Do Not Call lists must mean nothing because we are on all of them and I renew them to make sure we are still on “Do Not Call Lists” . But that doesn’t stop the India/ Philippines telemarkers because apparently calling in from out of the country is some sort of loophole I am told, and well heaven forbid our politicians do anything productive with their time, right? (Do I sound jaded? Sorry but the deluge of political and political lobbying calls and it is not even November are a bit much at this point and they totally ignore Do Not Call requests.)
Anyway, today I got one that was bad enough I called the company they mentioned, which were major Blue Cross and Blue Shield of PA providers, known to all as Independence Blue Cross, Capital Blue Cross, and HiMark. It’s a SCAM and one which WILL cost the unsuspecting actual money. And probably insurance providers too, and I do not know about you but I think I pay quite enough now for health insurance.
The number is 814-753-4736. It comes up as being from State College PA. It has been calling repeatedly so this time I answered. I put it on speaker phone and said “hello”.
Robo-Call.
This call was something about some new pain relief that is non-narcotic, applied directly to the pain area and 100% covered by insurance. Said to press 1 now to order the medication. They want to give you this revolutionary medical device / medicine and bill your insurance policy and they are approved in Pennsylvania to make this call. There was an option 5 I think it was to instruct your medical provider you wanted this whatever it was – it sounded like a pain patch to me, but I am not sure. All I know is it was for pain.
No one in my house suffers from chronic pain and well, we don’t take prescription pain meds. We are pretty boring: ibuprofen, Tylenol, aspirin and even that is sparingly taken.
Again, I was so appalled in this day and age of doctors over-prescribing pain medication and the constant opiate addiction death stories that started with prescription pain meds that are constantly in the news that I actually called three major providers across the state. Their reaction was the same: WHAT?????
So in my humble opinion, they are NOT approved to call people, and nothing like this exists, and they are a scam. No option for “Do Not Call” and when you call back the phone number can’t be connected.
Why am I bothering to write about this? Number one I am SICK of telemarketing calls. I know all of our numbers are on Do Not Call lists in Pennsylvania and on the Federal Registry, and we still get the calls. And these calls do not include all of the political calls live and robo. Or the fake charity calls live and robo.
And given the fact that there ARE people out there who live with chronic pain for whatever reason, people might actually fall for this. Or if they are elderly, might naively assume their doctor or insurance agent told these people to call.
(814)-753-4736 seems to be a VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) line, which means someone buys it and the caller ID might say one place, but origination point is another. I know because I helped an old employer get one set up – he didn’t actually have a New York Office, but wanted people to think he did so he got a VoIP line that was a New York City area code, but you were actually calling through to Pennsylvania if you called it. Whitepages.com lists the number as a Zipwhip US VoIP and ValidNumber says it is registered to Landline device operated by LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS, LLC.
Level 3 Communications are telemarketing whores for hire. Level 3 has had complaints lodged against them by the Federal Trade Commission and I am guessing they haven’t been too successful since they are still in business. They operate a Tier 1 network. The company provides core transport, IP, voice, video, and content delivery for medium-to-large Internet carriers in North America, Latin America, Europe, and selected cities in Asia, among other things. (here is their Wikipedia page.)
Anyway, if you get this number, don’t answer. Block the number if possible. There are too many scams out there. And if it sounds too good to be true, it generally is. If your health insurer were to offer subscribers anything additional, it would come to you in writing from them and in my opinion, not like this.
Thanks for stopping by
Some will say it’s “only” 41.5 acres. Well if you can do basic math, all the acres add up. Who knew when I wrote my 
It’s a snowballing effect. We have lots of housing but we simply don’t take care of it. Our elected officials just approve more and more projects.
And remember Moody’s is issuer paid. Municipalities get what they pay for and given the hot mess Lower Merion Township is due to developers (and is Tredyffrin with all it’s issues and the mother of all open space killing developments Chesterbrook from time to time far behind?) I wouldn’t be so bragging that my municipality was right up there with them as AAA. But again, a municipality is getting what they pay for. And what will it mean when developments empty out because they are older and falling apart?
And I love when local elected officials in Chester County brag about stopping mobile home parks. I do not think anyone really gets how many of those are in Chester County, or that they are kind of one of the few sources of truly affordable housing for what defines affordable housing. They approve building of huge projects with zero truly affordable housing. Or a developer will toss out there that they will make a few units of something affordable, only it’s never truly affordable for say the family of four or six or even larger that might actually NEED affordable housing.
Now see what I think would be a great idea is if these developers who are salivating over Chester County’s open space would actually restore some of the actual run down housing supply that exists in areas that suffered downturns when factories and manufacturing left their towns. Think Phoenixville, Downingtown, and Coatesville and any of the number of small cross roads towns you find scattered throughout Chester County. Heck if they did this more in Phoenixville and Downingtown they would probably see a positive result fairly quickly given how hard these two places 
have been working to rejuvenate their towns and business districts already. But it takes talent and patience to restore older homes or do an adaptive reuse of a mill or factory, doesn’t it? And again, these developers aren’t about communities, they want to get in and get out.
Ok and when you are speaking of development you need to consider the Herculean efforts some put into land preservation. I have a friend who put four years of his life into obtaining Federal land conservation. He got a USDA Easement on his farm. The easement is a conservation easement for the preservation of a thriving bog turtle colony. It’s locked up in perpetuity I think that is wonderful. His name is Vince Moro, and you will now read about him in this article on ChaddsFord Live:
And I am not, believe it or not, completely anti-development. Small and thoughtful projects that demonstrate careful planning are not problematic to me, but you do NOT see that today. Developers come in and rape and pillage. It is nothing, ever about where WE call home, only how much money they can make. They don’t care about fitting their developments in with our existing surroundings or employing human scale in infill developments in towns (think East Side Flats in Malvern. I am all about supporting the local and small businesses there but talk about not fitting the surroundings.)
Again, I remind everyone that development should darn well be an election issue out here. Look at your candidates and what they stand for. We need less who are proud of being “developer friendly” and more who are willing to preserve where we call home. From the local township, borough, and so on to the State House and State Senate vote for Chester County. If a candidate can’t go on the record about what they will actually DO or an actual PLAN for preserving Chester County, it’s open spaces, agricultural and equestrian heritage, say bye bye to them.
