fraud, deception and what-have-yous

A friend from a former workplace asked for my opinion on this text message she received this morning.

Hi, gud day! Ms. ____, This is Erickson! I got ur number from database! I'm working frm U.S. Base Company & my senior executive is looking for 2-3 persons to work with him & I would like to recommend you & If you qualify for this job you will earn 15-20k/mos. If ur interested just txt me to set u an appointment to my senior executive to give u more details! Dnt wori there is no commitment yet! ->gurlie, scam ba ito?

It sounded so vague (from what database?) and I bet someone is cringeing at the grammatical errors. I asked if she had already inquired as to what company this was supposedly. She, again, forwarded the reply.

This is the company add: 15th floor Octagon Bldg. San Miguel Ave., Ortigas Center Pasig City. Wear casual attire and bring 1 valid ID ->dats ol he replied. visit der company daw. He ddnt rili answer my qstn.

Does this line of answering seem suspicious? Anyway, I just don't like the way it sounded and why the recruiter was evasive. So I asked her to give me a few minutes so I could check the address online.

And the horror of it!
Just because of this I'm so happy we have the internet for information and I'm ecstatic that we are connected at home.

Yes, if you search that address using google, you'll get a legitimate company. Nu Skin is a company that sells beauty and nutrition products and does MLM. There have been several other bloggers who have written on this company's recruitment style and/or M.O. and a click on one blog reveals more than enough information to cause dismay. Previous M.O. s are usually through phone calls. Anyway, this was the blog that I read: The Sunday Phonecall

So I went back to my friend and informed her of what I unearthed. I'm not sure what she replied to the recruiter but she was informed the company is Synergy 1 Global (now you tell her!) which seems to be one of the aliases of this company.

To make a long story short, she refused. The recruiter, of course, badgered her some more and she refused vehemently and that's that. I'm happy I was able to help her avoid that trap.

Oooh, I'm definitely annoyed at this. Don't you just hate sneaky, deceptive MLM schemes?

pseudo band, pseudo album

From wheresmycow and also

_artistmonk_

01. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

02. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

03. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

04. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post.
Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.

mute is a friend

This clip is from the movie Big Nothing which came out way back 2006. The movie is not really about call centers but it is a damn good reminder to make sure you really did press (in my case, click) the mute button. I'm not guilty of anything like this yet. Not really prone to swearing out loud but you do hear a lot of horror stories. Got a copy of that sound clip pf that notorious local tech support call stored in my hard drive. (Yes, the p-ina one.) I think it's also available in youtube, but if you do want a copy of it for yourself, just drop me a line.

What's this for?

This is an attempt to write more often about general topics. I have come to the conclusion that I don't blog as often as I'd like because I don't know what to write about or what NOT to write about.

So this is more of an anonymous or less personal attempt of speaking about things I want to talk about that might strike my fancy. Right now, that covers a lot of things. So let me post this first and come back when I am coherent.