Red Cross Gets Trolled

I’ve written before about giving blood. I enjoyed giving, and have tried to give since but my iron always seems to be too low.

But regularly last semester, I received phone calls from the Red Cross, letting me know there was a blood drive in my area. The first time it happened, I thought Cool, I’m glad they’re following up. The sixth, I said: “I’ll call you when I want to come in and please take me off your list.” (Others have complained of this as well).

And I was off. No more calls. Great.

Until last Thursday. I started getting nightly calls, all during dinner time, (or realistically, during study time). They never leave a message, and when I called back, I got the American Red Cross call center voice-mail. I assumed they had ignored my wishes and had started calling me again. But it’s a little more complicated than that.

She said that a lot of their donors are calling saying they’ve gotten calls from this number, but it isn’t a Red Cross number and it wasn’t the Red Cross calling them in the first place.

I think the Red Cross is getting trolled. Someone, maybe selling something, maybe just trolling, forwarded their number to the American Red Cross to hide their identity. This prankster/huckster is essentially stealing money from the American Red Cross by making them waste their time and resources to track them down.

The number is 814 – 636 – 0020

DFTT. since it’s still going to the American Red Cross as far as I know. Below’s a list of my contact times and dates, in case anyone wants to follow-up:

9/29/11, 5:50pm
9/30/11, 6:13pm
10/1/11, 2:45pm
10/2/11, 6:19pm
10/3/11, 5:51pm
10/4/11, 5:51pm
10/5/11, 7:18pm

I appreciate a good troll but not at the expense of ER patients. Whoever’s doing this should stop, before the venerable and noble American Red Cross’s lawyers get involved.

Inspirational Quote:

“Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon.  A happiness weapon.  A beauty bomb.  And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one.  It would explode high in the air – explode softly – and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air.  Floating down to earth – boxes of Crayolas.  And we wouldn’t go cheap, either – not little boxes of eight.  Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in.  With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest.  And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.”–Robert Fulghum