What’s more annoying - lockdown or clever patter of phone crooks?

ICANNOT make up my mind – what is the cause of my irritation at the moment? Clearly, I am fed up with the never ending lockdown, but running it close is the annoying persistent telephone calls that rarely have anyone at the other end when I answer them.

I keep picking up in case the surgery is trying to tell me I have reached the front of the queue for my injection!

If I do manage to make contact with a human being on one of these nuisance calls, it always starts the same – “are you having a nice day?”

When I get to the third call before 9am, I am sorely tempted to be truthful and say “I was until you called” but that would just annoy senior management who judges that is rude.

Yet the alternative courteous reply usually commits me to a sales or scam call.

I have tried to tell the annoying sales caller that I would have contacted them if I needed their services, yet I guess they are trained to be thick-skinned and persistent, so I have to continue my boring “no thank you” for longer.

I did try passing my less-thanbusy time by engaging the salesperson in a chat. For some reason this is taken as one being interested in their product or service and it just gets more difficult to end the call.

Maybe just once I might be interested in what they wish to sell me, but I have got to the point where I suspect a scam call, whatever they want to sell.

Scam calls are becoming more regular and hardly a day passes without a fresh one.

I really do not know where they get my telephone number from, but they seem to know I am what used to be called a senior citizen and there is a presumption that I will take in the patter.

Sadly, I think people do fall for these con artists, and they are not all aged pensioners. Some I suspect are simply gullible to the clever patter of these crooks.

I now make a point of reading the financial pages of the newspapers that report on how people have lost vast sums of money to these crooks and the banks have not always been prepared to refund the money stolen.

The regular of these habitual cons was the one that claimed to be from Microsoft advising me I had a problem with my broadband. They wanted to get into my computer to fix it, and if I allowed that they would put a fault into the system that they would charge a few hundred pounds to remove. I never ever fell for that scam or a similar call claimed to be from BT – but I sadly know of a couple who did and they ended up needing a new computer to restore their internet service.

I rarely get those calls nowadays, so I guess there are few left who fall for this.

The crooks are clearly more ambitious – and I suspect more skilful – as they claim to call from your bank or credit card provider, or even, I am told, HM Revenue and Customs to claim you owe a lot of tax and are about to be arrested! I have even had calls claiming to be from the police who need your help to catch a rogue police officer! These are all scam attempts, simply because none of these unsolicited calls can possibly be real. All of the ones I have quoted, and many others, are doing anything other than trying to part you from your hard earned money!

Let’s all decide that 2021 can be the year when we beat the scammers and ensure we can enjoy the days when the vaccine beats the pandemic and we can start to enjoy our lives again! You can report scam calls to Action Fraud 0300 120 2040 or www. actionfraud.police.uk or contact Derbyshire police on 101.