I had a scary moment that involved me calling 911 and having the county sheriff out to the house.

We have a land line, (I have mentioned it before) and today the phone rang after three days of being quiet. I answered it and it was a recorded message (poorly worded I might add) about credit card debt and lowering of the rates and if I am interested to press 1. With no option to remove myself from the list, I pressed 1 and this is how the conversation went:

Hunky-Dory, right? No.

The phone rang 10 minutes later and it was the same company. This time I just spoke with the person who answered when I pressed 1 and said “You just called, I asked to be removed from the list, please remove me.” and hung up.

Ten minutes later, I was changing Benedict’s diaper when the phone rang again. I answered it and it was the same recorded message. I pressed 1 without listening to the rest of it and when the person answered, I asked for a supervisor. The man at the other end told me he was a supervisor, so I asked for his supervisor. At this point he told me that there was no one above him, so I told him that I requested to be taken off the list two times in the last 20 minutes and that he was in violation of the do not call list. He told me they don’t subscribe to the list and then he said he was going to come over and choke me.

Yes, he said that.

I then went in to protective mama bear mode and said a few things along the lines of “How dare you call me and threaten me.”  I started crying a bit and the man said “Are you pouting now? Are you crying? Are you scared?” then said a few more mocking things about me being upset and crying.

At this point I ran upstairs for my cell, called 911 and was told a deputy would be sent to my house.  I was pretty upset and crying on the phone at this point. I managed to call Joshua while waiting and told him what happened. He said he would call the phone company to get the phone numbers of the last received calls.

The officer arrived pretty much said that there was not much they could do (is there ever?) and his advice to me is to just not answer the phone. Then he left.

Joshua then called and told me the phone company could not access the last calls received without the police calling it in.

I called the FTC and spoke with a very nice woman who took my information then she said that the man was most likely a scammer and that there is no way to catch him (or his “company”).

While the woman at the FTC was nice and officer was not so condescending, I am frustrated that a man called my house, threaten me with bodily harm and there is nothing I can do about it. We are still tossing around calling the FBI to see if they can help, but I am not sure if we will because we will probably get the same response.

Say a prayer for me and my shot nerves though. I realize it was probably just a loser with little to do in life and he probably lives 1000 miles away, but I am still pretty worked up over this and upset.