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The Long Cold Chilly Windy Winter

February 18, 2010 By pia

“If you don’t act now the account will be closed.”   “What do you mean?  You will close my account?”  “No I meant to say ‘the meeting will be adjourned.’ ”   It’s a proxy meeting and I won’t bore you with specifics.

Explain please how a person would say the first sentence when she meant the “meeting will be adjourned.”  I have been continually harassed by a company hired by a fund company.  Continually as in three calls in the past two days all saying the sentences in the above paragraph.  There were more calls but I hung up.  Why am I the one person in America both to answer her phone and not hang up immediately?  Why?

It’s not that I thought they were going to abscond with my money.  It’s that they use the same verbiage in repeated calls.  And there is a second of fear.  I’m an idiot.  I admit it.

I’m beyond angry. I try to let anger fly away.  Unless used for a greater purpose it only serves to give people heart attacks and strokes–as my stock broker could attest to.  He had  massive heart failure a few months ago after having lost most of his money and much of his clients money.  I felt sorry for him.  I know.  I know.  But the world changed and it wasn’t his fault.

Most of us have had our lives changed in the past few years.  These calls were directly made to play on fear.  “Single woman, lives in South Carolina.  Call her until she breaks.”   Most women I have met here are very strong.  They do have that steel magnolia thing going.

I’m a  New Yorker and we yell.  And yell.  And yell.  I refuse to fall into that though maybe it would be healthy for me.

I’m going to file formal complaints with both the SEC and the FCC.  My brokerage house doesn’t want me to.  I have to ask: why?  Is there something beyond minor harassment in those calls?

Though I have made good friends and can’t complain about my life here, I’m feeling very alone.  I would probably feel that way in New York right now.  Having bag lady fears is normal, I know, though I have less to worry about in that area than many women, I do.  It isn’t a giant amount of money but it will pay my expenses for many months or a great trip.  I would like to keep it.

Those phone calls were designed to play on my fears. I had asked them not to call me.  I specifically said, “I don’t want anybody from First Widget Trust calling me anymore.”  Once you say that legally they can’t call. They ignored that.  I feel violated.  I feel as if somebody peered into my soul and decided that I’m somebody who can be screwed with.  (According to my brokerage company, nobody else who has this fund–my one fund, I hate them–has been getting more than one call from First Widget Trust, and none have had that script read to them.  It’s a script you’ll remember.)  When a man called at 8:55 last night I said “I told you not to call me anymore.”  He said “you didn’t tell me.”  “You’re right.  I said “….from First Widget…” He hung up.  The law is that specific and I respect that.

I need winter to end.  I didn’t move to the beach for endless freezing weather.  My heating broke last week.  Fortunately I can keep it on “emergency.”  Unfortunately that’s very expensive.  Unfortunately Trane is back ordered at least a month.  Fortunately it’s under warranty.

My health insurance premium went up 37.6% a month.  Nobody has ordered a moratorium on my increase, as President Obama did in California for 1.4% more.  Is California superior to South Carolina?  Are we going to be punished because South Carolina didn’t go Democrat?  (I have given up on caring about any political party in this country.  I have always liked Obama, and thought at first his conciliatory politics marked a new era.  Now I think he needs to develop some cajones.

These are all minor things but they add up.

Sometimes I need to blog things to get over the feeling.  I hate this need.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: health insurance premium increases without a moratorium, mutual fund harassment

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Comments

  1. Doug says

    February 20, 2010 at 8:14 am

    Well, we profit by your bloggy craving, so if you’re going to do any self-improvement, please focus on the yelling (I can’t picture that) before the blogging.

    • pia says

      February 20, 2010 at 12:42 pm

      Doug mi amigo I hate to yell. If I start I might never stop. I almost yelled at the broker. Did a bit and it did nothing but put me in a worse mood

      I really wrote this because I couldn’t believe the Altman Company’s script. Had to write it down to make sure I heard correctly. Threatening to do something to a person’s money is never good etiquette. These days it’s felonious. IMHO

  2. TC says

    February 20, 2010 at 11:21 am

    I have given up on caring about any political party in this country. I have always liked Obama, and thought at first his conciliatory politics marked a new era. Now I think he needs to develop some cajones.

    ROFL

    I love it. I actually truly believe that’s a great political statement there. All these buttheads in Washington care about lately is what party they belong to. No one is helping the American people. They all need to grow a pair and do what they said they were gonna do.

  3. TC says

    February 20, 2010 at 11:22 am

    Ok, really? I have got to find a way to get a new face for this thing! I wonder if changing my e-mail would do it? Or just not putting in a url? lol I perpetually look pissed off.

  4. pia says

    February 20, 2010 at 12:37 pm

    TC I understand nothing anymore. I don’t understand why avatars don’t work here. They did. Then they stopped. Sort of like DC.
    Thanks so much for your very understanding comment–the first. The second I take no responsibility for.

  5. cooper says

    February 20, 2010 at 7:25 pm

    I am with you hard if that makes sense.

  6. cooper says

    February 20, 2010 at 7:25 pm

    My avatar works …hummm

  7. pia says

    February 21, 2010 at 10:48 am

    That makes sense. Thank you Cooper. I came across an early comment of yours. My have you grown up 🙂
    Your avatar would work Queen of the Blogosphere

  8. Bone says

    February 22, 2010 at 8:42 pm

    I’ve gotten calls here from all sorts of people and companies–telemarketers, collection agencies, the NEA, some lady wanting to know if I wanted her to come by and take my daughter (which I don’t have) to church–since I moved in four years ago.

    The worst part is they’ll call Saturday morning at 8 AM, when I am NEVER awake. I’ve added myself to the do not call list numerous times. Doesn’t seem to help. I basically don’t answer my phone anymore.

    • pia says

      February 23, 2010 at 8:34 am

      Did you tell the woman to come over and take your daughter to church? That’s hilarious in a very sick way

      Since I got my phone through the cable company it doesn’t seem to appear in any phone book and I love that. Been long enough now so that it would have

      When I stayed at the townhouse would get calls everyday for a felon who would give that number. Took people a long time to believe she didn’t live there. Could track her jail times from lack of phone calls.

  9. EsotericWombat says

    February 23, 2010 at 12:50 am

    I know that you don’t want to, but it seems like the solution to both problems is to keep yelling. Though the second one requires more people to join you. The way information travels now, if a handful of people are complaining loudly enough it’ll become a national story overnight, and the President will have to have something to say about it.

  10. pia says

    February 23, 2010 at 8:31 am

    EW I can’t seem to find people to join. Nobody is satisfied but people are battered down. I went to one Democratic party meeting. What a frigging joke. People drink, smoke, eat appetizers and don’t seem to want to do anything because “people yell.” It might have been just these people
    I have emailed everybody I can think of. I have contacted all the SC Dems on my FB friends. I have emailed the White House several times

    My problem is I can’t yell well. I come off like a crazy person. What I do better than most people is write. But I’m not poor yet. I’m not dying yet or that I know about. I don’t have kids. I’m not an empathetic person in the sense that people who don’t know me personally want to help me

    Even when I found out about NLD and begged for help through my blog. Only those bloggers who knew me wanted to help me but none of us knows anything about this

    I’m sure “experts” read my blog. Not one offered help. So I essentially lost readers and my blog–and was able to help other people but not me

    I had to move to a small city where I shouldn’t get along with anybody if you based it on politics and religion to find people who wanted to help me–in big and small ways. This place blows me away. Of course I bring my personality to the table. And I pay for the exercise. But the kindness of people who are no longer strangers overwhelms me

    The thing is so many don’t have health insurance at all. And they don’t know how to fight for things like that or trust the government. Well this could be the longest post I have ever written 🙂

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About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

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