To Whom It May Concern,
This morning my husband received a call from the "Your Choice Government Grant Info Center", I told them he wasn't home when I first answered the phone because I thought it was just another telemarketer and we don't usually bother each other with those calls. The young lady I spoke to ask if I was a relative and I said I was his wife. Once she got that information she told me why she was calling..."You and Your family have been selected to receive an $8,000 grant from the Government." I ask how we had been approved for something we had not applied for and she said that it was done by tax records. Weren't we tax payers? The government had done research and we fell into a catagory that was approved for grants, based on debt and spending.
The thing that alerted me to start off with is she said that this grant could be used to fix our credit... BUT WE HAVE an A credit rating. Immediately I ask, "What do you mean, we have perfect credit?" She responded that it didn't mean we had bad credit, we just didn't use our credit. Well as my teenage daughters would say..."D'UH"... We pay as we go (except for the house and one of our vehicles), otherwise you are just letting someone else charge you for buying things and isn't most of the stuff we buy today expensive enough without being charged for buying it.
I then ask her, "exactly what was this grant going to cost us?". She said you seem worried about giving out information over the phone, you don't have to do that... We will mail you a packet and you will just have to fill out the paper work and then we will process the information. I thought maybe this is for real, but I was still leery so I told her my husband had just driven up and she should talk to him.
Well to put it lightly she went for the hard sale with him, gave him all her information as follows:
Stacey White
ID#0487
Your Choice
Government Grant Information Center
Box 41802
Las Vegas, Nevada 91335
She then explained that they needed $257 to be withdrawn from our account by the Federal Credit Union of America, and if he would just give her the second set of numbers on one of his checks we could get the whole process started for our pre-approved $8,000 grant.
He told her we NEVER give out any of our checking numbers and if she would please just send the package we would read over it and decide if this was a grant we wanted, if so we would have no problems sending them the requested $257 processing fee. WELL, she ask him to please hold while she got her supervisor to talk with him.
Once her supervisor got on the phone, my husband once again ask him to send the package and we would look it over. He was told they couldn't send the package until they had the money, "TO MAKE SURE WE WERE LEGITIMATE"... Well we thought that was funny and my husband told them "we didn't call you, you called us, and with all the scams these days you AREN'T getting any of our number, but if you will give me a number where I can call you back after I make sure you are legitimate I will gladly call you back."
To say the least we weren't given a call back number, the man wasn't happy and even ask my husband if he "would let $257 stand in the way of free money" and my husband told him yes, if it was free money for the people calling... SUDDENLY the phone went dead... I guess they didn't want to talk to informed and intelligent consumers who only wanted to verify who they were.
So people of AMERICA beware they are out there... You just have to ask lots of questions and never under any circumstances give out your information: credit card numbers or checking account numbers.
Thanks for letting me vent and laugh a little more, I just hope no one else falls for this.
A wise consumer.
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