider area. It was getting very late, so I started picking up my cans of poison and putting them on a shelf. As I was doing that, I kept noticing more maggots in places that hadn’t been treated [enough] yet, so I poured more bleach on them.

I hated leaving the garage in this state, but I really needed to get to bed. I wished there was some way I could burn the tiny demon spawn, without destroying my car or house. Believe me, if I ever find a pile of these things outside, they’re going to burn. Revenge will be mine, someday. Unfortunately there was nothing more I could do, out there, so I closed the garage and prepared to go in for the night.

Before going inside, though, I shook my pants and checked my shoes for maggots. When I got inside, I watched the floor behind me as I walked, to make sure I didn’t see anything wiggling. I was very freaked out and paranoid, at that point, so I undressed slowly and carefully, putting my clothes and shoes into trash bags.

Then, I went up and took a hot shower. Every drop of water, running down my leg or through my hair, made me feel like maggots were crawling on me. I almost felt like taking a bath in bleach, but I wasn’t quite that far gone. If I had actually found maggots crawling on my skin, I might have gone to that extreme. That was one of the most unpleasant experiences I’ve ever, and I’m sure my words cannot express just how horrible it felt.

This morning, I’m feeling a lot better (sanity-wise), but am not touching the garage door until the pest control people come. So, I’m staying home today so I can ensure that these evil creatures get annihilated ASAP.

From the FIA Card Services (aka Evil Spawn of the Bank of America+Fleet and Bank of America+MBNA mergers) Privacy Policy (emphasis added by me):

This notice describes the privacy practices of FIA Card Services for consumer financial products and services governed by the laws of the United States of America and applies to open, closed and inactive accounts with FIA Card Services.

For some reason, this concerns me a little bit.

I have two open accounts with them right now, and am going to go ahead and opt out of their information sharing options for both accounts. But it’s not people like me that I’m concerned about.

I’m concerned about people who may have ever had an account with Bank of America, MBNA, or any of the other credit card companies that they have collectively gobbled up over the years. People who may have canceled their cards long ago, cut them up, and forgotten all about them. People who may have even thrown away all of their bills/terms/etc., because it’s been so long.

According to the paragraph quoted above, FIA Card Services may share their information with other companies, even if their accounts are closed! Maybe I’m just naïve, but I never would have imagined that after I closed a credit card account, and stopped doing business with a company, they might still share my personal data with arbitrary third parties.

I’ll bet they don’t still mail annual Privacy Policy notices to everyone who has closed accounts. But, all of this may be a moot point. The wording is ambiguous enough that even though they *might* do something with that data, they probably don’t, and I have no positive proof that they actually do engage in this unethical practice. So, they get the benefit of the doubt, for now. But it’s still creepy, and they’re still evil for other reasons.

I was looking through my Gmail Spam folder today, as I do once in a while, to make sure nothing is in there that doesn’t belong. Among the actual spam, there were a couple of legitimate messages (nothing important though), including the official Google Earth newsletter (Yes, Google automatically marked one of its own newsletters as spam. I went ahead and clicked “Not Spam” on that one, since Google Earth is a cool program), and the MySpace newsletter.

My focus today is on the latter. After taking one look at it, I agreed with Gmail’s determination that the damn thing was spam. It consisted almost entirely of images (49 IMG tags!)! None of the images had alt tags, and 26 of them were linked to myspace pages (the rest were spacers/decoration).

It also included one little line of text at the very bottom:

Unable to view this newsletter? Click here to view the MySpace Newsletter profile page! :)

Gmail does not display images in messages marked as Spam, so what I saw was 3 browser-window pages of image placeholders. On the left side of this post, you can see 3 screenshots of the message, scrolled one page at a time. The screenshots are linked to their full-size versions, but I think the miniature versions and my explanation make it clear enough: This is utter garbage!

I wasn’t even the slightest bit compelled to view the images, or to click the link at the very bottom to view it on their website. Gmail was right to mark this crap as Spam!

About 3 years ago, I got a new credit card called the Merrill Lynch Platinum Plus Visa. The card came with a nice, big credit limit, and had a fixed interest rate of 5.9% for purchases, balance transfers, and even cash advances. I’d never seen a rate so low for cash advances. I did not plan to do any cash advances, but it was still nice to know that I could, without suffering a typical 17-27% cash advance interest rate.

Anyways, this card happened to be managed by MBNA. I used the card for all my credit purchases, and it was my favorite card for a while. Then, in February of 2006, there was notice in with my statement, which said that they were changing my terms, due to a “change in [their] business practices”. These changes included making the interest rate for everything variable, which came out to 8.9% at that time. I was carrying a balance of over $13,000 on it at that time, so I was not looking forward to this rate increase.

In fact, I was so pissed off about it that I did what it said in the small print on the notice: I sent them a written letter, refusing the new terms. This meant that I could keep the existing interest rate, until I paid off the balance, but if I made any purchases on the card, it would automatically constitute acceptance of the new terms. So, I went through and switched everything that was linked to that card (SmartTag toll transponder, automatic monthly payment for Hwar Do lessons, and a few other recurring payments) to a different card.

Well, two weeks later, I received a notice from MBNA talking about how their merger with Bank of America had completed in January, after having been given the green light by the FTC in December. So, I’m pretty sure this merger is the change in business practices they were talking about. They sure didn’t waste any time making unfavorable changes to their terms!

So, my MBNA card was to be come a BoA card, slowly over the course of the year — the same way my Fleet card became a BoA card the previous year. We put the cards away and did not use them for 3 months straight. They still raised my limit a couple times during those months, and kept sending me promos/convenience checks, in the hopes that I’d suddenly have a need for thousands of dollars and that the promo checks (with 5.9% rate — same as the fixed rate my whole account had since opening it) would make me forget about the fact that I’d have to accept all their terms if I use them.

Anyways, I thought I’d changed all my recurring payments to use a different card, but apparently I missed one. :( The University of Phoenix billed me for a $70 “resource fee”. This is a fee that you have to pay for every class you take, and if you don’t pay it manually by a certain date, they auto-charge it. You’re supposed to pay it by the date the class starts, but I’ve always (for about 3 years before) paid it after the class ended, along with my tuition payment. They’ve never auto-billed me for it so early. Yes, technically they did what their rules say that they do, but it really irked me that they’d never done that to me before, and had to chose this particular time to start.

I tried and tried to get ahold of anyone in the finance/billing department at UOP, but could not reach anybody. I left voicemails for several people, and sent them emails as well, but nobody called me back or replied to the email. Actually, one person did call me back, about 3 weeks later.

So, I automatically accepted BoA’s new terms. I eventually accepted that at least 8.9% was still better than the rates on any of my other cards, which had both suffered from merger-induced terms changing (the previously mentioned fleet card, and a chase card). Thankfully, the rate has not gone up any more since that one time, while my other cards have continued getting worse.

I think it’s time to shop around and find a new card, though, from a bank other than Bank of America or Chase, so I can just cancel both of my damn BoA cards. I’ll probably switch my checking and savings accounts to another bank while I’m at it, since BoA has just done one thing after another to make my existing credit cards suck.