Mumble Mail to the Extreme

I’ve written previously about the growing trend of what I call “mumble mail”. Basically, it is when someone calls only to leave a largely incoherent voicemail. You can read my old post here.

But recently, I’ve received one such phone call that is hands down the most mumbled mess of a message ever. This one message was so bad that I felt it needed its own post!

At 8:36 AM CST on Friday, December 6, 2024, my phone rang. The screen on my iPhone displayed the number (646) 503-6638. Just underneath the number read the words “Spam Risk”.

It is not unusual for me to see “Spam Risk” on a phone call. It seems that is the majority of the calls I get these days. And as per usual, I sent the call directly to my voicemail. If I don’t know who you are or I’m not expecting your phone call then you can just leave me a message and I’ll decide if you’re worth a call back later.

Odds are you are not!

So, when 8:37 AM CST rolled around and my phone beeped to let me know I had a new voicemail, I was surprised by what I heard. Or didn’t hear is probably more accurate.

First off, there is a TON of background noise throughout the entire message. It is clear from the amount of background chatter that this person is calling from within a call center type setting. I mean, I just hear several other voices talking. Some of what they’re saying I can make out and some I can’t. Either way though, the noise was distracting and served to muddle the message intended for me.

Secondly, about all I could make out in the call is that I think the caller’s name is Rico Santos, he’s calling for Gary Richardson, i.e. me, that his unnamed company is interested in my book (but he doesn’t say which book…there are 7 that I’ve published to date), and that if I have some time to talk to call him at a number that can’t be fully understood. I mean, if it wasn’t for the number being recorded by my phone and Siri transcribing the voice to text then I wouldn’t know what number to call if I wanted to talk to this individual.

Rico spoke slowly but it was clear that English was not his first language. Some of his words were impossible to understand. I’m not sure if that is by design or just a reflection of his unfamiliarity of those words within the English language. Either way, he never mentioned his company’s name that I could pick out. There was a few words after he said his name that were just completely incomprehensible that may have included a company name but there is no way for me to know listening to that mess.

And lastly, the message clocked in at 52 seconds in length. The first 5 seconds was silence before Rico started with his greeting of “Hola”. From there, Rico “talked” about 20-22 seconds in the message. The remaining 25 seconds was just him sitting in silence while I listened to the background chatter.

And to illustrate just how poor of quality the message left was, here is the Siri transcription of the message:

”I'm leaving a message to Gary Richardson I'm I'm calling a company It sounds very interested with your book Five 503-6638 Thank you and have a good day…”

I did google the number that he called from but only found a reference to that number as being associated with a robo/spam caller report. When I did a reverse number lookup, the number is a VOIP number that does not show any registration aside from Skype P2P as the provider and is flagged as a HIGH RISK because VOIP numbers are difficult to trace and don’t belong to a registered identity. In fact, the reverse number lookup website I use, numlookup.com, states “all VOIP phones are deemed as high risk, as the owner is most likely masking their real identity.” 

With so little information to go from, I have no desire to engage Rico in any conversation. Part of me is curious to call the number late at night and suggest he email me his info to see if I can get more information about this group but the jaded Indie author in me already knows what will be found. And I can almost guarantee that IF he emailed me any information that my searches would not yield anything positive.

With the mumble mail messages I’ve gotten in the past, when I did call them back and suggest they email me, most of them never did. I guess it’s too difficult to put anything into writing or when something is spelled out it’s harder to hide the deception? Maybe these groups just go for the easy marks and anyone that requires effort is just dropped? I can’t say. 

And while I have no evidence to say that Rico from (646) 503-6638 is associated with any type of scam, I feel confident that I can say that if anyone was interested in having a serious conversation with me about my books that they would make a more concentrated effort to leave a clear and professional sounding voicemail instead of this cluttered and incomprehensible mess that Rico attempted. Not only that, that a serious group would follow-up that voicemail with either a text message or an email. It’s clear Rico has my phone number so there’s no reason a text couldn’t be attempted. Likewise, the press releases that many of these groups get my information from also includes my email address so there’s no reason not to email me either. 

The lack of proper communication leads me to conclude that this is not a group that’s serious about what it’s trying to offer. Regardless of their ability and/or intent to deliver on whatever is being sold, their lack of conviction and professionalism in pursuing these offers immediately highlights them as risky if nothing else. But at the end of the day, for me personally, if you can’t be bothered to leave me a well articulated and enunciated voicemail identifying who you are, who you work for, and exactly what you’re contacting me about, I have no interest in engaging you. A callback number with no other identifying information won’t cut it. I’m not going to call back a stranger named Rico just because he asked me to call him. Why would I call you? About my book. Which book? What about it? Your company is interested in it. For what? What interest do you have in it? What is your “company” called?

To me, this is like a stranger walking up to a young woman while he holds a camera and propositions her to come back to his apartment because he wants to photograph her for the magazine he works for but he never says what magazine it is or anything. That’s just creepy and highly risky for the woman to blindly follow a stranger to an undisclosed location just because he has a camera and says he works for a magazine. Rico says he works for someone but I have no idea who. He’s interested in my book but doesn’t say how or why or for what. Granted, a phone call is far less risky than the physical risk my example carries but a similar concept applies. You shouldn’t just blindly go along with a stranger because they say vague things that scantily aligned with your goals or dreams.