BOGUS PHONE CALLS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 185, 3 May 1933, Page 4

BOGUS PHONE CALLS

Many Aucklanders Are Victims of Hoax WIDESPRE A D ANN 0 Y A NCE Dominion 7 Special Service. Auckland, May 2. Bogus telephone calls requesting the delivery of goods or asking for the services of business people and residents in the city and suburbs are causing widespread annoyance and inconvenience in Auckland. In some instances the victims of the hoaxes have been put to expense before telephone messages have been proved false, and in every ease time has been wasted and confusion caused. Most of tiie bogus calls have been reported to the police and each time it Ims been stated the false messages were given t>y a woman. In spite of Urn difficulty in tracing the calls with the automatic telephone system the police are pursuing a number of clues. It. is believed that one person is responsible Cor all tiie calls. In several cases families have been dis!iirbed during the evening by a message supposedly from a considerate stranger to tiie effect that a member of the household had been seriously injured in a motor accident. The person telephoning either refuses to give a name or gives a false one, and rings off nfter naming Hie locality where tiie accident lias taken place. Members of the family usually hire a taxi and drive to the scene, of the alleged accident, and in some cases several hours have been wasted before the position has been realised. Among business people who have suffered ns a. result of the false calls are tinderlakers, tlorists, brewers, grocers, piano and wireless dealers, taxi companies, and chemists. Several astounded householders have been called upon by undertakers’ representatives who had come to prepare an entirely fictitious body for burial, while others have had delivered wreaths that they had not ordered. The hoaxes have proved expensive to taxi concerns who have sent cars far afield, while large -orders of groceries have been sent to fictitious addresses. A keg of beer to be paid for on delivery was unloaded at the preinif’is of a Queen Street chemist, while in one instance a firm loaded a piano on a truck and sent the driver off on a vain search for a house that did not exist. A. similar epidemic of hoaxes occurred in the tVairarapa district many years ago, and residents were called to railway stations to collect mythical parcels, and tradespeople suffered annoyance. Bogus calls were frequent In Christchurch last month and earlier this year.