When I got my first smartphone, I decided to hang on to my trusty old Nokia 3310 as a backup. Then, I decided that I also wanted it to be active with its own SIM card so that I could use it to call the smartphone if needed or if the smartphone died. I bought a prepaid card from [Phone Company #1], put it in the old phone, and left it on a shelf.

Then, a weird thing happened. I started getting calls to the old phone. As I didn’t carry it with me, I couldn’t pick up, but there would be several missed calls on it every day. As it was a prepaid card, I didn’t want to waste any money calling back; it would just use up what I’d paid into it.

The following weekend, though, I was home when the phone rang.

Me: “[My Surname] here.”

Telemarketer #1: “Hi, is this [My First Name]?”

This already annoyed me, as I don’t like telemarketers being so informal with me.

Me: “Yeah?”

Telemarketer #1: “Hi, [My First Name]. I’m calling to hear if you’d be interested in—”

Me: “Who is this?”

Telemarketer #1: “It’s [Telemarketer #1] from [Phone Company #2]. I was wondering if you’d be interested in a subscription to—”

Me: “How’d you get this number? This is a prepaid phone. Why are you even calling?”

Telemarketer #1: “I just wanted to make you a good offer.”

Me: “No, thanks.” *Hangs up*

Later the same day, the phone rang again.

Me: “[My Surname].”

Telemarketer #2: “Hi, is this [My First Name]?”

Me: “Yeah, what is it?”

Telemarketer #2: “Hi, [My First Name], this is [Telemarketer #2] from [Phone Company #2]. I was wondering…”

Me: “You guys again? I just said no; you’ve already called me.”

Telemarketer #2: “I just wanted to give you this really good offer…”

Me: *Sighs* “What’s the offer?”

The telemarketer went through a script telling me about a monthly subscription plan, no better or worse than any other out there.

Me: “No, I’m not interested in that.”

Telemarketer #2: “Okay. Could I ask why not?”

Me: “Look, this is a prepaid phone. It’s a backup phone. I already have a subscription on my smartphone; I don’t need a second one. I’m not interested, so stop calling me.”

I hung up again.

I was getting both annoyed and confused. Here’s an interesting thing: in Norway, you can opt out of telemarketing. You enter your number into a public database, and all companies in the country have to check their lists every few months. Serious companies do actually follow this, and I had opted out years ago, so I was both surprised and annoyed to get this call.

Turns out, there’s an exemption. If you’re already in a customer relationship with a company, they’re allowed to communicate with you. The intention of the exemption is to let companies communicate valuable information since you’re already a customer. Many companies, however, abuse this and use the opportunity to simply send a bunch of ads in the mail or call you on the phone, wanting to sell you stuff.

It gets worse. I didn’t even have a relationship with [Phone Company #2]! So how could they call me? I did some digging into the legal stuff and found out: the company that sold me the prepaid card was the parent company of the company that kept calling, so technically, they were within the boundaries of the law.

The calls kept coming, and I eventually answered one, attempting to really explain why I wasn’t interested.

Me: “[My Surname].”

Telemarketer #3: “Hi, is this [My First Name]?”

Me: “Yeah…”

Telemarketer #3: “Hi, [My First Name], this is [Telemarketer #3] from [Phone Company #2]. I was wondering…”

Me: “…if you can sell me a monthly plan, yes, I know.”

Telemarketer #3: “I have this great offer for you—”

Me: “Look: I know what you’re offering. Here’s the thing: I’ve bought this prepaid card specifically because I didn’t want a monthly plan. If I wanted that, I would have bought one. I didn’t. So I don’t. I already have a monthly subscription on my other phone; this is just a backup, a phone I’m not using. Understand?”

Telemarketer #3: “But you can get…”

They started to go through a script of the plan: such and such a number of call minutes and SMS texts included, etc.

Me: “It’s irrelevant. I’m not using this phone.”

Telemarketer #3: “But it’s a great offer—”

Me: “It’s really not. I’m not sending any text messages or making any calls per month from this phone, so why would I want to pay for that? I preferred to just pay that one amount I already paid so that I can make a couple of calls to alert people if the other phone dies. There’s no reason for me to buy any monthly plan for this phone. Can you take me off your call list now?”

Telemarketer #3: “Okay, I just wanted to make you this good offer.”

Me: “Yeah, so you’ve told me…” *Hangs up*

I kept getting calls up to five times a day. I never picked up. I eventually turned off the phone so that whenever they called, they’d get a busy signal. Later, wanting to test how often they tried, I turned it on for a while to see how long it took for the phone to ring. It was never more than an hour. I figured they actually had me on a priority call list and tried to call me once every hour. Talk about not getting the message.

Eventually, they shut the phone down. Turns out, they can do that; it’s in the fine print. If the prepaid card hasn’t been used up in six months — I told you I wasn’t really using that phone, didn’t I? — the number goes inactive and they can shut down the service. They said it was because they needed to limit the number of active numbers, but I think they just want to force people to buy their subscriptions. I didn’t care much, since I didn’t really use the phone anyway and the calls just became a nuisance.

That parent company still exists and is one of the biggest in the country. They are not known for their good customer service, though, and having experienced this first-hand, I haven’t done any business with them since. And I never will.

I lived abroad for a while, and then I moved back to Finland. My mom had to sign for my phone and Internet to be connected, in her name, despite me not having lived with my parents for more than a decade.

I was informed by various employees, usually rudely, that I had “bad credit” and therefore could hope for nothing but a prepaid phone — definitely no house Internet. Now, that’s not something you want to hear, so I got my credit report. Maybe I had forgotten to deal with some payment when I left the country, and it had gathered interest in my absence? No, nothing of the sort — a report as clean as freshly fallen snow.

Further inquiries taught me that the phone/Internet company was looking for bills paid. In Finland. In the last two years. While I had not lived there for ten.

I offered proof of paid phone bills from the other country where I’d lived, paid electricity bills, paid rent, a recommendation from my landlord, anything. Nope, I needed to have bills paid in Finland; otherwise, their system flagged it as me not paying any bills. Well, I didn’t, seeing as the bills were nonexistent. During all this, the clerks also never failed to treat me as someone who was trying to scam them — by living abroad?

And that’s why I had to take my mom to the phone shop to sign for me, just like I did when I was fourteen.

What I really want to know is how people deal when they don’t have family here. Finland’s official line is that it wants to attract foreign specialists and experts. Well, if not having always lived in Finland is a crime, good luck with that.

This is in the earlier days of cell phones where a lot of plans have limited texting. We deal with unbilled usage, so we alert you before it prints and try to save you money.

Caller: “My daughter has sent a lot of texts! My bill is huge!”

I check, and her daughter has sent almost 5,000 texts, which racks up to about $500.

Me: “For $20, I can add unlimited messaging to wipe it all out like it never happened.”

Caller: *Immediately argumentative* “I refuse to pay $20 for something that you can fix for free!”

Me: “Ma’am, I am actually trying to save you money.”

Caller: “You could save me more!”

Me: “Or I could save you nothing at all.”

She complained. She got it escalated. She still had to pay.

This was a good many years ago now. My husband’s phone bill had a spelling mistake. We never really paid any attention to it. It never really caused any issues… until it did, of course.

The mistake was simple — think “Rod William” instead of “Rod Williams” simple.

One day, we moved states and put in for mail redirection. Where I am from, mail redirections have to be EXACT, so the bill never got forwarded. In all that goes along with moving, it didn’t even cross our minds that the bill hadn’t arrived or been paid. Then, inevitably the phone got cut off. Once we realised, we were all set to fix it up, pay the bill, change our address, etc. But no, it can’t be that simple.

You see, to change the spelling mistake, we needed to provide proof of my husband’s correct name. But for any name change, they needed name change documents such as a wedding certificate or other official name change document, which he didn’t have as it was not a name change, just a spelling mistake. For some reason, his licence or passport was not good enough evidence. We asked what we could do to get this fixed up and they offered no help or resolution, just stonewalling that there was no possible way to fix the incorrect spelling.

Okay, cool. At this point, we were cranky. “Not going to help us with what should be a simple fix? We won’t pay the bill,” we told them.

They responded with details of the contract and our obligations, debt collectors, etc. My husband simply replied:

Husband: “But who are you going to go after?”

Employee: “You, of course.”

Husband: *Looking comically confused* “But my name is not Rod William, and I am not going to pay his bill. Good luck finding him. If you happen to send me my own bill, though, I would be happy to pay that.”

Oh, look! The spelling mistake was corrected immediately.

My mobile phone contract is with a company that uses telesales to set up contracts. To ensure that any changes to your contract can only be made by you, your account is protected with a security password. Someone with that password can set up a new contract or change your existing one. The company regularly reminds us with security emails not to give out our passwords.

I’ve been receiving calls a few times a day from a withheld number that doesn’t leave a message, so I’m not able to block them or call back. Usually, I can’t pick up as they call during work hours, but today, I’m able to answer.

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: “Hello, I’m calling from [Mobile Phone Provider.]”

Me: “Right, you’ve been calling several times a day for weeks and not leaving a message. Is something wrong? Why haven’t you emailed?”

Caller: “I’m calling with some exciting new deals—”

Me: “Stop. My contract isn’t due for renewal and, even if it was, I opted out of marketing calls.”

Caller: “These deals are to take on a second contract, maybe for a child or your husband—”

Me: “No. You are not allowed to call me with marketing. Take me off your list.”

Caller: “I can only take you off if you give me your security password.”

Me: “No. I’ve got no proof of who you are as you called me, and my password would let you do anything you like to my account. You don’t need it to take me off your dialer.”

I’ll spare you, but here follows a long exchange where he keeps on insisting that I give him my password, and I keep refusing to give confidential information to a stranger.

Me: “I want to speak to your manager.”

The caller immediately hangs up. I assume at this point that it’s a scam, but I want to make sure that my account is still set to not receive marketing. I restart my phone to make certain that the caller is no longer connected, and then I call the provider on their official number.

I get through security verification and explain the situation.

Customer Service: “Okay, I can see from your notes that that was our sales team. I can transfer you back to them now if you give me a moment.”

Me: “No. I’m not supposed to receive marketing. I don’t want them to be calling me. They’ve been calling multiple times a day for weeks on a withheld number.”

Customer Service: “Okay, yes, I can see that you have opted out of marketing, but the sales team is calling with very special offers that you won’t want to miss out on.”

Me: “Under GDPR (US translation: information protection laws), I have control over what you can use my information for, and I’ve opted out. I’m also registered with the Telephone Preference Service.”

Customer Service: “But they’re very good offers!”

Me: “Get me your manager.”

Again, I’ll spare you, but I had the same conversation with the manager, who only agreed to stop the calls when I asked to be transferred to the cancellations team. I’ve got no idea why they thought that “very good offers” meant it was okay to break the law or why they asked their sales agents to ask for a confidential password when making unexpected calls from a withheld number. Thankfully, the calls then stopped.