PS. Our location is on Cape Cod, and the rep left a card saying she was with the New York office, which according to their site, does include Massachusetts.
Sounds like a scam to me. If a rep gets agitated I would definitely think it’s a scam. Did you get a federal ID number?
They should have IDs.
Good thing your wife stopped before the census rep got to the part about bank account numbers.
I have a policy to never answer the door unless I am expecting the person.
Not even for people in a police uniform. If they have a warrant, they’re coming in, anyway.
If it was a scam giving your birthday is pretty benign as anyone can find that with relative ease. I think you were right to shut it down. You could google the phone number on the card and see if it pulls up a legit entity. You could also google the name and see if a LinkedIn profile comes up.
American Community survey conducted by U.S. Census
Was she a young person with a badge saying “elder”? LOL
Call 911 and take a picture of them.
Follow discretely and get a picture of license plate
Sounds shady
I just don’t answer the door anymore. I get 5 solar panel sales people a week pounding on my door. I look through the window and walk away.
You are under no obligation to speak to anyone. People feel bad about leaving someone standing on their door stoop. Don’t be them.
Three Stooges - census takers 1940
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kil2t20t18
Moe walks up a few steps to a door and says to a man who answered the door:
Morning sir, I’m the census taker.
Are you married or happy?
A woman’s voice yells Henry!
The man ducks and Moe gets hit in the head by a flying vase.
Moe falls down the steps then writes down ‘married’.
Stripper-gram had the wrong address...?
In her mind: “I am here to case the house for locations of valuables, ways to interfere with the security system and to see if there’s a safe we can torture you to open for us next week in the middle of the night.”
Usually it is a telephone interview. I got on the line with a presumed census data collector, to determine if the letter sent was legitimate or not, and was told that there were “severe penalties” for failure to complete the series of questions. So I filled it out, and sent it in, but the answers were all bogus. I had discovered that the interviews were selected by random choices of telephone numbers, and I was aware that my phone number I had at the time had been listed to another person previously. So I made up a whole fantasy that I was a drug dealer working some street in the nearest metropolitan area, which was my source of income, and all personal information was also equally fake.
I wonder if there was ever a follow-up interview with the person whose name I used.
I have been harassed by these people before.
they don’t anymore
Would it be impolite to note that Hannibal Lecter knew how to deal with census takers?
After all, I’m an old man. I can’t be expected to remember everything.
P.S. Same goes with phone calls.
Someone knocks on my door and is holding a clipboard, I just walk away..If they knock again I just wait...After a third knock, I open the door and say “No...” then shut the door...
Someone knocks on my door and is holding a clipboard, I just walk away..If they knock again I just wait...After a third knock, I open the door and say “No...” then shut the door...