Would you believe it?

I certainly didn't.

Since when does a company ring up out of the blue to say that we've won a competition organised by Telkom? Apparently it's their umpteenth birthday so they're giving away loads of prizes to folk whose telephone numbers were read out on ANTV.

Well, that's what the caller told 'Er Indoors who jumped up and down as if we'd won the Canadian lottery or something so we could all retire having hived off Our Kid to the most exclusive boarding school in the known world or somewhere even better.

I told her there was a catch, there had to be. But it's a SuperEx 19.5D, she garbled to me. Wow, I thought, that sounds like a really nice car to sit in whilst idling away the hours spent in traffic jams. And the catch?

We have to buy a phone card for Rp.400,000, which is all very well but none of us have a handphone. Ah, but they'll pay us back, she said. Why should they? I mused. Oh, but we can sell it later. But at a discount I replied.

They'll bring the Super Duper Wotsit to our house. Great, that's important because none of us can drive.

It now turns out that it's a motorbike fit for one of those Hell's Cherubs that plague our street and the sidewalks of Jalan Sudirman, the main drag. Wow!

We can always sell it, she says.

Yeah, if we ever get it, I told.

And if the above sounds cynical, it's because I am.

I've only ever once won anything and that was in a raffle organised on behalf of a local children's hospital. I won a bloody big pink Teddy Bear for which I had no use or a girlfriend to give it to.

So I gave it to the children's hospital.

Now I await the result of this charade.
......................

'Er Indoors is getting more and more irate with whoever is on the other end of the phone.
......................
We both now think it's a game involving a Pak Bambang, but I've told him that if there's a shiny new two wheeler in the Jakartass Towers driveway when I get home at about seven this evening I'll say something nice here.

The following morning follow up

Of course there wasn't anything in our driveway.

The Reveller, in his comment below, has concisely explained the scam. If anyone would like to piss the scammer off, then please call 7143 1516, which is the number Bambang Sudrayat, which is a feasible if false name, gave us when he tried to scam 'Er Indoors.

What worries me, and many others, is that folk can be so gullible. The chance of getting something for seemingly nothing is so tempting to so many folk.

What an indictment of our consumerist society.

Labels: social psychology

 

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¶ 12:37 pm