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From: hagerman@friday.DEC
Newsgroups: net.rec.photo
Subject: camera rip-off scam
Message-ID: <106@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Fri, 20-Dec-85 00:29:56 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.106
Posted: Fri Dec 20 00:29:56 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Dec-85 06:24:47 EST
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Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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A few weeks ago my wife got an interesting phone call during the
day.  It was a pre-recorded "film usage survey" that asked questions
like:
    how many rolls of film do you shoot per year?
    what kind of film do you use?
    what kind of camera do you have?
    what is your phone number again so we can send you 10 free rolls
        of Kodak film?

I thought it was kind of strange that anybody would send me free film,
especially 10 rolls, but I just kind of ignored it.  We never got
any free rolls of film...

Two days ago our house was broken into and all my camera equipment and one
jewelry box that was near it in the bedroom closet were stolen.
The value of the stolen equipment was about $2000. (My Leica and 
5 lenses).

So is there a connection?  And how did they get my name?  Well, I usually
buy Plus-X at the grocery store and develop it myself, or color print film
and send it to them.  So the grocery store knows my name and address,
along with about 100,000 other families in Colorado Springs.

*But* about two months ago I bought, on a special occasion, one single
roll of Ektachrome 1600 film (for $8) and had it processed by
a lab (for $12).  Maybe, just maybe, they took my address from the
list of "oddball" processing requests (for example, "push this roll
two stops"), typed my phone number into their computer dialer,
and voila, instant list of addresses of cameras.

Not that there is much I can do about it now...

Doug Hagerman