There was a story around this week which began in the Victorian Consumer Affairs office.

It warned people to be on the lookout for some dodgy door-to-door blokes ripping off elderly people with pushy offers to clean their carpets and curtains.

Under normal circumstances, I would have read it, tutt-tutted a bit and moved on.

But this time I didn’t because of something that happened after a recent Bushwhacked column.

I’d been warbling on about having rediscovered the delights of old cassette tape music and the memories they provoked.

Some time later I had a phone call from a very nice little old lady in Bendigo (I won’t give out any other details for reasons which will become obvious) who told me a story about how she and her late husband used to arrange dances.

She now had possibly 200 cassette tapes which she’d recorded maybe 30 years ago and wondered if I’d like them.

I was already blown away by her generosity, but when I called out to her home, it was clear she was very edgy about something, about the door latch, and about her personal safety.

Slowly, she began to roll out the story.

About a month earlier, a pair of these bloody low-lifes had barged into her beautifully cared for home and, in clearly threatening ways, demanded she pay hundreds of dollars to have her house cleaned.

Scared out of her wits, my new musical friend had muttered a frightened agreement and after some unconscionable behaviour and an absolute invasion of her private home, they got some money and left.

Later, she couldn’t find her cherished jewellery given to her by her husband.

She reported it to the police and the feeling was there wasn’t much which could be done.

Well, maybe there is.

If, as I suspect, these scum-sucking bottom-feeders have worked over Bendigo, then make sure you call Consumer Affairs to report them.

Phone 1300 55 81 81.

You might be tempted to say: Ah well, the old lady was probably confused and anyway they did the job and there’s no proof about the missing jewelry.

But apart from the fact that they bullied a vulnerable, nice woman on her own, they did NOT do the job they offered to do and these people have no idea of the real impact of their scamming.

In the case of my lovely, generous reader, they robbed her of the ability to sleep in her own bed for a month.

She tried to sleep sitting in a lounge chair – one the cleaners claimed to have cleaned – for a month.

She couldn’t even talk about it without breaking down.

It’s likely some of her neighbours were similarly ripped off that day.

She’s jittery about noises, the doorbell and lots of other things.

She did nothing to deserve this, and we, as a community, should be outraged that our elderly are being preyed on in this manner. 

Especially one who had obviously spent a large part of her life making people happy.

I’m sorry if this column contains no jokes or clever words today. But I am really, really pissed off.