Just when the phones at MT.Net were no longer ringing with car warranty scams, we got another one this morning. This time it’s from phone number 732-903-0837. Some folks on the 800notes website say it’s a New Jersey company called Motor Vehicle Protection Corporation. That’s who the salesguy said was calling. Could this company be the spawn of Great Atlantic Warranty/North American Warranty Solutions or Automotive Warranty Solutions?

As I’ve long been on the Do Not Call list, it’s time to collect some money from these bastards. Time to see how this works.

Update 11:30 AM: Bah. Looking at the wording on the N.C. Attorney General’s page, the bastards get one free call before I can sic the dogs on them:

If you have received more than one telephone call by or on behalf of the same entity that is in violation of the Do Not Call law, you may go to state court …

How much you wanna bet that the company will then claim a “prior business relationship” based on the first bogus call? This law is toothless!

To recap, the Motor Vehicle Protection Corporation is violating the Do Not Call registry, but they’re doing it below the penalty phase of the law. The company is identifying itself with a live human being, which is a step up from the previous car warranty scams. In essence, the scam continues but with fewer vulnerabilities for state attorneys general to attack. Clever, indeed.

Also for those of you finding this on Google, we received a dead-air call from this number over the last few days. This is likely from the company’s auto-dialer, finding live phone numbers to later feed to its sales queue. Oh, hey! This is where my “more than one” phone call comes into play! I can sue them after all!

On the heels of the bogus Einstein Bees quote and the bogus Thomas Jefferson Deflation quote comes news that the claim that newscasters in Sweden are named “cronkiters” after legendary newsman Walter Cronkite is also bogus.

David Halberstam gets the dubious honor of first reporting this untruth, having mentioned it in an Atlantic Weekly piece in 1976:

In the spring of 1962 Cronkite became the CBS anchorman. He was rooted in a certain tradition and he was the best of that tradition. He set standards by which others were judged. In Sweden, anchormen came to be known as Cronkiters….

Cronkite himself repeated the claim in his 1996 autobiography A Reporter’s Life:

I remember hearing Paul [Levitan, CBS producer] first explain the term [“anchorman”] as referring to the person on a relay team who runs the key last lap, and then Sig said it referred to the steady anchor that holds a boat in place. In any case, the meaning had been changed forever, and I was the first bearer of it. Sweden was a little slow to adopt the term. There, for some years, anchormen were called “cronkiters.”

Amazingly, no one bothered to fact-check it until after Cronkite’s death. It illustrates the level of Cronkite’s credibility that he could (innocently) repeat this falsehood and people would take him at his word.

If Walter said it, then that’s the way it was!

I got a few emails today from the guy who rented us our beach condo last year. The subject was “Jim sent you photos on Tagged :)” and the body said:

Jim Nothisrealname
Jim Nothisrealname sent you photos on Tagged
Want to see the photos?

Click Yes if you want to see the photos, otherwise click No.
But you have to click!

Please respond or John may think you said no 🙁

Here’s what it looked like:

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