I received the "grandfather" call two years ago. They had an excuse for all my questions that I asked. I knew about this type of call and kept them on the phone for two hours. They were getting frustrated with my inability understand their scam. When I asked if I could just send them a check, they finally hung up. As a retired senior, I have plenty of time to play with scammers.
You missed at least one. Your legitimate supplier of services, say Spectrum, degrades your contracted services until you have to upgrade (at an increased cost) to keep functionality of your service. Other examples - non-support of old iPhones as the iOS changes Discontinued Sling-box function (just ended the service without any offer to keep) Devices that can't be repaired, by self or others but constantly need replacement. Problem is we are old enough to recall when things worked, perhaps badly, dangerously, or expensively but usually companies did not outright scam you.
I dealt with something similar yesterday. I help an older person with their tech and they got a hold of me to install a box their ISP sent them. It was a WiFi range extender. When I called the ISP to ask why it was sent they said it "must have been added to the account in error".
