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Posted on 06/04/2025 1:41:50 PM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
This afternoon, a young woman claiming to be a Field Representative from the US Census Bureau knocked on our door and aske my wife if she could ask a few questions.
The first was her birthday. My wife impulsively gave it to her and then thought better of it, and got quite agitated, asking why she thought she could just drop in and start asking questions. After all, we filled out our Census form in 2020, and the next one is in 2030, five years from now.
The rep got a bit snippy, saying "once the interview had started it had to be completed." We weren't playing that game. My wife said, that if you want to talk to us, send us an official form, or make an appointment. There was some more back and forth, at which point I jokingly said, "you should get out of Dodge." The rep got huffy and used the canned response "I feel endangered, so I'm ending this interview.
What is this, and what the hell is going on?
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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.
The next census in the U.S. is scheduled to take place in 2030.
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.
Yep. That’s the first question to ask.
American Community survey conducted by U.S. Census
She had something around her neck. But, because my wife was agitated, I forgot to look and photograph it. I told her to either make an appointment or send her survey in the mail, and I’d decide whether to answer it or not depending on whether or not I thought it was legit.
Her business card did list the proper number for the New York regional office, which does cover MA.
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...?
You don’t answer your door?
I can’t imagine a person being that afraid of everyday life.
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.
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