I received a text from my mom at 2PM on Friday last week. The text read "Two men were here, they are coming at 10am tomorrow!!!!!!!!!".
I thought to myself, "what are we up against this time?". I immediately called my mom, but her phone wouldn't go through. I continued to try to call my mom until the phone finally rang.
My mom told me that two men had been at her house and inside her house. She read off of the paper, she received, the two names of the men. She finally told me that the company was Direct TV by reading if off the paper. She told me the men were going to send her a gift card in the mail. That is the only thing she could tell me about their visit at this time. I kept questioning her and then I thought to ask her if she gave them her debit card. She said "debit card" in a way that she didn't know what a debit card was. I had to break it down to her as the card she uses to buy things. She said "I didn't give it to them". I had to keep asking her in different ways and she finally told me that they did write down her debit card number.
My mom gave out her social security number, debit card number, date of birth, phone number, address, and name to these 2 men she didn't know. She even had to go find an envelope with her address on it to show the men because she doesn't know her address. For some reason, she can remember her social security number, but not her address. I guess she has had her social security her whole life and her address for not so long. They also ran a credit report.
Paul and I immediately went to her home. Paul called up the two men who were at her home. The one man spoke back as if they didn't believe us and that my mom spoke to them fine. His words were that she wasn't loony toon or anything. Paul told the guy to come back to my mom's home to talk about it. Paul called the customer service, while waiting for this man to return. The customer service was more caring and said they would cancel it. As Paul was doing those calls, I was cancelling my mom's debit card with the bank. Direct TV had already done a charge on the card of $1.
The man did come back and just kept saying he was trying to save her money. He even wanted to talk about things inside to get out of the wind. He was trying to revive the deal and had no sincerity with the whole thing. He finally walked away with an attitude.
On Saturday, the next day after they had stopped by. My mom received a phone call and voicemail from the man that Paul didn't speak to. He was still trying to get my mom to purchase the cable and said in the voicemail that he heard Paul was "controlling the situation". Paul called this man back and said a few things to him. The guy said he would make note of it.
We are hoping that is the end of that. Paul bought No Soliciting signs and we put it up at her house. She still does not know what the men were going to do. She says "they were going to do something with my tv".
A lesson was learned.
We took checks away from her during the summer when she hired someone to cut down her tree. She said she could use her checkbook to pay $500 to some random man that stopped by her house. I took her check books away after that. Luckily, we were able to catch the man before he cut down her tree.
She has liked her debit card. I think it makes her feel secure and is probably the last thing she had to feel normal.
I feel bad, but it is time that she doesn't have a debit card anymore.
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