Job Discussion Forums

joshua2004 · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 12:01 am Post subject:

DO NOT GIVE OUT INFORMATION ON THE PHONE WHEN RANDOM PEOPLE CALL ASKING "WHO AM I CALLING?"

There was a news story about people that call and get your information who seem to be innocently asking which number they dialed. They can use the information they get from you for various nefarious objectives including but not limited to calling back and saying the have kidnapped "so and so" and are demanding money when in reality nothing bad has happened.

Whenever someone calls YOU and then asks who they are calling, trust your instincts and say something to the effect of "excuse me? Who are you? No, I am not going to tell you anything!"

It is VERY serious. I cannot stress this enough: Watch out!

And have a nice day.

ls650 · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 3484 Location: British Columbia

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

Always confuses me kbps kBps...but if you are using the dialup I had with Telmex, then Skype will be far too choppy.

FreddyM · Joined: 05 Jan 2006 Posts: 180 Location: Mexico

I just barely tried Skype yesterday, ordered $10 worth of credit, and it works great! On a 20 minute call to Texas, I spent less than 50 cents (or about 5 pesos) for the call. But I am on a broadband connection, 512k with Prodigy infinitum.
If you're on dialup, you might try to see if you can find some cheap broadband, perhaps with a cable company (I've seen some promotions for as cheap as $120 pesos a month), or if you have a landline already with Telmex, they've been running a promotion where you get broadband and basic phone service for something like $440 pesos a month. If you use Skype to bypass the Telmex system, and you make a lot of international calls it may well be worth it to spring for broadband. I can't imagine living life without it!
I've noticed that Yahoo is running some kind of promotion where they only charge $0.01 (US$) per minute for calls to the United States using their Instant Messenger software...I read the fine print however and it's only available to U.S. residents. But even at $0.021 cents a minute for Skype, it is still cheaper than those Simi Tarjetas which I usually use to make calls to the U.S.

Perpetual Traveller · Joined: 29 Aug 2005 Posts: 651 Location: In the Kak, Japan

Ben Round de Bloc · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 1946

On of my (many) Telmex stories:

When I bought my house here and got a phone line, I discovered that Telmex hadn't waited very long before recycling the number I'd been given. Among lots of hang-up calls, at least four times a day I'd get calls asking for Alfredo Gonzalez. Many of them seemed to be from collection agencies, and a few of those callers strongly and rudely suggested that I wasn't telling the truth when I said nobody by that name lived here. Three months after I had my phone line installed, I got a phone bill for over 10,000 pesos! Evidently, good ol' Alfredo had discovered that his old number had been reactivated and that his Telmex phone card, which allowed him to charge calls from public phones to "his" home phone account, was good to go. He must have called every friend and relative living in The Republic. Thankfully, when Telmex had asked me if I wanted one of those cards, I'd declined, so their records showed that I hadn't had one of those cards issued to me. It cost me an extra trip to the main Telmex office downtown, but those extra charges were removed from my bill. Since long-distance calls on Telmex's bills lag three months, I had to call a special number two more times to have more of Alfredo's long-distance card calls removed from my bills. Oh, and at the end of the year, I had to call that number again, because Telmex's computer system had put all three months of Alfredo's calls back on my bill again, somewhere around 25,000 pesos in total.

ls650 · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 3484 Location: British Columbia

Samantha · Joined: 25 Oct 2003 Posts: 2038 Location: Mexican Riviera

I agree, and it was a surprising solution for my quandry. Yahoo just bought Dialpad (which I had been using for ages) and must have dissolved the last of my Dialpad credit shortly after the transition date. I decided to give them a try on Sunday, downloading their Voice software (ignoring all the other stuff they tried to get me to download) and made a call to Canada. It really was only 1 cent per minute and you can start with as little as $10.00 which will last me months. The voice was clear with no sound problems. I am on 56K with Telmex. Thanks for bringing this subject up again ls650, as this will save those calling home from Mexico a small fortune in long distance calls. If you are using your Yahoo Voice account at a cyber cafe, make sure you sign out and close the program completely.