My mother got scammed recently. Not too badly, and unfortunately in a way with sufficient deniability that the miscreants got away with it, but it made me realize something about her, and about elderly people in general.
My mother is obsessed with the cost of television. When I was a kid, and she was a woman in her thirties making her way through life, television was free. You turned it on, and there were the three-plus-one-plus-local channels: ABC, CBS, NBC, and then PBS, and then all the crappy local channels with re-runs and the occasional infomercial, but you didn't have to do anything more than pay for the TV set and you had it all, for the 1970s definition of "all."
Then came cable, and now the Internet. The array of options has widened appreciably, and 80-year-old women of relative privilege have never before had to think quite so much about how those entertaining little vignettes get onto the glass screens now scattered about their homes. And now it costs money, which is so unfair, because that makes it seem like a luxury. It was never a luxury before. And to my mom, it's really unfair that quality television has become a luxury item just when she's living on a long-term fixed income retirement fund.
The "scam" was straightforward. Their ads use phrases like "digital TV" and "as many channels as basic cable" to give the less-savvy the idea that they can cancel cable and still get their shows. They exploit the transition to digital broadcast (eight years ago!) to create confusion. The ads look exactly like the Alexa Silver ads, and with good reason; that look is familiar to elderly viewers. We giggle at it, but to my mother, it sells.
I had to tell my mother that what she bought was "just an ordinary, modern television antenna." The black rectangle doesn't look like a television antenna to her, of course; it's not rabbit-ears. When she said it wasn't cheap, that she spent sixty bucks on it, I had to tell her the truth: she got scammed. It wasn't going to bring her many of her favorite channels. She wouldn't be able to watch HBO on it. And she probably couldn't get her money back, although she was welcome to try.
Trying to explain to her why her local channels come bundled with her cable TV, but cable TV doesn't come bundled with her local channels, is an exercise in futility. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to her. It's frustrating because she's still a smart woman in charge of all her mental faculties. But at the age of 80 her brain is full, and she doesn't have the patience or bandwidth to try and understand this whole new complex world.
My mother is obsessed with the cost of television. When I was a kid, and she was a woman in her thirties making her way through life, television was free. You turned it on, and there were the three-plus-one-plus-local channels: ABC, CBS, NBC, and then PBS, and then all the crappy local channels with re-runs and the occasional infomercial, but you didn't have to do anything more than pay for the TV set and you had it all, for the 1970s definition of "all."
Then came cable, and now the Internet. The array of options has widened appreciably, and 80-year-old women of relative privilege have never before had to think quite so much about how those entertaining little vignettes get onto the glass screens now scattered about their homes. And now it costs money, which is so unfair, because that makes it seem like a luxury. It was never a luxury before. And to my mom, it's really unfair that quality television has become a luxury item just when she's living on a long-term fixed income retirement fund.
The "scam" was straightforward. Their ads use phrases like "digital TV" and "as many channels as basic cable" to give the less-savvy the idea that they can cancel cable and still get their shows. They exploit the transition to digital broadcast (eight years ago!) to create confusion. The ads look exactly like the Alexa Silver ads, and with good reason; that look is familiar to elderly viewers. We giggle at it, but to my mother, it sells.
I had to tell my mother that what she bought was "just an ordinary, modern television antenna." The black rectangle doesn't look like a television antenna to her, of course; it's not rabbit-ears. When she said it wasn't cheap, that she spent sixty bucks on it, I had to tell her the truth: she got scammed. It wasn't going to bring her many of her favorite channels. She wouldn't be able to watch HBO on it. And she probably couldn't get her money back, although she was welcome to try.
Trying to explain to her why her local channels come bundled with her cable TV, but cable TV doesn't come bundled with her local channels, is an exercise in futility. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to her. It's frustrating because she's still a smart woman in charge of all her mental faculties. But at the age of 80 her brain is full, and she doesn't have the patience or bandwidth to try and understand this whole new complex world.
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