deafbiz.com

Found it at CNN’s Money section where readers submitted bulls**t jobs and I didn’t expect to see Relay Services Operator on the list.

Relay is supposed to be a service for the deaf, hard of hearing, and speech disabled where a person using the Internet, cell phone or text telephone reaches an operator, I dial a number for them and relay conversation between a text and voice user.

90 percent of the calls we get are from people who are not deaf, most of them are scam calls or prank calls, so for eight hours a day, 40 hours a week I relay bogus conversations. The benefits are good though. The turnover rate is extraordinary. A few weeks of Nigerian scam calls and teenagers with nothing else to do can take a toll on some people.

Pay: 10.00-10.50 starting with the availability of a promotion after 6 months.

Can anyone from the Relay Services verify that 90% of the calls are NOT from or to deaf people? That’s pretty high and a huge waste of taxpayer’s money.

I found this website via LifeHacker which focuses on Informercial Scams.

I see DirectBuy TV commercials all the time. I recalled a very similar high-pressure sales pitch when we first bought our house. I can’t recall the company name except it started with “C”. At the sales pitch, they told use we must join today or forever lose the opportunity to save money. Well, my B.S. antenna shot way up and I said I needed time to think. The salesperson suddenly became cold to us and we were quickly shown the door.

So I had a hutch that Direct Buy was a reincarnation of this defunct company. Sure enough, the complaints listed at Infomercial Scam described the same high pressure sales pitch.

Here’s one of the complaints that caught my eye:

4/15/2007 - Karen writes:
We are a deaf couple from Phoenix, Arizona. We called them for an appointment for showroom etc. They said we would have to bring an interpreter(sign language) The supervisor (guy) was very rude to us. We cancelled it. Thank God. Later we found this website and learned more about Directbuy scam. Please do something to shut it down ! Contact the TV media- 20/20 !!!

Good thing they walked away. Supposed they had a UbiDuo? That would’ve solved the communication issue but then would they have fallen for the sales pitch anyhow?

Recently I received an email promoting an “alternative” to the UbiDuo.

I gotta check this out, after all I should know the competition, right? (Disclosure reminder: I am manager of WinfreePCS.com which sells UbiDuo).

I contacted this person (our email path has crossed before and our conversations were never pleasant), and he sent me the link to his product.

Here’s part of the product listing:

” Why pay almost $2,000 for face to face communication devices when you can get yours for less than $50.00!”

Luckily it came with a picture of the product as well as well as the exact title of the product.

I copied the title into Amazon. Sure enough there’s the identical photo of the product and the information.

See for yourself:

Discovery Text Messengers

Take notice of the reviews - all thumbs down.

Considered yourself informed. A $50 product that could be compared to a $2000 product is “too good to be true”.

This person operates a deaf advocacy center in California and he should be ashamed of himself to market inferior products to the deaf community.

When there’s a disaster, Red Cross is there. What happens if the disaster victim happens to be deaf? How can a hearing rescuer communicate?

UbiDuo to the rescue!!

Rochester Red Cross now has TWO UbiDuos - one in the office and one in the disaster rig.

Thanks to 13Wham.com, Rochester NY’s ABC Television station for getting the word out.

If you want you local Red Cross to considering purchasing the UbiDuo, please contact Winfreepcs.com for assistance.

(full disclosure - Judy S. Gunter, webmaster of deafbiz.com is also Manager of winfreepcs.com and has helped Red Cross with the UbiDuos).

From LifeHacker:

Stuck in the UK trying desperately to figure out how to sign “where’s the loo?” Then point your cellie to MobileSign.org, a visual dictionary of British sign language. You enter the word to look up, and Mobilesign will spit back a downloadable video viewable on your phone demonstrating how to sign the word.

Mobilesign was created by the Centre for Deaf Studies. Nothing against you Brits, but I want this so bad for American sign language it hurts

Zdnet has more details.

Anyone know of something similar in ASL? And will it work in Treo 650?