I’ve been inundated of late by calls from people who claim they want to help me lower the cost of my student loans.
I never answer them, because I have my iPhone set to send calls from unidentified numbers to voicemail. But they always leave a message, and they’re not robocalls, but actual human beings, always women, all reading from the same script. I block those numbers and delete the voicemails, but I wonder how I got on their list in the first place.
I haven’t been a student at any institution of higher learning for more than four decades. Even then, since I went to a rather inexpensive state school, and never ran up the bill because I didn’t come anywhere close to graduating before I left, I never borrowed a penny to pay for tuition, room, and board. Similarly, our daughter never took out a loan to pay for her undergraduate or graduate education. That may make us a rarity in today’s America, yet somehow, there’s a database that lists us as likely targets of what I’m sure is a scam.
Maybe I should answer the next call and tell them I’ll send them a big check as soon as the transfer from my new friend, a Nigerian prince, clears my bank.
With my luck, the caller won’t be the student loan scammer. It will be Rachel from Card Services who wants to hook me on some other con to lower my credit card debt (another problem I don’t have).