I’m not sure that there’s any easy answer here, and we’re lucky when the occasional person like Solon speaks up. I think for things that are local or “common-sense,” such as ordering pizza, local/regional education efforts by local deaf and local social service agencies is the best solution, perhaps. For companies where you need to make mass orders, such as a residential school or a deaf-owned business buying in bulk or making multiple purchases, I think it’s going to have to be done similar to how Dianrez does it– personal contact through e-mail/letters, and then perhaps continue it that way.

I’m sure there has to be a better solution, and I’m just not thinking of it right now. Would love to see this discussion broaden. The more minds we have considering solutions, the more likely we’ll hit on one.

Educating businesses about relay scams should include ways to verify legitimacy. Ask for phone numbers and addresses and look them up on Superpages. Ask for a website and read it, get addresses and phone numbers and check those. Ask for a name and verify that it matches the online information. Ask for a bank reference and call the bank after verifying it is a real bank, using their listing. There are many ways to verify a customer, and they all take just a few more minutes.

The same applies to scammers on meetup sites. Typically they have similar stories: they are engineers, have one child between the ages of 10 and 14, are deaf, but never went to a school for the deaf nor do not have any deaf friends, or are located far away from family and friends. Some even know Deaf characteristics: they “do not like deaf people because they gossip.” The way to check up on these is similar: check names and phone numbers, and ask for specific names of teachers or schools where they went. Verify those. Mention some prominient living deaf people you know and ask them what they know about them. (Thomas Gallaudet and Helen Keller did NOT live in today’s times.) I would say more how to identify a scammer but don’t want them to read it in this space. Just think first and if it doesn’t sound right, it’s a scammer. There are more of them than there are of us and they are using our relay and emails!

Well, I set them straight about it and told them that a relay call could be a Deaf person using tty and not scamming. They had no idea. It’s definitely impt to educate hearing people because it seems most would have just hung up the phone.