Letters - Thursday, April 8, 2021

I’m sure I can’t be the only one appalled by headlines in the local and national news concerning the huge problem of litter in our parks and streets.

Every day I collect litter from the “can’t be bothered” brigade who somehow think there is an army of litter fairies that clear up after them.

It has to be said that the main culprits are young people casually tossing anything and everything into the streets and parks.

Country lanes with scrap dumped in them, alleyways with household rubbish.

The councils must be sick of it, let alone how much it costs to clear it all.

The councils could do themselves favours by providing more recycling points and certainly bigger and more litter bins themselves.

As for the idiots that think it is good to pick up after their pets have fouled and then throw the bags into the bushes.....what on earth is all that about?

Like all these things, it starts with respect for your surroundings, something that seems to be completely lost on everyone.

PT

Address supplied

SCAMS

Playing the numbers game

I should like to warn your readers about a possible scam phone call I received.

The woman on the other end of the line told me that the warranty for my appliance was out of date. She was offering to renew my warranty, no doubt for some inflated price and/or no doubt I had to give away personal financial and other information about myself. No doubt also she would use scare tactics (such as the cost of repair) into me parting me from my hard earned dough.

The truth is that this woman and perhaps this warranty company are simply playing the numbers game. She assumes that I do have at least one appliance in my home and that, yes, the warranty may not have been renewed.

However, there is a way of fighting back against these rogues and that is to play the numbers game on them. This is a tried and tested method and, at some point, the potential scammer will give up as they will know that they have been rumbled. You ask them a series of questions. Please do not gave them any hint as to whether their answers are right or wrong. Here goes:

About what appliance are you talking? They will probably quote some appliance or other. All this question is doing is sucking them in. Suppose they say, ‘washing machine’, you then ask for the make (remember they have told you that the warranty on this appliance is out of date so should know this if genuine). Now, if they have no idea, they have to quickly think of a make. Do not confirm whether this is right or wrong. If they get it wrong, then you know that the game is up for them, but for fun you could always play along.

Then ask them for the model number. Now this gets even trickier for them, as whichever make they have said has many models from which to choose. Thus, unless they know precisely the model, they are going to struggle in answering this question. Again they may strike lucky.

Then you ask for the serial number. Those companies who are just using the numbers game will find such a question impossible to answer. At some point, they will use the ‘data protection’ card, limiting their ability to answer some questions, but that is just bluff because they do not know the answers. Only a genuine company may have these details and, if they do, then someone else may be in real trouble for leaking such information to them.

Of course, to prevent you being bothered further from this ‘company’, you could always block future calls, should your phone have that capability. On this occasion I was ready for the caller, as it came from that notorious risky set of phone numbers starting 0203 which are often used as VGPNs (Virtual Geographic Phone Numbers) thus seemingly looking like they are coming from, in this case, London, but in reality could be calling from anywhere in the world. Hope this advice helps your readers in not being scammed.

NS via email

VIRUS

Cost of vaccine passports

Vaccination passports? What a load of rubbish. There’ll be forgeries on sale within a day of the first ones being issued.

And the cost! A few years ago proposed ID cards were said to cost £80. I suppose vaccination passports would be just as expensive. If we don’t pay for them directly, we will pay for them through our taxes.

There are lots of things that the Government should be spending our money on and vaccination passports is not one of them.

Stephen Palmer

Penwortham

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