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Saturday 28 May 2011

Charlatans

I had a phone call from a foreign sounding gentleman purporting to be working on behalf of Microsoft. Well I listened to what he had to say and must admit that it sounded plausible until he had me look in Windows event viewer. Now I’ve used the event viewer many times, so when he tried to tell me that those events were going to kill my computer. I began to suspect that he was trying to con me into something that would cost me money.

The long and short of it was, that I let him waffle on for a while, whilst pretending to be very worried, and carried out his every order, typing in various commands into my “Run” bar. Finally we got to  www.logmeien123.com  . Thats when I hung up the phone.

This is a company that will offer to manage your computer for a small sum of, wait for it, £699 per annum. Maybe if I was a computer Luddite and I had a medium size company I might be interested. However, believe it or not I can access my computer for the vast sum of the square root of fuck all. It’s called remote access, and comes built in to modern windows systems.

So if you get called from a company called LogMeIn warning of dire predictions then just tell them to take a running jump.

 

logmein

Well that’s got that off my chest.

11 comments:

  1. HOW MUCH??! To "manage your computer"? You could buy a new one every year for less than that! How likely is it to break completely more often than that?

    After all, this one I'm using now hardly every cra**%###########*****

    ReplyDelete
  2. I bought the present one three years ago for £600 and it is still flying along. All you need to do is a bit of housekeeping now and then with free software that you cn download from the net.

    My computer nev..........................THE END

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've had a few of those. I tend to put my absolute idiot head on and spend as much time as possible being completely incapable of finding what he's telling me to look for. I try to avoid mentioning that it's a Mac right away and even if I'm actually using Windows, which I do a fair bit, I feel their job satisfaction can only be increased if I make it challenging for them by imagining that I am at a Mac when they call. If one of them ever susses it out before I take pity and tell them I'll offer hearty congratulations, but in the meantime I expect conversations to continue along these lines:

    Call centre guy: "And what version of Windows are you using?"
    Me: "OS X."
    CCG: "You mean XP?"
    Me: "I mean OS X."
    CCG: "Okay, click on the Start button and blahblahblah, stuff you can't possibly do..."

    /facepalm

    ReplyDelete
  4. I got a similar call the other day. Knowing that there are plenty of scams based around this, I couldn't be bothered to string him along, and a considerable quantity of "fucks" swiftly followed...

    ReplyDelete
  5. I quite enjoy 'stringing them along'.

    The conversation gets progressively more sexual until he/she is forced to complain.

    I then remind the caller that it was they who rang me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Captain Haddock28 May 2011 at 23:54

    I haven't had this "pleasure", as yet ..

    But if I do, I'll simply adopt my Hard-of-hearing "Total Computer Biff" Pensioner act (not difficult, except I have perfect hearing) and tell them that I consider £6.99 per annum very reasonable indeed ..

    When I've wound him/her up to the point where I become bored .. I'll then invite the caller to chew my Starboard testicle, before terminating the call ..

    Well .. its got to be a damned sight more entertaining than daytime Telly .. Hee hee ..

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hmph,

    LogMeIn is a valid business offering a valid service, remote access to a computer you set up on your own account. I use it often in order to access and support customers machines remotely.

    What you got here was a scammer trying to use this system to bilk you.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think these are pure scams that try and pretend to be valid businesses. The aim is usually to make the computer continuously virused so they have to keep fixing it, for a fee of course.
    I have had over a dozen such calls over recent weeks, most pretending to be allied to Microsoft.
    Someone I know was caught, happened to have just crashed her PC, decided to allow the PC to report it to Microsoft, then was taken in by the scammer who happened to phone minutes afterwards. She ended up with a heavily compromised and infected computer.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Agreed, it must be the latest scam, I got a call from a similar sounding fellow, telling me my Windows PC was doing all sorts of bad things. Odd really bacause I don't run windows.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Actually Logmein is a legitimate company selling a very useful product, but it's intended for the corporate market and is much more powerful than you'd need for home support.

    I am a bit surprised at them doing cold-calling.

    Cheeky, maybe, but not a scam.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Personally I think it is a scam. I don't run a business. The mere fact that they didn't actually know my name was suspicious from the start.

    I personally think it was a rogue member from their sales team trying to make more commission. By trying to scare the computer illiterate (Which I'm not),is in my mind is deceitful and dishonest.

    ReplyDelete

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