While spending the last month at home with her family due to COVID-19 restrictions, Mary Forbes has been alarmed by the number of times her mom receives phone calls for donations.
“I already had mom’s phone taken out of the phone book a few years ago because she was getting calls and got scammed a couple of times,” Forbes told the Tribune.
“But her number is still available in the system so if you search her name you can get it out of an old phone book.”
Callers who contact her for donations have been calling her for decades, she added.
“They share their lists, even when you ask them to remove a name, the still call.”
Forbes believes her mom agrees to donate most of the time, but out of a sense of guilt.
“They will get on the phone with her, and because she grew up in poverty and had a rough life as a child and suffered from misfortunes, they prey on that. They speak to her emotions and tell her that as a child she would have appreciated being helped.”
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About six months ago, Forbes noticed her mom received calls from an assortment of agencies but all from the same number — a donor care centre out of Winnipeg.
“We’d taken mom’s number out of the phone and I was home during that week because one of my children was sick and noticrf she was getting the calls.”
Forbes said by the conversation she could tell that her mom was uncomfortable.
“She’s a Newfoundlander and no one from Newfoundland wants to stop talking, but I could tell she wanted to end the call but couldn’t.”
When she heard her mom tell the caller, ‘I guess I could do that,’ Forbes asked what was going on and interrupted the call.
“They were calling on behalf of a genuine charity, but I asked for their CRA number, the number of the agency they represented, the name and number of the manager.”
She called everyone and reiterated that her mom’s number needed to be removed from the lists and that callers needed to be thoughtful.
“I appreciate that they are trying to raise funds, but the agency they’ve hired is hired to do a job, not to meet the mandate of a charity. I think they are sometimes using unscrupulous means to gather funds. They are targeting seniors who are alone at home and manipulating them with language and emotions to get them to give up some of their income and it is inappropriate.”
Forbes said she heard back from one agency stating they did not intend to change their way of operating and another one assured her they’d spoken to employees asking them to be more mindful when making calls.
Fast forward six months and Forbes at home again and she notices the calls are coming in.
“My mom hasn’t been forthright about how many calls she receives because she’s embarrassed by them. I undertand that she wants her freedom, I’m not her babysitter, but it’s not right.”
A request has gone in for an interview with call centre in Winnipeg, but to date the Tribune has not heard back.
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