‘Good afternoon, Mr Simkins, and how are you today?” Once upon a time, hearing such a cheery greeting upon picking up my home telephone would have been a comforting reminder of civilised life in the UK – an indication of a country, and a people, who knew the correct social niceties for which the British are rightly famous. So why has this phrase now become the most loathed in the English language?
The answer is, of course, that it’s the inevitable opening gambit of the cold caller. Usually ringing at noon or just as you’re sitting down to dinner, you can always recognise them by their synthetic and overfamiliar line. ‘Good afternoon Mr Simkins, and how are you today?’
Of course they’re not interested in how I am at all. What they’re really interested in is parting me from my money. “Our records show” (or so they claim) that you’ve been involved in a car crash that wasn’t your fault, or been mis-sold private health insurance – or worse, that your personal bank details have been hacked and that your life savings are even now being siphoned off to an untraceable bank account.
Luckily, they’re here to help. All you have to do is to tell them your bank details, your credit card number, your private passwords and PIN, and they’ll sort it at once, being (as they always claim) a police officer or trusted bank employee ringing on behalf of some august institution.
What’s more, the callers are happy to resort to emotional blackmail to get what they require. One typical “caller” I got into conversation with a few weeks ago managed to inveigle me into answering a few simple questions for what was euphemistically described as “a lifestyle survey”– and when I rumbled the true nature of his intent – namely to pass on my answers to companies who would then bombard me with calls of their own – and announced I was ending the call, he wailed: “But Mr Simkins, if you hang up all my work will be down the drain.”
Luckily I came to my senses, and put the phone down: but even so, these few brief answers I’d already given him – preferred holiday destination, marital status, and the fact I didn’t have double-glazing – was sufficient to his needs, and, within hours I was being deluged by calls from mortgage lenders, travel companies and double glazing salesman, all trying to sell me their products.
On average, I receive two or three such calls every day. Indeed, with the proliferation of mobiles and smartphones, it’s the only time my home telephone ever rings nowadays. Some calls are mere nuisances. Many are not. And for those people less wary or less techno-savvy than me, they can prove catastrophic, a fact graphically illustrated this week when a gang of eight men (one of them a contestant on the hit TV talent show The X Factor) were convicted of swindling pensioners out of £1 million by making hoax telephone calls.
Victims included 94-year old war veteran Kenneth Whittaker, who was conned out of £113,000 (Dh 598,000) by one of the gang posing as a police officer, and 86 year-old Barbara Davidson, who lost £14,000 she’d saved up to visit her relatives in South Africa. In each case the caller’s methodology was the same; ring up, pretend to be someone else, confuse the caller, dupe them into giving over personal details, and empty their bank account. The police discovered the gang had been using 16 different phone lines, and made 5,695 calls to 3,774 separate victims. “Financial terrorism on an industrial scale” was how the prosecuting counsel described their activities.
Luckily in this case the miscreants have been caught and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences; but there will be plenty of other individuals only too ready to take their place. In fact they’re probably dialling my number even now.
“Good afternoon Mr Simkins, and how are you today?” Well I’m just fine; but I’ll be even finer once each one of you has been put out of business.
Michael Simkins is an actor and writer in London
On Twitter: @michael_simkins
