Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Potential Scams

My 94 year old Aunt has great vision. She had cataract surgery a while back and doesn't even need glasses any more. She says she can see as good, or better now, than she did when she was a lot younger. It was time for her get her driver's license renewed, but she had trouble seeing the horizontal line. The driver's license office took her money, but told her she would have to go see a particular eye doctor before they would renew her license. It was not the doctor who did her cataract surgery and she did not like that, but she went.

They proceeded to do a whole bunch of tests. She said they were doing all kinds of things to her and taking pictures and she wasn't sure what they were up to. But she eventually got tired of being examined and told them she didn't want them taking any more pictures of her eyes. They told her she needed to buy some glasses. She told them she didn't believe it because she can see the roads signs perfectly. And if it was true, she would prefer to get them from the doctor who did her cataract surgery.

They gave her a piece of paper to show the Driver's License office she had been there. When she went back to the DL office, they gave her a drivers license without make her buy any glasses, and didn't even have to look in the machine again. This seems rather strange. Meanwhile~

I have been getting a message on my phone saying that I need more storage to back up my telephone. I do not care to back up my telephone, and did not believe that I needed more storage, but I did not know how to get the message to stop and it was pestering me so often I went to the ATT store and asked how to turn it off. I was told that I would have to turn off ICloud or purchase more storage from ITunes for $.99 per month. So I signed up for more storage.

The next day I got another message saying I needed to buy storage. So I upgraded to $2.99 per month. I now have 199 GBs of unused storage and I am still getting those annoying messages telling me that I need more storage. So I went back to the ATT store and told them what was happening, and they turned off ICloud, which means the storage I have purchased is irrelevant.

I told ATT I would like to cancel my storage service and stop paying for irrelevant unusable storage service from ITunes. They said I would have to contact Apple. When I contacted Apple, I got a message saying that my telephone does not qualify for support and I will have to pay $29 to discuss the issue with them.

I am extremely upset, disgusted, and annoyed that I gave my credit card number to ITunes and purchased storage that I did not want or need, and will never use, in order to make the message to stop, and it did not stop. I am not a person who normally buys into conspiracy stories. But sometimes the unfolding of events lends itself as support to conspiracy theories. And this appears to be a corporate scam to trick stupid people into paying a monthly fee for something they do not need or want by pestering them with a multitude of unwanted messages telling them they need storage, when they do not. I believe a class action law suit could be filed if the situation is not resolved in a timely manner.

So I am sending ATT a letter to that effect and requesting that they terminate my monthly service with ITunes, refund the money I have spent on it, and consider the letter an invoice. I am billing them $100 per hour for the time I have spent rendering administrative assistance to help them correct their mistake corrected. They may never pay, but I will have their attention when they get my certified letter.