Your Warranty May Have Expired

An incessant and insistent ringing phone woke me up the other morning. Yes, I still have a land line. Somebody has to fork over wads of money to the phone company so that they can bombard me with phone calls to sell me cell phone service early in the morning. Never mind that the cell phone service being sold to me is a service that I already have. The nice young lady with the reassuring voice on the automated recording doesn't know that, and none of the options provided by the nice young voice allow me to tell them that I already have her service and have no need for a new service from her. I guess the phone company doesn't really know everything about me after all.

Come to think of it, I'm not so sure how much the marketing people know about us in these days of massive databases and instant information transfer and multi-platform information trading. "What the heck does all that mean, Bill?" you may be asking me. How the heck should I know? All I know is that the warranty on my vehicle may be about to expire, which came as quite a shock to me considering that the vehicle I owned at the time of the call was a 1982 Dodge truck. But the earnest young voice (male, that time) was warning me to do some thing or another before the warranty on that baby expired. Again, there was no option available to let the earnest voice know that the warranty had expired while Ronald Reagan was defeating communism and, quite possibly, before the earnest voice on the tape had been born. I knew Dodge made good trucks, but really......

If only Dodge had made me, because apparently, at least according to various recorded phone calls, my warranty is about to expire. Have you had one of those phone calls? The ones that tell you right off the bat not to hang up. If you are between the ages of 50 and 75, then you are eligible for $10000.00 in life insurance and you can not be turned down? Only the voice doesn't call it life insurance. The voice calls it burial insurance. And we all know what the voice is implying: buy insurance now, before you expire and leave your family destitute paying for your lousy funeral, you lout. Oh, and while we're at it, buy some life insurance for your baby, you insensitive jerk. Don't you want the best for your child, even if you don't have any?

Then, of course, I get the phone call telling me that I may be paying too much for health/life/auto insurance. If I could speak to an actual person, then I would tell them that I don't have life insurance, so I highly doubt that I am paying too much for life insurance. Although, being the proud owner/caretaker of four cats (Oy) I probably should have life insurance and some sort of estate plan in place for when I expire, which will be soon according to the burial insurance people.

As for health insurance, well I'm all for finding cheaper health insurance, assuming that the insurance actually pays for some of the medical expenses incurred without me having to file paperwork with Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, ICE, and any other of a number of alphabetical organizations that thrive on shuffling and/or losing paperwork. Don't get me started, as my friend from a certain New Orleans tavern is fond of saying.

And I would like to know exactly why the person on the phone thinks that I am paying too much for auto insurance when the company the voice represents is my auto insurance company. Didn't that other voice on the phone that sold me my policy tell me that there were no lower rates available to anyone from any company? When did that change? And why wasn't I informed? And why do I get another recording when I press "1" to speak to a company representative? Shouldn't there be somebody waiting with baited breath for me to call? These are just a few of the many questions I have when listening to the earnest young recorded voice trying to sell me something every morning.

Just one more question: Anybody seen my Dodge? She's on her last legs and I need to buy her some burial insurance.