I received a phone call a few days ago from a person who had a very strong Indian accent. He was hard to understand and I had to ask him to repeat himself several times. He said he wanted to ask me some questions related to a home security survey— specifically about smoke alarms. There were only a few questions: "do you have a smoke detector in your house", "how often do you check the batteries", "do you check it every six months", and "do you have a fire extinguisher in your house". He said thank you and that was all I heard until today. (I don't know what number this came from, since I have a few unknowns in my received calls and one might be a friend).
Today I got a call from this number (913-204-1827), and this time it was a very perky, friendly sounding girl who had clear English. I'm a college student and a TA for a class, so at first I thought it was a student. She acted like she knew me or was calling a good friend back— she said she was Rose, which confused me because I do have a friend named Rose.
She asked me if the homeowner was there and I wanted to know who she was looking for/I suggested that she had the wrong number. But then she mentioned something about a home security system and I knew something was weird. Then she said that it was because I answered a survey about smoke alarms and now I had "won" a random prize of a $1200 GE Home Security System. I hung up after trying to tell them that I really couldn't do that, since I'm in an apartment.
I did a little searching on Google and found out that other people have had something similar happen to them. I found this thread that has some funny shill responses. Apparently it's not a "prize" at all, and you end up paying a monthly fee for outdated equipment. I'm glad I didn't get sucked into that. Not sure how they got my number.
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