2 February 2021 — 2348 mst

Why has a Flathead County resident been told to call a
Seeley Lake number to schedule a CV19 vaccination?

 Update, 4 February.  The vaccination scheduler told me the Seeley Lake prefix was for a cell phone, which are being used for the call back number because people who called the county’s landlines became ensnarled in the county’s phone system. Evidently the calls go out using the county’s landlines.

I was given the times and dates of my first and second jabs, and told not to show up early.

On 18 January, I signed-up for a Covid-19 vaccination at Flathead County’s health department using the online form. I received a robo reply:

Screenshot

Today, two weeks later, I received a voice mail message from a 406-751 8xxx number telling me to call a 406-499 xxxx number to schedule my appointment for my vaccination.

499 is Seeley Lake.

This smells like fraud. It seems to me the callback number should have the same area code and three-digit prefix as the “here’s how to schedule your vaccination” call.

Yet it might legitimate. Perhaps the FCHD is outsourcing its callback services for responses to voice mail messages.

I want to be vaccinated. But I don’t want to be scammed. And I’m not that trusting a soul. Therefore, my policy is to verify before trusting.

Which means I now must endure multi-tiered telephone systems and sluggish “leave your number, we’ll call you back” bureaucracies to determine whether the call I received was legitimate. I’m condemned to inquiring by telephone because bureaucracies tend to blow off email inquiries.

When I signed-up for the vaccination, I provided the health department with an email address and my telephone number, and noted that because I’m hard of hearing, I preferred a reply by text message or email. Apparently text messaging and email are technologies too new, too complicated, and too inconvenient, for the health department to master. So it ignored my situation and picked up the telephone.

The health department might have called yesterday. A 406-751-8xxx number called while I was being connected to a kidney dialysis machine. One does not answer telephone calls during that process. No voice mail message was left.

Today, while resting without my hearing aid, there were two 406-751-8xxx calls. The second left the message to call the Seeley Lake number.

It’s possible the FCHD is so buttoned-up against inquiries that I might not be able verify the authenticity of the 499 prefix. I have not decided what to do — other than to utter some not fit for a longshoreman’s ears commentary — if that happens.