Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Buzzer, Buzzer, Toil and Trouble

My buzzer rings just now. It is of course not for me, and the guy won't accept he's ringing the wrong buzzer.

Several months ago, fed up with the friends of the front apartment tenants ringing my buzzer at all hours of the day and night, I put my name and apartment number on the buzzer. Granted, I didn't really believe it would helps matters much, but what else could I do? Faced with 99% of the rings being for other apartments in the building, I figured the taped information would help a tiny bit.

Nope. It looks like in Brooklyn, nobody bothers to read before buzzing. And because my buzzer is the one closest to the door, everyone and anyone who comes to the building buzzes it. I had to tell one woman who came late at night last week to please stop buzzing and accept that she would have to try the other buzzers to reach whomever she was seeking.

It occurred to me just now one more thing I could try: put a sign over the complete buzzer warning the visitor to only press if they were looking for the party whose name matches mine. This way the piece of paper obscures the button, and out of laziness (since isn't that the culprit, not illiteracy?) they might ring another buzzer first.

Any other suggestions?

6 comments:

  1. Just yell at them over the intercom.
    Or pretend it's your dealer, "yo dude, you got my shit?"

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  2. Or pretend it's your dealer, "yo dude, you got my shit?"

    Oh Moshe, thanks for the laugh! :)

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  3. I got one of those fraud calls on my cell where this Indian guy said I won stuff and I just need to pay $4 for shipping, so I started messing with him. Screwed around for like 15 minutes.

    Gotta try my other ideas next time. One, especially if the guy is Indian, pretend to be an Indian tech support guy for some computer company. The other, Chinese takeout.

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  4. I'm telling you, I HATE the cell phone spam calls. And I'm on the Do Not Call list. GRUMBLE.

    Then there's the joy of my home phone provider pinging me half a dozen times a day so that my call waiting is constantly beeping.

    Technology hates me. Too bad tech is my JOB.

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  5. Those are not spam calls, they're fraud. They tell you they need to charge some small amount, then they wait a month or 2 and start charging you for other "services".

    I've had 2 ideas about credit cards. 1, give them a test number. These are used for testing credit card processing soft and will validate as a correct number. Visa and Mastercard test numbers look fake, but the amex ones look real. 378282246310005, 371449635398431, 378734493671000.

    The other option is creating a virtual card with $1 credit limit. BofA allows you to do that and I think Chase too. The problem with this is that you'll have to give the scammers your info.

    "Then there's the joy of my home phone provider pinging me half a dozen times a day so that my call waiting is constantly beeping."
    Huh? I don't get it.

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  6. I get that it was fraud, not spam. I was just venting on a related pet peeve.

    As for my home phone comment, I keep getting multiple calls a day from "Cablevision" according to my caller ID. Very annoying

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