Once she was able to see the system behind the calls, that screened out 90+%. There are still banks that call her every week to try and convince her to refinance her mortgage on terrible terms. The best antidotes to this are financial security (even if what you're telling me is true, I don't need to do it to make ends meet), financial literacy, and hard-and-fast rules.
1. Never give any information over the phone. Particularly financial or identifying information.
2. If you feel sold or pressured, tell the person that you need to go to the bathroom, and that you'll call them back. Then, call me and we'll talk through it together.
I got a couple phone calls from my mom over the next couple weeks, but they built her confidence to the point where she can spot the scams out very clearly now.
I can't imagine how difficult this would be, if my parents had short-term memory loss or worse. This industry is really soul-crushing, and the FCC needs to stomp it out.
What worked for my mom was to have her listen to an NPR radio show where they investigated this sketchy world. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/18/544448670/epis... and https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/01/29/464859624/epis....
Once she was able to see the system behind the calls, that screened out 90+%. There are still banks that call her every week to try and convince her to refinance her mortgage on terrible terms. The best antidotes to this are financial security (even if what you're telling me is true, I don't need to do it to make ends meet), financial literacy, and hard-and-fast rules.
1. Never give any information over the phone. Particularly financial or identifying information.
2. If you feel sold or pressured, tell the person that you need to go to the bathroom, and that you'll call them back. Then, call me and we'll talk through it together.
I got a couple phone calls from my mom over the next couple weeks, but they built her confidence to the point where she can spot the scams out very clearly now.
I can't imagine how difficult this would be, if my parents had short-term memory loss or worse. This industry is really soul-crushing, and the FCC needs to stomp it out.