Phone Bills Were Post-Modern (3,000 characters)
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Phone Bills Were Post-Modern
v3.12
[Note] This article is composed based on the author's personal research, reading, and reflection, and the author is not an expert in the fields covered herein. In creating the content, I have utilized publicly available materials as well as information gathering, organization, and fact-checking using AI, which has become common in recent years; however, these are merely auxiliary means to aid understanding and do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided. In addition to introducing verifiable information, this article contains metaphorical expressions, hypothetical reasoning, and personal interpretations or re-readings. These are not intended to assert a specific position or conclusion, but rather to provide the reader with material for thought. For final judgments and interpretations, please be sure to consult primary sources and other perspectives, and make your own decisions.
1. SMS Fish
I received an SMS from NTT docomo.
このメールはNTTドコモから無料で配信しています。
日ごろ、NTTドコモをご利用いただきまして誠にありがとうございます。
さて、お客様がご利用中の電話番号につきまして、ご利用金額※が大変高額となっております。
※d払いの携帯料金合算払いご利用金額を含みます。
つきましては、下記URLよりご利用金額のご確認をおすすめいたします。
http://smt.docomo.ne.jp/portal/support/src/support_index.html
また、ご不明点がございましたら、下記お問い合わせ先までご連絡いただきますようお願いいたします。
また、料金明細サービスは下記「ドコモオンライン手続き」よりお申込みいただけます。
https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/mydocomo/apply/index.html
※ネットワーク暗証番号もしくはdアカウントが必要となります。
＜受託会社／お問い合わせ先＞
NTTファイナンス株式会社
電話0120-246-360
営業時間9～17時※土日祝日・年末年始を除く
It stated that my phone bill, or something billed along with my phone bill, had become high. At this point, I didn't even know if the SMS was genuine. On the small screen, the characters were lined up very bureaucratically. The more bureaucratic the characters, the more they can reach out and grab your heart.
The text stated that the usage amount for the phone number I am using was very high. It also mentioned that it included the amount for d-payment combined mobile billing. There was also a URL for confirmation and a contact point.
The word "high" coming from a mobile phone company is like a fishing hook thrown into a river. Even though I don't intend to be a fish, it catches slightly on the corner of my mouth.
The first thing I thought was that it was spam. Mobile charges, unpaid, service suspension, high billing. Those words often swim in the pond of fraud. If you carelessly click a link, your ID, password, and PIN will be eaten. So, I was suspicious at first.
However, the tone was not that aggressive. It didn't say to pay immediately, or to authenticate by today, or that your phone is finished. The way it tried to make me panic was a bit weak. For a scammer, it was strangely polite.
So, I thought about something else. If this is real, what did it react to?
2. Unchanging Statement
I looked at my phone bill statement.
There, the monster I was expecting was not to be found. The amount seemed to be within the usual range. At least, there was no explosion that I could see at a glance.
The SMS says it's high. The statement looks like it's not. The two screens were saying different things. One of them had to be lying, but I couldn't tell which.
If the SMS was fake, it was natural that there was no change in the statement. But if the SMS was real, it meant something was happening in a place I couldn't see. Is it an amount before confirmation? Is it a different payment? Was the phone itself taken somewhere?
The word "phone bill" directs my imagination toward the phone. Calls, communication, numbers, someone's voice, unknown countries.
3. d-payment in the 50,000 yen range
I checked the details of the d-payment.
After that, I looked at the finalized bill.
There was a figure in the 50,000 yen range for d-Barai. It wasn't that the phone bill itself had skyrocketed. Inside the d-Barai charges, there were the books I had bought the day before.
They were books worth about 60,000 yen. Most of them were works by Thomas Pynchon.
The books were pretending to be a phone bill. Moreover, at the center of it sat the author who had written about massive systems, invisible connections, meanings that arrive late, and labyrinths of symbols. It wasn't so much that the phone bill was post-modern, but rather that as a result of buying too much Pynchon, the world of billing had become Pynchonesque.
To be precise, the Amazon book purchase went into d-Barai, was added to the mobile phone charges, and the high-usage alert from Docomo reacted to that total amount. However, the visceral feeling was that the Pynchon I bought yesterday was looking at me today with the face of a phone bill.
The reason there were no changes in the statement I saw at first was that it hadn't been finalized yet. After it was finalized, the d-Barai charge appeared, and from there it connected to Amazon. There was a time lag. Time lags are probably common in the world of billing, but they aren't very kind to human anxiety.
I looked at the finalized bill later. The 50,000 yen range in d-Barai was almost entirely Pynchon.
In this order, the monster gradually returned to the bookshelf.
4. The Staircase of Displays
The d-Barai statement was in a different place from the phone bill statement.
Since I received a notification for the phone bill, I went to look at the phone bill screen. The cause was in a different app.
Furthermore, the Amazon payment didn't appear in the form I expected. I thought it would be listed as d-Barai, but on the screen, it looked like a credit card transaction.
Humans look for things by the names they know. However, this time, the book costs were moving while changing their names. It was like a little disguise trip.
From the operator's side, this is probably natural. As a billing mechanism, it makes sense.
However, in the user's life, phone bills and Amazon book costs are in separate drawers.
This staircase is straight when viewed from behind. While climbing it, you lose sight of the landings many times along the way.
5. The Map of Anxiety
The anxiety this time came more from the invisibility of the path than from the amount of money.
The simple event of buying books had the face of unauthorized use.
What I needed to be wary of was not the ghost of a phone bill.
Pynchon was sitting in the back.
Of course, if there were d-barai charges I didn't recognize mixed in, that would be a different story. It's better to check via the official app or website rather than through links in an SMS.
6. The Return of the Book Costs
In the end, my phone bill hadn't exploded. The books had just taken a detour.
The book costs came home after quite a long detour. Even though it was the same book cost that arrived, it looked like something completely different just because it came through a different door.
Books are quiet one by one. When you buy them in bulk, they turn into numbers before they turn into knowledge.
The true identity of the scary notification was my own books. I felt a little relieved, a little remorseful, and I laughed a little. And, I'll probably read the books.
When I bought a Pynchon book, the billing process became like Pynchon too. Amazon, d-barai, phone bills, and high-cost notifications. It was all the same book cost. Pynchon's.
Phone bills were post-modern.
#NTT
#docomo
#d-barai
#mobile-bill-combined-payment
#Amazon
#book-purchase
#phone-bill
#high-cost-notification
#SMS-notification
#payment-details
#unconfirmed-details
#carrier-payment
#ThomasPynchon
#postmodern
#reading-life
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