Scam Likely

My new iPhone rang for the first time on Wednesday afternoon. When I checked the screen, I was somewhat surprised to see the display read “Scam Likely.” I am totally serious. I’ve had calls from unknown (to me) numbers before, occasionally with “Likely So-and-so” as the name. But I’ve never seen a call come up with no number and be identified as a likely scam.

I obviously didn’t answer the call and I was on my way in to an acupuncture appointment, so I set my phone to airplane mode. When I turned it back on after my appointment, I saw that Scam Likely had left me a voicemail. I assumed it would either be a few seconds of dead air followed by a hang-up or one of those bullshit “You’ve won a free cruise!” or “Lower the interest rate on your credit cards!” recorded messages.

I hadn’t set up my new voicemail box, so I couldn’t check the message immediately. When I finally got around to doing so, I was astonished to find the message was actually from Sprint. It was a perfunctory customer retention attempt. I say perfunctory, because the woman talked so fast I could barely make out what she was saying. Hardly an impassioned please to keep a customer of more than 15 years.

I’m not sure what I find more amusing – that T-Mobile classified a call from Sprint as Scam Likely or that Sprint made such a lame effort to win me back as a customer. They’ve since sent me several emails, pleading for my return. Emails are cheap, Sprint. Plus, the emails all make the claim that I’ll be paying more for T-Mobile, when the cost will actually be less for three lines than I was paying for two. Maybe the Scam Likely was accurate after all.