The title just about sums up my whole week. I will start with the phone scam since this is supposed to be a financial post although, each of these can be a financial burden. I received three phone calls from a 202 area code yesterday and I let them go to my answering machine. Let me preface this whole post by saying, I do not answer phone calls from numbers I do not recognize especially long distance ones. They usually end up being telemarketers or scams. I decided after the third call from this same number I would listen to my answering machine to see just who they were. No shock that it was a recorded message. It seemed that the answering machine began recording in the middle of the message so it did not make any sense. What I could understand said that they were going to turn something over to the county court house. I deleted the message and then got to thinking, maybe I should call that number back. I called them back and got a person that did not speak English, they were either Indian or Arabic. I asked them to repeat several times what company they were calling from and I never told them who I was, I only said they had called and left me a message. The person on the other end, like I said did not speak English, told me they were looking for my husband and called him by name. Remember I did not tell them who I was and yes they probably had caller ID which has my husbands name on it. I asked him again to repeat what company he was calling from and he said, "the IRS." Not the Internal Revenue Service but, "the IRS." I told him I thought he was lying and that this was a scam and that I was going to report him to the FBI. He hung up. I googled the phone number and it was from Washington, DC but do you really think that someone from the IRS would say that or would they say the full name. I went to the www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov website to see what I needed to do to report this fraud. Yes, this is fraud. When a person or persons pretend to be a government official that is fraud. I registered this number 202 684 6460 and my compliant. I tried to call them back again after I had made my complaint, just to let them know but shock surprise nobody answered the phone. I guess they saw it was me again. I also made a phone call to my local sherrifs' office to see if anyone else had this same issue. They confirmed my suspicion and yes others had actually given them money via wire transfer and debit cards. If you do not get anything out of my blog but this, please do not give anyone your debit card information over the phone unless you know who they are and you initiated the phone call. No government agency is going to call you to get your back taxes or judgements taken care of over the phone. No government agency is going to let you get out of jury duty by paying a fee over the phone. Please, if you think that a phone call is legit get their contact information and call the agency they say they are with and check it out. It does not hurt and it may save your money and your identity. Please be aware as we approach tax season this is going to happen more often. Call their bluff!!!
Now the other turn of the screw, my pipes were frozen this morning. I guess I should have paid a little more attention to all of the news casts that were talking about how to prepare for below zero temps. My hubby got up early to get ready for work and I am so glad because this could have gone all kinds of wrong had he not. He got up and went to the kitchen and realized there was no water coming out of the faucet. He woke me up and I hit google to see what we needed to do. I love google. According to one plumbing site, if you think your pipes are frozen you are supposed to shut your water off at the main valve coming into your house. Hubby went to do that and that was frozen so I told him to take some towels down and wrap around that area to warm it up. The plumbing site also said to turn all of your faucets on so that a little water was running through them. We did that too just in case. Now it was really cold yesterday, all day and we had no problems but I guess we were using the pipes off and on so nothing happened. We did get down to zero last night or at least really close to it and I guess that was enough to cause our valve to freeze. So far no leaking but, I am still keeping my fingers crossed. Here is your homeowners' tip for the day, if the temp is going to be close to zero during the night turn your faucets on so that a little water is flowing constantly during the night and that is supposed to keep your pipes from freezing.
Stay warm and keep an eye on your pets and your neighbors.
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