18/5/01

Generous to a Fault

It used to be hard to say no. But I've learned.

    I'm one of a few people in this country who works to earn money. The rest are employed to try every trick to take my money away.
    Scamming, schnorring, hustling: it's our gross national product.
    If they're not phoning for my opinion, it's for my credit card number. They talk fast so I can't stop them to say no, which I would if they'd let me.  Eventually they have to give me a chance to say something, like yes, please, take all I've got, or more likely, #*@!&#!.
    I used to try to be nice about it.
    "Charity begins at home," I'd say.
    "Good, we'll be there in two minutes."
    But then I got burned. I got a call from Kav Lachayim, the Israel Center for Children with Cerebral Palsy and Cancer. Real hard to say no to them, right? I said OK, 50 shekels. I told them my credit card number.
    A long, long time later, they mailed the receipt. The receipt thanked me for the 400 shekels, said I'm a really great guy, the kids'll have a better life all because of me.
    Four hundred shekels!
    You should understand, I am not Rothschild.
    I called them up. They said it was a silly mistake, a simple misunderstanding, it never happened before, and they promised to stop the payments. 
    The next month, my Visa account was robbed of another 50.
    Steaming mad, I called them again and demanded my money back.
    "Sorry," they said, "We can only give you back 500 shekels."
    Huh? I explained that I'd only given 400 (plus that month's 50).
    "No, you got a receipt for 400. We haven't issued a receipt yet for the other 500, so you can get that back."
    "Are you saying you've taken 900 shekels from me?!"
    "Yes sir, plus another two payments that we haven't even processed yet."
    They had put me down for 50 every month -- every month forever.
    They said it was a mistake, and they were really sorry, and when they took another 50 a month later they said that was a mistake too, and a month later they said it was another mistake when they took yet another 50.
    But they assured me all that money was being well spent.
    I then took a closer look at my Visa account report, and discovered I was being rooked by a second charity too. My donation to Lev Malka for 36 shekels somehow became a standing bank order for NIS 36 every month for a year.
    I called them. A silly mistake, they said. A simple misunderstanding. We thought you said ... Oh, but this has never happened before, they assured me.
    It took weeks to get through to Visa (silly me, I was calling the number indicated for "clarifications"), and when I finally did, they were helpful, but almost helpless. I told the clerk the sorry tale, and asked that he stop payment for both immediately. Not so fast, he said; it's no easy matter to stop payment, and by the way, he added, looking at your account I see there's yet another payment for Kav Lachayim this month, shall I assume you don't want to pay it?
    OK, so I'm stupid. I wouldn't buy a vacuum cleaner over the phone, or a plot of land under the Temple Mount, but I figured I could trust people collecting alms for sick kids.
    Look, I'm happy to give charity, but I feel violated when they show their gratitude with chicanery, theft and greed.
    This brings to mind a sorry story from a few years ago. Marks & Spencer's used to show its love for Zionism by giving anyone with an Israel passport a 10% discount on any purchase in its UK stores. A nice way to say we love you, right? Well, Israelis just don't know how to say thank you. They found a way to cheat the system, by making huge purchases and then immediately returning them, earning a nice 10% profit. Typically killing the goose that layed the golden eggs, these Israelis spoiled things for the rest of us, and turned goodwill sour. M&S quietly withdrew the offer.

YA'AKOV "JACK" Bauman is a nice, friendly man who until recently lived in Efrat. When I met him, a couple of years ago, he earned a living hanging around gas stations, soliciting donations for a charity.
    I was selling my old car, and Bauman answered the ad. The car was tip-top mechanically, I told him, but it was old, pus-colored and battered. Perfect, he said: in his business, it was good for his image to look poor (I took that as an insult to my car, but I let it go). His employer was buying it for him, and it was just what he was looking for. The price was right.
    We became instant pals. He was American, religious, genial. He appreciated my attachment to the "oldmobile," and said I could visit it anytime.
    He paid me with two checks from the charity, and we practically hugged as he drove off.
    The checks bounced.
    Nice, friendly Jack Bauman had stolen the checks and forged the signatures.
    I called his now ex-boss. He said I was in good company: Bauman stole money from them too, and numerous others. It turns out this charity collector was a major charity unto himself. Cheery, trustworthy and persuasive, Bauman found that he couldn't fool all the people all the time: he was fired, his wife divorced him, and he went into hiding from the enraged likes of me.  
    He's still driving around in my beloved old car, I still haven't been paid, and all I can hope for is the satisfaction of putting him in prison: the Police Fraud Department took keen interest in my complaint, and recommended his arrest to the Public Prosecutor's Office.
    The funny thing is, Bauman never asked me for a donation. I might have been paying that, too, every month for life.

YOU SHOULDN'T think I always fall for it, but it does happen sometimes because I don't think quickly enough in Hebrew; I need an extra few moments to silently translate the shpiel. (Now I turn the tables on 'em: I get them to speak in English, so while they're stammering and translating, I'm the one with the quick answers.)
    I neatly avoided a costly scam because the caller was Russian, and his torpid Hebrew was worse than mine.
    I was kinda surprised to get a collect call from Bezeq. I accepted the call, and the guy says he's a Bezeq technician, there's a problem with my line, would I press the following numbers so he can check if the line works.
    I had time to think while he spit it all out:

    1. He's from Bezeq and he's calling collect? OK, I figure this is how the phone company saves money and makes money at the same time. Disgusting, but brilliant.

    2. There's a problem with my line? Then how did he get through?

    3. He could fix it if I call him? 

    4. When I told him my phone was working jim-dandy, he insisted there was a problem, and tenaciously argued with me. Now, I've had some experience with these kind of people, and if I'm not willing to be helped, they say the hell with you and slam down the phone. This guy so desperately wanted to help, he eventually said, "Well, maybe you're right, but we won't know for sure if there is no problem unless you call this number."

    In other words, CALL THE NUMBER!
    I didn't. But the next day I did call Bezeq's spokesman (not collect) to ask what this was all about, and they said yeah, the police are on his trail.
    The day after, there was a story in the Post about it: numerous people had been scammed for thousands of shekels by complying -- and unwittingly dialing the "follow me" number, which transfers usage of your line. 
    He didn't get me.

NEITHER DID the talent scout who stopped one of my kids on the way home from school, and gushed that she should be a model. He got our phone number and called to tell us we've got a special kid with a marvelous future, bring her to the studio.
    By the way, we said, we've got two more just like her. Identical triplets. Should we bring them too?
    Wary we were, but no, no, no, they swore, we're legitimate, we're serious, not like the others. This is not a scam, he assured us.
    It was a scam. After a two-minute "screen test," we were told they're perfect, we're all gonna get rich on this, and it'll cost us only NIS 5,000, sign here.
    Now, we believe our kids are worth it, which is why we decided five grand was a fair investment. And being a serious modeling agency, they would certainly see it that way. So we felt it was reasonable to ask that they pay the girls NIS 5,000. Each.
    Maybe this explains why we're neither rich, nor poor.