We're Being Scammed!

Tammy got a phone call a few months ago from a company calling themselves Yellow Pages saying that they had a refund for us. Before she could ask any questions they informed her that I had signed up for advertising services (we're sitting on a domain name for a possible side business when we're retired) from them but that I was canceling the remainder of the services and that they needed to know where to send the $500. They asked her a series of questions and recorded her answers before transferring her to another telemarketer who began to explain the contract she'd just entered into. Say what? Tammy made it clear to them that she didn't sign up for anything and called them on the scam they were engaged in.

Tammy documented everything that had occurred and sent it off to the Minnesota Attorney General's office wanting to have a record in case they should later come after us. And now they have.

We got a call two weeks ago asking for a payment of $500 for services that had been provided in the name of Grapevine Art Glass. They played a recording for Tammy of her agreeing to a series of questions about the contract she had supposedly agreed to. She explained that the questions she answered were different than the questions they had paired up with her answers in the recording. She handed the phone to me and they explained that if we didn't pay they would be turning our account over to a collection agency. I asked the guy if times were so difficult that he couldn't find an honest way to make a living. He hung up on me.

Tammy did some digging based on the phone number they'd given and found that they were located in Canada but were using a dropbox in New York. She wrote the Attorney General's office in New York detailing the scam and to go on record with them. She also went online and found that these same people target all sorts of businesses and that oftentimes the victims will attempt to settle rather than spend time defending themselves.

We received our first invoice in yesterday's mail.

My concern has been that they actually do have a team of legal experts working for them who could somehow attach themselves to our assets unless we pay. I think it's a pretty safe bet that they've got nothing of the kind. We'll be hanging up on them and trashing any further correspondence they may send.

And by the way—who the heck is Pamela Gilmore?

I made it out to the Red Bull Crashed Ice event in St Paul on Friday night, curious to see what this bobsled-meets-roller-derby-on-ice-skates competition was about. I'd hoped to get some cool photos but all I could really manage was some video.  It was too cold to take off my gloves and manipulate my Lumix LX5 the way I'd need to get the shots I was hoping for. I walked back to my truck thinking that this was one of those events much better appreciated from a comfortable chair in the warmth of my home.

I was out on my Mukluk several times this week in temps that ran the gamut from unseasonably warm 50s to more normal single-digit temps that had my toes crying uncle after two hours even with my Lake winter cycling boots protecting them. I'm curious to see how my road bikes feel once I hit the streets this spring after having spent most of the winter on what amounts to a tank in comparison.

Each trip out on the roads and trails results in lots of mud caked on my bike that I'm careful to hose off, especially from the drive-train, after each adventure. I went to turn on the outside faucet after yesterday's ride but it was frozen. Hmm...that's a dilemma, but not to fret. I loaded my bike into the back of my truck this morning and brought it to the car wash and gave it a quick once-over before turning the spray on my truck of nearly 11 years.

Here's some video from yesterday's ride. Not so interesting to most, I get that but very nice to have for me years from now when this thing I do is only a memory.