[Dougal]

“Hermann Gruntfuttock” defence​

Next time you get a call supposedly from Telstra, NBN wi-fi, Microsoft, etc about your faulty internet; use the “Hermann Gruntfuttock” defence;

“What?” I hear you say.

One day the phone rang; silence.

When the silence goes on for a while you know it’s an Indian call centre’s autodial system which automatically dials phone numbers in sequence until it detects a human voice, then it transfers the call to the team of scammers.

Sure enough a very Indian voice asking me how am I, to which I replied by asking why are you calling me.

“I’m from Telstra” she said, “We have detected a fault in your internet, so are ready now to fix it for you” to which I replied, “Are you looking at my account at the moment?”

“Yes“ was the reply, following which I said “I’ll advise you of my name to make sure it is my account you’re looking at”

Then I said “My name is Hermann Gruntfuttock, that’s Hermann with two n’s; is that my account you’re calling about?”

“Yes” was her reply, followed by me saying “Bye bye”

The other day I received yet another call supposedly from Telstra; so just in case they had recorded Hermann Gruntfuttock as a dud, I used a different name.

My name is Norbert Goosecreature I said.

Did it work? ……………….Yes!

I’ll now need to come up with a new idiotic alias; got a suggestion?