I was called today by somebody who gave their web address as w*w.resortvacationsvip.com which is a travel company with no links to enabling booking. I wonder how they could get any legitimate business.
They claimed I was being offered a free holiday from a competition that I or a member of my household had entered.

They couldn’t tell me which competition I had won, but did tell me it was only open to Visa card and Mastercard holder. - I pointed out that this would apply to over 98% of the adult UK population.

They had my correct name and address.

The scammer had a heavy, possibly Indian or Chinese accent.

When I confirmed that I did own appropriate credit cards, they tried to extract my credit card details - when I refused on the basis that this was probably a scam, they kept trying to get my credit card number out of me, assuring me that it was OK - apparently they’re FCCA registered, and because of that the details couldn’t be misused. - I countered that in fact, as my cards are issued on the UK and therefore FSA regulated and that f I was stupid enough to give it to cold callers, they could attempt to misuse it with a card not present transaction.
When I kept asking why they needed the credit card details, at first I was told that it was so that they could verify that I was a credit card holder. I pointed out that they called me so I was the person that needed to verify their credentials. Then he switched tack, and said that the would need my credit card details for a registration fee of around £250. I questioned this, pointing out that I had been offered a completely free holiday competition prize. He said “Nothing is free“.

They gave me a “Toll-free” number that I could call them back on. I pointed out that a phone number in the USA is not toll-free when called from the UK - It is an international call.

When I asked for their FCCA registration number, the caller evaded answering.
I kept leading him on for a while, to keep him from trying to scam others, and to research his web site and comments about the scam company. One particularly enlightening one was on 800notes.com

I asked him if he had heard of Perfect Travel Promotions Orlando - Which appears as the title on w*w.resortvacationsvip.com and has an identical web site at w*w.ptporlando.com. He claimed he hadn’t heard of PTP Orlando. They have the same phone number (1-877-727-7605) and email addresses of CustomerService@PTPorlando.com and sales@PTPorlando.com

When I kept asking him the name of the company he was working for he refused to give it then finally hung up.

In short, it had to be scam. What legitimate company employee would not know their own company’s name?

If you have similar experiences, or wish to comment on this, please do so.

The new shiny Dell Inspiron 530 has finally arrived. It appears that Dell have moved away from their old dark grey to a shiny Steel look.

The computer seems robust and well made - I only hope it lasts longer than the Fujistu Siemens machine.

After the failure of the Fujitsu Siemens PC I’ve ordered a new Intel Quad Core Inspiron 530 to replace it.

With my new PC only just a month old, there has been a catastrophic failure of the hard disk drive. Windows Vista initially reported issues with the USN journal on my data partition.
Vista suggested formatting the drive.
Instead, I managed to get it back temporarily using a chkdsk /R and backed up the data.
With the data safe, I allowed it to attempt to reformat the data partition - it failed claiming that there were errors.
I tried a full system recovery, first from the recovery partition and then from the recovery DVDs I’d created when I received the machine.
The computer refuses to recognise the hard drive completely now, and has been returned.
John Lewis, who sold me the computer have refunded the money, as they were unable to replace it.

Like many people, I own a Swiss Army knife made by Victorinox. (actually I own more than one). One of them is a Victorinox USB2 with 1GB memory stick.

I recently lost mine, and was quite upset. Eventually the pen-knife turned up in the laundry, after passing through the washing machine in a 40 degree wash.

I tested it straight away. All the blades were fine, as was the LED torch, the pen and amazingly the memory stick itself. I was seriously impressed, and must award particular credit to Swissbit, who manufacture the USB memory stick on the knife.

The Sony Ericsson S500i comes with a USB cable to synchronise calender and contact data, as well as for downloading music of other content.

What the manual doesn’t tell you is, that while the S500 is connected to the USB cable, it also charges the battery. It is obviously a trickle charge, but it does charge the phone.

In S500i I discussed the difficulties of installing the supporting software for my new Sony Ericsson S500i Mobile phone.
I’ve also been having a SIM related problem, where the phone seemed to periodically lose contact with its SIM and gives an “Insert SIM” message or saying that it was an “Invalid SIM”.
I phoned Christopher Duffy, of Carphone Warehouse in Knutsford, where I had purchased the handset, in order to complain about the “Insert SIM” message. He was kind enough to explain that he had come across this problem before, but there is a solution.
You need to push the SIM right in with a pen until it clicks and locks in place, almost like inserting a memory card. - A little detail that they omitted from the (very superficial) S500 manual! In the manual, it gives the impression that the battery holds the SIM in place. This is not the case!
In order to extract the SIM, it needs to be pushed in again, at which time it pops out.
I wish Sony Ericsson would improve their support and documentation standards to match Nokia’s.
Since “clicking in” the SIM, I have not had the dreaded “invalid SIM” message.

I have found an interesting piece of research about the dragons that can be found in the Middle Earth Play by mail game at
www.meturn.com
What amazes me about this dragon research is that it contains so much information when the normal outcome for an encounter with a dragon is a deceased character.

The Stoke-on-Trent based games shop Shire Games holds regular gaming sessions in their shop on Thursday evenings. I decided it would be worth going there and enjoying myself. So I went yesterday. Shire Games provided a good gaming experience in a friendly atmosphere.

The two games that I played were Wildlife and Formula Motor Racing which is long since out of print.

Wildlife took a couple of hours with 6 players. It seems to be a well balanced game which requires strategic thinking to achieve multiple routes to overall victory.

Having been a player of postal games for many years followed by a long lapse, I’ve returned to the world of play by mail and have joined my first Middle Earth PBM, as the Elvish faction in a Battle of Five Armies game.