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TeleZapper - A Way to Avoid Telemarketers?
VeniDormi asks: "While watching TV on my TiVo, I actually stopped to see an ad for a device called 'The TeleZapper', which claims to foil tele-marketers by convincing their auto-dialers that your number has been disconnected. The FAQ is light on technical details, only mentioning that the device 'emits [a] tone briefly when the line is answered'. I'm hoping Slashdotters with more telecommunications expertise can enlighten me as to: how/if this might work and whether or not it is something I could reproduce with a sound card, say for recording at the beginning of my voicemail message. Could it be as simple as playing back the three shrill tones I hear when I dial a wrong number?" Ah, the telephone equivalent to SPAM. Too bad phones don't have the equivalent of procmail filters.
I haven't had a single phone solicitation since I signed up for the service a few months ago. It's well worth the $3/month.
My sig has a broken link in it.
I'm spending $0.75/mo. for "nonpublish" service. I haven't recieved more than 5 telemarketing calls in a month.
Still, sometimes reactive measures are necessary.
Wouldn't it just be a lot easier if, for example, when you hear a telemarketer on the phone just say "get bent" and then hang up on them?
:)
Seems like a much less troublesome and a much more effortless solution to me!
Ever dial a Disconnected number? The tone that's played is part of the telephone system standard, and when a telemarketing computer receives that tone, it thinks the number has been disconnected, and marks the number as such in it's database.
It emits three rising tones, identical to those that precede "invalid number" errors. Automated telemarketing tools recognize these control tones and disconnect the call, AND remove the number from their dialing pool, since they think it's now an invalid number. After the three tones, the phone rings as normal. Two drawbacks: This won't work with telemarketers that don't use automated tools, and it may confuse people who call you, since their brain may also think "it's an error message, I'm going to hang up now." After all, who listens to the phone errors? When you hear the tones, you know you're not getting through, so you disconnect.
.@.
Is there a box somewhere that you can simply have it prevent the phone from ringing if the call is "Out Of Area"? I've never had a solicitation that was brave enough to identify themselves. I don't know that I'd want to pay a subsciption but a box that did that would be well worth my $19.95.
Yeah, that oughta work. Never thought of that, maybe I'll give it a try.
Best Slashdot Co
I don't care about the telemarketers. They dont' call me. I wanna device that'll tell people that the reason some strange guy picked up the phone at their daughter's place WAS BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T DIAL THE RIGHT NUMBER! Geeze, people... I should start saying she's tied up to the bed... you'd think after the third wrong number they'd get the hint.
Pretty simple. I don't answer the numbers that come up "Unknown" or "Out of Area". That weeds out 95% of the telemarketers. If it's someone I know they just leave a message on my machine and I pick up.
Viola.
Execute? [Y/N] _
sounds like the american way at work... =]
Can't wait to see this one on QVC.
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
My guess is it send out the 3 note tone that indicates a disconnected phone number ("We're sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer is service"). Computers pick that up and (in theory) will remove your number, thinking it's a disconnected number. I've heard reports that putting that tone at the beginning of your answering machine anouncement will accomplish the same thing.
Could it be as simple as playing back the three shrill tones I hear when I dial a wrong number?
Careful. Those may be copyrighted by your local telephone company.
I love when they call. Mess with their heads. I once told the guy "i'm on the can, but go ahead" Then strained and grunted while he was talking. It was fun, but I laughed too hard then hung up.
I haven't gotten a call from a telemarketer for years.
My solution: I don't have a home phone. Whenever I am forced to give out my telephone number, I give the number to my cell phone. In my locality (Virginia, US), it is illegal for a solicitor to call a cell phone. This is because if a solicitor were to call my cell phone, *I* would be the one paying for their call.
I'm not sure if this is a nationwide law, or just a local one, but it's certainly worth looking into. Many cellular service providers are now offering unlimited local plans for around $50 US, so the cost is close to that of a regular land line.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
I just leave my answering machine to deal with them. I swore I'd never screen calls, but I get several each day. The worst are the ones that tell me to hold on the line for someone. That's gall.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It should be a simple software fix to upgrade the telemarketer's systems to search for something beyond that simple tone - even recognizing the entire "the number you have reached has been disconnected" speech pattern would be pretty simple I would think.
A better solution would involve telepone companies getting involved - say you get such a call, you could dial *TELEMARKETER or something, and the number that just called you would be added to a blacklist - when enough people blacklisted the number, that number would be prevented from making outgoing calls for a set period of time.
Ahh, if only the telephone companies didn't make so much money off telemarketers, think of how quickly they would be gotten rid of.
(naive mode off) oh wait... we still have spam... scratch that last bit of wishful thinking then.
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
Given that most people I know tell telemarketers to "Please place me on you do not call list".
This procedure works, is absolutely free and will never break. Unlike...ahem.
Too bad phones don't have the equivalent of procmail filters.
Sure... Caller ID + Anonymous Call Rejection. Works well!
rooooar
We need something that keeps it from ringing in the first place.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Most autodialers cut off after 4 rings, which is the standard answering time of an answering machine/voicemail, etc. Putting the TeleZapper tone, or any other tone for that matter, at the beginning of your voicemail message wouldn't work unless you could change your voicemail to answer after less than 4 rings. I know I can't do that.
With a high-power electric discharge.
"telezaper" is certainly a name more adequate to a stun-gun. If they find a way to send a high voltage through phone lines (like 100.000 volts) I'll certainly buy one.
The bigest point would make this work with cell phones too...
What ? Me, worry ?
This doesn't sound like too lame an idea. However I can see it easily creating a market for better/smarter autodialers.
Which would say to me that a similar kind of neverending merry-go-round which exists between copy protection and deprotection is going to start up between indiscriminate marketing and the privacy conscious.
Junkbusters has an excellent page on stopping telemarketters. Before I read the Junkbusters script I always got annoyed at how telemarketters would keep pitching their product to me after I had politely said no and the only way I could get them to stop was to be less polite and just hang up on them. After reading the Junkbusters site and trying their script I discovered that the magic words "Can you please put this number on your do-not-call list?" almost always gets the telemarketter to immediately stop pitching to you (and it has the nice side effect that some might actually put you on their do-not-call list at some point). They are legally required to maintain a do-not-call list, so they pretty much have to stop bothering you when you ask - check out the Junkbuster site for more info.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
I just use a cell phone, I've never gotten a telemarketing call except from a credit card company that I already had a card with, and even then I just tell them that I don't accept sales calls on my cell phone :) If I get them off the phone is less than a minute, it's free!! It's also good for eliminating redundancy, who needs a landline anyway?
I didn't see anything in the article about sending large electric charges into the ear canals of telemarketers. Now there's an invention that will make its inventor a mint.
Personally, I've not even bothered with doing that. During the time that telemarketers call (before 9pm weekdays/Saturdays) I just let the answering machine do the screening. All my friends know I'll pick up as soon as I hear them speak.
A fun site to visit is Antitelemarketer. Has some interesting telemarketer tormenting tricks
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"Please put me on your No Call List."
Cuts right through their spiel. They have to honor your request: it's the law.
I cut my telemarketing calls down from four daily to once every two months. It worked a hell of a lot better than "So, what are you wearing?".
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
You know those 3 tones that you get when you dial a disconnected number, just before the recorded voice announcement. I've heard it a lot in the last few months. Dotcoms out of business.
How about just hanging up on every person who calls you? If it's important they'll call you back, even if they are a bit confused. Telemarketers never call back.
Advantages:
1) FREE
2) Causes confusion (always a plus)
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The telezapper just plays the 3 tones that
.wav file of those three tones...
mark a number that is out of service. It plays them everytime your phone is picked up. The telemarketer's equipment is supposed to remove all "out of service" numbers.
You can get the same effect by putting those tones on your answering machine. If you have voicemail, the telezapper can't work, but adding the tones will.
I don't know of adverse effects of using the tones (other than callers being confused and thinking you're weird), but I suppose there could be some.
I'm sure someone will post a location with a
There ARE phones with filters. You can
can choose numbers you want to block.
If somebody calls you from one of
the blocked numbers the phone silently
discards the call.
rh
Simple solution. No gadget needed, no CallerID, no privacy checker. Once you get a telemarketer call, say "Take me off your list"
:-P
After about a week you may get 1 stray spam call once every 3 months. If its someone you already talked to, depending on your state, you can usually sue them for a good sum of money.
You can thank me and send me all that extra money you were about to spend
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I can usually identify spam calls and hang up before they start their spiel. The way the autodialers work is that they dial phone numbers until someone answers, and then route the call to one of the human talkers. So there's a delay of a few seconds after I pick up the phone, while it rings one of the people and waits for them to answer. If I don't hear a response a couple of seconds after I say "Hello", I hang up.
:-)
So far I haven't hung up on my mother, as far as I know.
Well, if you're bored, anyways:
1: "I'd like to ask you a few questions for a survey..."
you: "Sure, hold on a second, I'll be right back" (put phone next to stereo playing Cindi Lauper, for about an hour).
2: "May I speak to the man of the house?"
you: "Define 'man'..." (rant and rave about sexual discrimination until they hang up)
3: "I'd like to offer you a free..."
you: "Where is it made? Does it contain asbestos? Is it compatible with Linux? Were any animals harmed during it's manufacture? How much does it cost anyways? What do you mean free? Oh, sorry, I can't afford free."
4: "Hi, is this Mr. _____?"
you: "Sorry, he died this morning.... (boo hoo...)"
5: "We're going to be in your neighborhood..."
you: "Can you help me with something first... I gotta finish this math homework before I do anything else... What's the cube root of 42? How do you calculate the inverse tangent for triangle A?"
You get the point... it's amazing fun actually, you don't have to make any sense either! Annoy them enough, waste their time, they'll never call again, and be less apt to annoy your neighbors! If everyone used up their time, telemarketing would cease to be profitable, and would then stop happening!
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Heres how it works.
Slimy Telemarketter's computer dials your number, it waits until the phone goes off hook. Then it listens. If it hears the 'disconnected' tone the computer hangs up, and is supposed to delete the number. If it does not hear this tone, the line is sent to the next live scumbag er, telemarketter.
The telezapper hangs out on your line and when you PICK UP the phone (no matter how many rings) the telezapper will insert this tone into your line. (Documentation says to insert 1.5 seconds of silence before talking, answering machine, etc.)
Of course all callers will hear this tone, but followed by a 'hello' or with whatever creative way you answer your phone.
A recording of this wav and a clone of the telezapper is here:
http://www.sandman.com/tmstop.html
Sadly though, patents have caused the above URL to cease sales, but good info.
-Aileronix-
I have been told that this is a telemarketing system seeing if my number is "good". Is there any truth to this?
Finally, I want to allow telemarketers to call me, but I want a $0.50 credit on my phone bill for each minute (partial minutes should count too, just like when the phone company charge me) that I spend listening to them. Let them pay to bother me. In fact, there should be a message that plays when a telemarketer calls:
"For a chage of 50 cents a minute this line will accept you telemarketing call. Press '1' to accept, otherwise please disconnect and remove this number from your list."
Lasers Controlled Games!
I use a cell phone as my main point of contact. The only thing I use my landline for is to dial-up (no cable or DSL in this house baybee!!!). If the house phone rings, 9 out of 10 times its a telemarketer and I'll pick it up, hear the usual delay with background voices, so I know I can set the phone down and wait for them to hang up. No more of those phony cops calling from the F.O.P. or the State Troopers something-or-other threatening me when I say I don't want to give any money! (I actually had one threaten me...damn pigs)
Too bad phones don't have the equivalent of procmail filters.
They do. Filters just take a look at the message and see if it wants to throw it, ergo...
*ring*
Me: Hello?
TM: Hello, is *pause* Mr. [mispronounced last name intoned with deep southern accent - I live in the northern US] available?
Me: *click*
In Canada, it is now illegal to do "automatic telemarketing", that is it has to be a real person calling. That decreases a lot the amount of telemarketing calls we have.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
There seems to be a "don't call" list out there; My son tried one tactic on a female telemarketer by treating the call as a "phone-sex" call, asking her what she was wearing, etc.
We haven't had ANY such calls since.
Of course, this might not have been as convincing if he had tried it with a man...
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
1) Simply using an answering machine cuts down enormously on phone solicitations. Some sleaze outfits do have equipment that will leave messages but most are only interested in victimizing a live caller.
2) I use an answering machine with a "voice mailbox" capability--mine was made by GE and cost $40. We don't assign anyone to Mailbox 1. Intro message says "Press 2 for Dan, 3 for [my wife]." Those few outfits that use automated equipment to leave message end up in mailbox 1. (But some real messages from baffled people end up there, too, so I still do need to listen to it).
3) On EVERY call I do get, my first words are "I don't want to be called, take me off your list." I believe this really does have some effect.
I currently get less than one solicitation per week.
4) If, for some reason, you're like me and have trouble being rude, a technique that it quite effective with phone solicitors and door-to-door salespeople is to say, politely, but firmly, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." The person who gave me this tip said that many salespeople are specifically trained NOT to break off the conversation or go away until they have heard "no" seven times. Give them their seven noes and they'll break off gracefully. I don't know if that's the explanation, but it does work.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
... I'm working on answering machine software for my linux box, I was going to have personalized messages based on the number I got through caller id, one for my parents, friends ect. It'd be a snap to record a piercing screetch and have the software answer with that everytime a Uknown Caller Unknow number comes through. Kick ass, automated revenge.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
This is a great idea, not to mention the fact that these companies who use them are not only annoying, but cowardly; there's no live body on the other end of the line.
AFAIK the automated devices are illegal in some states, but that problem can be circumvented by calling from a state where it's legal.
The site Antitelemarker.com offers a lot of advice for those tired of telemarketers.
Or it will--as soon as their trade ass'n (Direct Marketing Assocation?) convinces Congress that it may cut revenues. It is technological circumvention after all, and this is apparently the season for draconian income-protection legislation.
How long before they drop the ruse and just take our whole fuckin' paycheck? They can split it up among the federal government, the RIAA, the SPA, the MPAA, and--of course--the Big Five Media Companies.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
FCC regs used to prohibit computer devices (like modems and answering machines) from emiting sound for (IIRC) 2 seconds after picking up an incoming call.
This was to prevent the device from interfering with call setup/billing info, which used to be sent in-band (blue boxing).
Those regs were in force as of ca. 1983. I don't know if they were ever repealed.
- SWM
Takes all the fun out of screwing with telemarketers!
Telemarketer: Sir, would you like to know how we can help you save money on your telephone bill?
"Uhhhh, actually, I've been trying to spend more money lately."
Telemarketer: But Sir! We know for a fact that you are spending too much money on your long distance service. We can help reduce your rates by....
"See, that's just the thing. I've been making a concerted effort to start spending *more* money these days. I've been a pretty cheap bastard in my days. Do you have any programs where I could spend more on my long distance calls?"
"Hello?"
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Easy solution: Cancel the home line or keep it just for TiVo updates, and use a cellphone for all communication. No solicitations.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Card Carrying Red Neck - Stupidity has no tolerance for you.
#1 - Why is it so expensive? ($75 Cdn (or was that US) that I saw it advertised for) Surely someone else can make a tone-generator for much less than that.
#2 - It doesn't work for direct-dialed numbers. Surely there are a number of telemarketing firms out there that dont use computer-dialed lists, in which case a tone-generator would be useless.
I use a cell phone and while I do get the occasional wrong number I have never received a call from a telemarketer. My parents do though, and they'd love a way to get them to stop.
The commercial is hilarious because it shows a rather wealthy individual who's home is invaded by a telemarketer, and then it proposes the "Telezapper". The reality is that there isn't probably a "upper-crust" person on this planet who would expect their callers to listen through the 3-tone disconnected tone so that they can avoid telemarketers. Personally I'd be very irritated if everytime I called a friend I had to listen to that.
Having said that I get very few telemarketer calls and I presume it's because I'm hostile: For instance if I get a call with the "Please wait for an important call" I've usually hung up by "Pl...". If I get a call and there is a delay I hang up immediately. Quickly I seem to get removed from the sucker lists.
The idea of sending Unallocated number tones won't work most of the time. Large outbound callcenters are connected via ISDN. If a call is anwsered the callcenter application will receive a connect message and know that the call is anwsered. After this it will wait for a pause within a certain amount of time. If it finds this it will assume that a person has anwsered and route the call to an agent. If an agent is not available it will "Hangup in Face".
So, they then market a machine to home users to bypass their own auto dialer, making money on both ends.
THEN they market an upgrade to the auto-dialer to be smarter about how it deletes numbers.
THEN they market an upgrade to the answering system to be smarter about getting deleted.
Nice product upgrade path, hmmm?
Add to that the benefit of having all of your calls answered with a "beep beep beep" when you pick up. This is just my theory on how it works, so it might not be THAT aggravating, but I'd be willing to bet it's close.
--- http://foo.ca
A major problem with this method is that most potential employers, landlords and utility companies DEMAND a local, home number be on file. I have been refused service because of this.
There's no getting around it: you must have a local home number.
New York as well as many other states now publish official Do Not Call lists. Telemarketers will be fined if they call someone on the DNC list. The one exception is charitable organizations, who can still make as many calls as they want. In NY the service is free; in some other states (Florida, for example) you have to pay.
We signed up for the NY list as soon as it was offered, and the number of telemarking calls has decreased dramatically since it took affect. We have noticed an increase in telephone surveys, however, so the telemarketers may be pretending to be pollsters (I'm not sure; we never participate in telephone polls.
Wouldn't it be cool if you actually knew how to reproduce the mythical "brown tone?" It's supposed to induce massive diahrea nearly instantly. I'd love to unleash that on all the damned people trying to get me to try their 21% credit cards!
Has anyone seen commercials advertising a "privacy service" by your local phone company? I have BellSouth here in Atlanta, GA and I think it's very interesting that BS offers this service where during certain times of day they will have an automated system screen your calls and give you the option of taking the call or playing a pre-recorded decline message. That is a great idea, but they want to charge an arm and a leg every month for you to have the service, so they'll be making money charging you and making money selling your phone number to the telemarketers... what a great racket!
~ now you know
It can't get much more simple than this: whoever they ask for is never home, I, the call answerer, can't make any decisions of any nature about anything, and if they ask when the best time to call would be I give them the hours I'm at work. I don't remember the last time I spoke to a telemarketer for more than 15 seconds. There's absolutely nothing they can do about this simple tactic.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The only thing I miss is getting to pick on the poor telemarketers. Oh well.
I saw this a couple months ago in a magazine. I believe it was Poptronics (used to be Popular Electronics and Electronics Now).
I did a quick search on their site though http://www.gernsback.com, and was unable to find the article.
My younger brother actually hooked this up. It was as simple as adding the tones to the beginning of the answering machine message. The only problem is, that legitimate callers might also be fooled by the tone and hang up before they realize what's going on.
Try calling your Rep and ask for similar legislation!
The cynic in me now says that numerous Slashdotters will now come up with hundreds of silly reasons why this will be useless and/or not work. Still, I hope they're wrong, because this will be a great relief if it works.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Rather than baffle all your legitimate callers, you should first register with the Direct Market Association. The marketers don't want to waste time calling hostile people. Use this to register as a hostile customer. In a bizarre twist, if you register online it is $5. If you register by snail mail it is free. Use snail mail.
I registered quite some time ago and almost all of my sales calls went away. Just the little local people an newspapers were still calling.
You might also check with your state. In Missouri you can sign up here and it becomes illegal for people to call you (with some exceptions for people with powerful lobbies.) I am on this list as well and can't remember the last time I got a sales call.
something like an EULA. Why just let them call or pay money in order for you not to get their calls, when them calling you can be a source of income?
Use caller-id and whenever you see a number that does not appear, answer the phone with "Thanks for calling the (whatever) residence. Because of the increasingly large amount of time taken up on the phone I am having to start charging a fee for those who wish to speak to me. By staying on the phone you acknowledge and aquiesce to the fact that you will be held responsible for a 5 doller/minute cost to speak to me. If you do not agree to this, please hang up now" -- since most telemarketers are under strict policies that they can not hang up on customers.. well, it worked for the software industry, right?
I work for a company that (among other things) sells predictive dialer systems to telemarketing services. As such, I have found out a couple things about telemarketing that I'd like to pass on:
1. If you get a telemarketer on the phone, all you need to say is "Please put me on your do not call list." Thats all, nothing more. If the telemarketer says anything else to try to get you to buy, ask to talk to their supervisor. After a few months you won't receive any more calls. Telemarketing houses buy lists of names from distributors and are required by law to keep you on a permanent do not call list of you ask for it, and are also required to pass that list back to the distributor.
2. Be careful when you sign up for Magazines, credit cards, etc. Businesses will sell their subscriber's info to telemarketing houses.
3. Look up your state's Public Service Comission. In some states, it's illegal to contact a person that has been put on the state's do not call list. In some cases you can sign up over the Internet.
4. If the phone rings and you get dead air, it's probably a telemarketer. Don't hang up!!! Wait for them to come on the line and follow #1
TeleZapper
Aww, shucks, I saw this and I thought it would be some clever system that involved high voltage.
Summary, when 'someone' answers the phone, the Telezapper sends out a tone that makes the telemarketers auto-dialer think it's out of service, and then the telezapper hangs up.
This is all well and good, execpt that my answermachine is pretty smart. It can sense when an extenion picks up the phone, and the the answering machine will stop and hang up it's extension.
So, follow along:
1) Telemarketer auto-dialer dials a number
2) No one is home, so the answering machine picks up.
3) The telezapper, seeing an extension pick up, also picks up, and plays it's little tones.
4) The answering machine, realizing that 'someone' picked up an extension, stops the playback of the outgoing message, and hangs up.
5) The telezapper, having played it's tones, also hangs up.
Now... in that process, when was an ACTUAL caller allowed to leave a voice message?
That's right. Never.
Pretty severe logic flaw, IMHO.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Telemarkter Stopper.
See the link above for a similar product. It plays the "dead Line" tone that the phone company uses called a Special Information Tone (SIT). the computerized predictive dialers automatically detect this tone and remove you from the calling list.
Try selling them wooden spoons. Tell them that you sell them and you will be fired if you don't sell one today. Let them know that they can stir liquid with this wooden spoon and that it has a concave shape for sampling the liquid. Don't take no for an answer. They hang up before I'm done now. Unfortunately, I'm not getting very many calls anymore (around 3 a month now). :/
-- Proud member of the Jello Sex Cult.
From Junkbusters:
"No person may
-- Initiate any telephone call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party)...To the telephone line of any guest room or patient room of a hospital, health care facility, elderly home, or similar establishment; or
To any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call."
It looks like you can also receive up to $500 in damages if they do call your cell phone (though I don't know if they can be held liable if you claim it is your home phone number.)
God I laughed so hard when reading that... thanks.
John Casey
You can pry my null pointers out of my dead cold hands.
Loser :). What are you doing reading Slashdot when you're supposed to be working?
... oh, well, I was just...
Me?
Twoflower
--
Twoflower
Ok, Ok, I admit it - i work for a telemarketing company. There, you happy?! I do it begrudgingly to support my "habit". Anyway, we use a number of methods, one of which being a predictive dialer running on SCO.
Our dialer has the ability to detect tritones - the "doo dee dii, the number you have reached...". There are several different tritones, and our dialer can distinguish between a "Changed Number" tritone, and a "Bad Number" tritone. I suppose that if this device sends out a tritone that matches the "Bad Number" tritone, our dialer wouldn't call it. You can, however, set your dialer to do whatever you like with those "dispositions". An unscrupulous company may set their dailer to pass those calls to the reps instead of dropping the line (We don't do that).
However, i happened to catch that commercial too, and it also says that it "...will automatically delete your name from their database". Of course, that's horse shit. It'll just dispo your record as bad number, what the company does with those is up to them.
Naturally i encourage everyone to check out their states' Do Not Call registry and add your name if you don't want to be disturbed (BTW, the laws about DNC'ing don't apply to things like election polling and charitable organizations - funny huh?)
So that's that!
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
My brother lives with his boyfriend in Berkeley. This is his favorite script, from when he worked at home:
ring ring
Hello, this is ABC company. Is Mr. Caner in?
[imagine his deep voice] No, Mr. Caner is not in.
Oh, then can I speak to Mrs. Caner?
Speaking
[caller gets perplexed, always hangs up]
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
That is an terrible thing to say to a diver.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
Step one is to get the sales-person "off script". Most telemarketers are very poorly trained, and given strict instructions to read pre-written sales pitches to you. The best way do deal with that is to pretend to be listening. Read the paper or something while they ramble on. You can even set the receiver down, since you are not really listening anyway. Eventually they will get to something like "so, can I sign you up today?" As soon as you hear the hopeful uptalking sound of them asking a question like that, respond by saying, "well... it sounds pretty interesting, but I have a few questions first." Now you are in the driver's seat, and can waste a lot of their time. The game now is to think of questions that they would be unlikely to anticipate, but related to the product enough that they don't realize that you are jerking them around.
If they are good at their jobs, they will try to turn things around by answering questions with questions ("That depends... how much are you spending on toner cartrages now, sir?"). The way to deal with that is to cheerfully turn it right back, with another question. One that's even harder to deal with... ("Well, before we get into the details of how much I can save, I'm a little curious about the recent report that the toner used to recycle cartrages might increase the risk of skin cancer. I think those stories are probably just bunk, but I wonder if you could tell me what you know about it.)
Eventually, they will start to lose patience with you. (You can hear the frustration rise in their voice... if the call goes on much longer without a sale, they get in trouble, but if they start getting snippy with you and their boss overhears it, they will also be in trouble. They're in a jam now.) They become more aggressive about getting you to commit to buying, and their hand is over the "hang up" button to drop you at the slightest indication that you might not buy. Now is you one chance at a parting shot to let them know you have been just making their lives difficult. My personal favorite: "I heard that companies have started using a lot of prison labor for phone sales, because they can't get anybody else to do it... so what are you in for?"
I just answer with hello and listen. If there is a moment of silence, I assume it is a computer and hang up. I have yet to get a call back from someone saying that I hung up on them.
"I see. The fact that you . . . can't explain . . . explains everything."
I receive 1 unsolicited call per year, from the local newspaper, who has no idea who they are calling, they just incrementally dial. The only other calls I get are from friends/familly/work/wrong numbers.
Here's how it's done. Pay the $2/month (those bastards) for an unlisted number. Give your number out to no one you don't want to call. Not credit card companies, video rental stores, etc. Make it clear to your company that it is an unlisted number and is not to be given out to anyone without your permission.
When you *have* to give out a phone number (the place I rent videos uses it as your acct number), make a number up, and remember it. I use my work number of my previous employer.
I have had my current phone number 3 years, and have had 3 direct marketing calls.
Is this the same channel that was showing ads for The Clapper, Chia Pet, and the Super Australian Hair Removing Gel? Just 3 easy payments of $24.99...
As background, I used to work for a LD carrier. One of our customers did mass-calling.
The tones mentioned are commonly called a "tri-tone" message. They don't have to be there, so it's not a valid measure of a phone number working or not.
Most all mass-dialers use T1 or higher CAS(channel associated signaling) interfaces to dial out. When connecting a call at the T1 level, there are 2(4 on ESF systems) signaling bits, known as A and B bits. When the customer places a call, the first thing they do is set the A bit(s) high(to 1). Then various digit signaling happens, and the call is attempted via the carrier. If the phone number is valid and answred, the carrier sets the B bit(s) high. The customer now knows they have a valid phone number and a valid call, and will begin playing their spam. They never listen for a tri-tone message.
The other common way to dial out is via ISDN. The caller sends a connection request and receives a completion or error. They once again will not listen for a tri-tone.
I've never known a customer to pay attention to tri-tones.
When I receive a call that I suspect is from a telemarketer, I pick up the phone, say my greeting, then listen for a pause. If there is a pause, I hang up the phone right away.
Occasionally this catches people making legitimate calls offguard, but they usually call back. Telemarketers, because they're on a round-robin dialer, won't call back right away. Unfortunately this really doesn't solve the problem because (as I understand it) your phone number just gets put back in the dialing queue.
If you really want to get rid of the telemarketers, you need to put your phone number and address on a Direct Marketing Association "blacklist".
I believe there are other resources similar to this.
NOTE: I have not tried either of the above, but I've heard of others that have used it successfully.
See also the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and this Anti-Telemarker / Anti-Spam web page.
Why not take it one step further and make a career of it, like this guy did?
i recently moved here, and there is a law that for a few bucks, telemarketers can't call you at home. what a relief. now, my son and i can watch dbz uninterupted.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
I actually signed up for it because of junk mail. I would get up to an inch thick of junk mail each week, and now I don't get anything. The site tells you how to be removed from the lists that companies pass around. If you follow the right proceedures, it's actually illegal for them to mail you
The same is true for telemarketing lists too. It's a great site, and it works.
Komi
The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
Just tell them to take you off their list. Screwing around may be momentary fun for you, but it doesn't do anything about the problem. I haven't gotten a telemarketer in over a year. And I recently moved, which puts you on all the lists again.
Plus I lie about my phone number when I'm asked for it. I consistently lie with a number that is one digit off so if it is ever a big deal I can just put it down to a typo.
Careful on the 'died' one; if you wind up noted as 'dead' in the national big-brother network, who knows what will happen!
I used to work in a call center for my school. we were outsourced to one of the larger fundraising organizations in the US. We did have an autodialler of sorts, but the determination of whether a number was bad, disconnected, busy, etc. was made by us. you clicked a choice on your screen. (most) people are a little smarter than the telezapper
I know this is dangerous on /. but Bill Gates actually had some interesting thoughts about this subject.
He has a great one about getting blood out of a carpet with some cleaning service. He gets absolutely hysterical and then says they need to call him back, at which point he acts as if he has no idea what they are talking about.
Awesome.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Currently I have had a bad problem with some automated phone systems calling me at least 5-6 times a day and hanging up! When I tried to call block them it tells me the number cant be traced cause its UNKNOWN NAME NUMBER (my caller ID shows this as well).
c al ls.html
I called a Bell South number to report harrasment cause it was making me so pissed. I mean it has went on for weeks and 5-6 times a day gets old just to get up to see the caller id.
Bell south told me a could have it traced and it would report the number to them, but again this told me it couldnt be traced at all. so I cant even get it in a report to take to court if I ever found out who was doing this.
Bell South also has a phone number that is such a joke it isnt even funny, every option returns a message then hangs up on you, cant take to a single actual person about being harrased. the Option i figured was for me was about calls that just hang up on you after you answer them, when I hit this option it simply stated that automated systems ring people phones and then they company dont have enough people to actully talk to you so it hangs up.
What kind of spam is that? bother me while I am playing games on my PC or watching TV then hang up before I can even tell some I dont want none take me off your list! seems to me like something is wrong with that, should be a F'ing law or something.
YOu might find this link infomative as I did, it is verbatim what the hpone number and Option 1 told me that made me so upset.
Bell South: (Anoyance Call Center)
This number
704-780-2969
or this webpage:
http://contact.bellsouth.com/acc/telemarketing_
Read that tell me that aint BS!
Then a person at Bell South , wich I yelled at so much I think he just gave up, tried to sell me the service mentioned in the first post, Privacy Director, wich sounds like a great idea, if it where free, T mean seeing that people prett ymuch are useing the phone system as a way to sell stuff so much, seems far to me.
I told him its nuts cause I dont want to pay to be not listed in the phone book (always has seemed wierd to pay to not be listed, shouldnt this be the other way around?) then they charge me 7$ a month for called ID, them they probally charge the company doing the marketing SPAM, to not show where they are calling from, then want to charge me again to black it, my minimum phone bill is aready around 35$ a month for just a single phone line, cause I wanted caller ID so badly.
All this seems like a scam to me, and I would hope that something is done about it, mostly about automated systems that call and hang up on you cause they dont have a person ready to sell you something when there system rings your phone.
The whole thig has got me very very upset.
THe privicy director does sound nice and I bet it works well, but damn , it just grips me to pay another 3$ to Bell South.
SNL did a thing about this one time. They had Caller ID Blocker Blocker(tm). This device unblocks the Caller ID of the person who called you, even if they have their caller ID blocked. I thought it was pretty funny, but then my local phone system allowed me to block calls without caller id. That was spooky. It works pretty well, but now my Grandmother needs to dial *2 before dialing my phone number to call me.
It would be far more useful to me if telemarketers had an ACTUAL ID to go with the phone number. What I mean is, I get an ID that says "UKNOWN 555-234-5678" on my caller ID. If that ID was useful, it would be more helpful.
I'd like to see:
"Unsolicited Call From A Charity Who Snail Mailed You A Mailer Last Week That You Ignored And They're Hoping You'll Change Your Mind But We Both Know You Won't But We Still Have To Put The Call Through Because We Make Money That Way.... Sorry - Pac Bell, 800-2GO-AWAY" but they probably would need a caller ID box with 1024x768 resolution
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
Visit http://www.law.state.ak.us/consumer/tele_alaska.ht ml
... (and other rules)
/is/ the way that's /supposed/ to work ;)
"The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has adopted strict rules that offer protection against telemarketing fraud. These rules require that certain information be given to consumers and prohibit telemarketers from engaging is certain actions: A telemarketer may not call you if you have previously asked not to be called. "
By law, if you ask a telemarketer to remove your number from their list and not to call again, they have to. Of course, they hardly ever abide by that law, but that
void women (int money, time_t time);
This is easy, as long as we all cooperate. When a telemarketer calls, do not hang up! Instead, keep the person on the line as long as you can. Do not buy anything and do not give them any correct answers to their questions. If you simply hang up on the telemarketers, you are doing them a favor, since they can quickly dial another person who might yield a sale. If we all keep telemarketers on the phone as long as we can without making a purchase, not only do we prevent the telemarketer from annoying another person, we eventually force them out of business because they cannot afford long calls which do not yield a sale.
The one solution I found for dealing with telemarketers is... get a cellular phone, and use that! They cannot telemarket to cellular phones; it's illegal (and they seem to know this, because they don't do it).
Plus.. when you move, you keep your phone.
If you want a landline for cheap LD or dialup.. turn the ringer off.
Im a system admin at a Telebanking company, I make myself feel better about this by realizing we call ppl to help them out financially(refinaincing) we do not solicite any services or products. But I work with a couple of predictive dialers and they all work off of noise. If there is a no pause between the person answering the phone and the person talking it knows its an answering machine etc. But this device they talk about works on the concept that when the dialer connects a tone identical to the tone for dissconnected gets emmited. However that does not add you to thier DNC(do not call DB). The best Way to get off the lists is to ask to be removed. Then every other time the company starts a new campiage(usally for several different customers) it checks for your name on the DNC list. Also check with your local state, most states have a DNC list that EVERY telemarketer has to subsribe to to add to their own DNC. Hope this sheds some light on the subject.
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
Of course, residents of New York State can use a more effective approach, adding their names and numbers to the State's well-enforced "Do Not Call" registry.
Had a college roommate who followed some advice from the school newspaper regarding jerking telemarketers around. One such call went as follows...
Telemarketer: "Hello, sir. We're running a special on $FOO and for a limited time, we'd like to make it available..."
Roommate: "I worship Satan!"
Short pause...
Telemarketer, less confidently: "Umm, ok, well, see the special we have is that --"
Roommate: "No! You don't understand... I worship the dark prince Lucifer who rules from his dark throne!"
Telemarketer:"Umm... ok. Have a nice day then."
... problem solved. Whoever they were, they did stop calling. It still brings a tear to my eye.
I have a similar device next to my phone that is used to emit a tone to telemarketers: an air-horn. The only difference is that instead of a brief tone... well you get the idea...
Remember, these are real people with feelings and they like to be treated like humans. I always ask for their name and ask if they ever get really rude comments when they call people. Normally, they say they do, and then I ask them if they understand why people are rude to them. Usually they start dancing around the issue of how their actions are the cause of other people being rude to them, and you have to firmly but politly talk to them about the issue. Tell them that you don't think they are they are the type of person who likes to be rude to people. You can also ask them how they feel about getting telemarketers at their home.
They will often bring up the subject how "this is just my job". To this, you have to explain that everyone is responsible for their own actions. Ask them if their employer asked them to steal from somone or to hurt someone, would they do it?
You can also bring up why so many of their coworkers quite after such a short period of time. Obviously, other people realize that what they are doing is wrong. The reason why the pay is "high" (for unskilled labor, but I don't say that) is because so few people want to be yelled at all day long.
Try to keep mentioning their name, try to connect with them. Try to get inside their minds and find their soft spots.
If nothing else, you have made the telemarketers waste a lot of time on a long distance call.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
*TELEMARKETER or something, and the number that just called you would be added to a blacklist - when enough people blacklisted the number, that number would be prevented from making outgoing calls for a set period of time.
Uhhh, Telemarketing is LEGAL. Unlike spam, these are (quasi) legitimate companies. You can't just block their phone access for telemarketing.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
you could dial *TELEMARKETER or something, and the number that just called you would be added to a blacklist
I used to have call blocking in Austin Tx. The service worked like that, I could call in with a simple *## code and either manually add a number or tell it to block the last number that called.
there's a state no-call list. While there has been a few wide-spread violators, my personal experience is that we went from averaging one telemarketer a day to two violators since January. The state has been quite rigorous about following up on complaints. I guess it helps to have a state Attorney General who is very pro-consumer.
I'm not sure about the status of this sort of thing in other states, but as usual, it doesn't hurt to contact your rep.
-Jennifer
Even better, some states have State-wide Do Not Call Registry. Here's how it works:
1) You put your name on the State Do Not Call Registry.
2) Telemarketer calls you. You inform them that you're on the Do Not Call list and any subsequent calls will cost them $X (varies by state, in NY it's $2,000).
3) Enjoy the silence of no telemarketer calls.
For those of you in NY, here's the URL: https://www.nynocall.com/index.html
Stop by your state government's website to see if your state has a registry.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Well, of course, if I answer the phone and there is a 2-second delay, I automatically hang up. It's obviously a call center.
If, for some reason, I screw up, however, I have a wonderful solution.
If the telemarketer is selling vinyl siding for my home, I tell him: "What a coincidence! I install vinyl siding for a living!" If he's asking about a mortgage, I tell him: "That's funny! I'm a mortgage broker!". Etcetera.
Works nearly 100% of the time.
By law, telemarketters are requires to keep a "Do not contact list." When they call you, simply request to be put on that list. While you are at it, request a written copy of their "Do not contact" policy, they are also required to send this to you, upon request. Note the time of the call, and the caller's name, company, etc.
If, after you request to be on the list, they call you again, you can have them pay you $500. Unfortunately, off the top of my head, im not sure who you contact, but I will look harder if/when the chance arises :) However, I can say that my calls have almost stopped completely over the past few months.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
I might as well chime in with my super-fun-time story about telemarkets calling my place once.
Now, I must admit I don't get that many calls. However, they still get to me. At any rate, a friend of mine was over at my place and my roommate was home when I got the call...
Drone: Hello, I'm calling from etc. you know the drill
Me: Well, I can't say I'm terribly interested...
Drone: pitch continues
(At this point, my friends realize I'm on the phone with a telemarketer. They decide it's time for fun.)
Roommate: (bellowing) Junior! Get back in that box!
Friend: (timidly, in child-like voice) No daddy! No! I don't want to go back in there!
Roommate: I told you to get in that box! Do as you're told or you got a beating coming!
Friend: (crying sounds)
(All this time, I remain pretty silent, although trying very hard not to laugh.)
Drone: Uh, is everything OK?
Me: (flatly) Yes. Everything is fine. It's the TV.
Drone: (slight pause) Well, I'll be going now.
(hangs up)
--
Woz
My brother once got a call from ATT asking him to switch long distance carriers. My brother just replied, I don't use the phone. The other guy was like, You don't? My brother said, yeah I don't. Funny :)
In Idaho, the AG (attorney general) has a list that you can be on for about $10 for 2 years. I have friends on it, and they report a huge, huge drop in calls. If you get called by your telco for *their* privacy screening service, tell them "no thanks, since you guys are usually the ones that sell my number out to the telemarketers anyway, I'd rather not pay you more money". Seems to be effective.
I'm a pushover though, I'm always polite to telemarketers, but I tell them I'm not interested. I'm going to go downtown and get on that AG list ASAP.
They're relying on the fact that the dialer will remove the number from the database on getting the SIT tone. Not true, since SIT tones are used to deliver a variety of errors including 'all circuits busy' - also none of the dialers i've worked with removed numbers from the database based on SIT tones.
Isn't that like a protection racket? You used to (back in the ol PE6-5000 days) pay the phone company to have your name listed. This was handy, you could tell people, "Look me up in the book!" Then you had to pay Ma Bell to NOT put you in the book. Now, being unlisted isn't enough to keep the Telco monopolies from selling off your private information. They want $3/month (to compensate for lost revenue, I assume). I suppose that eventually, you'll have to pay them to secure your DSL connection, or else they'll let Microsoft come in and disable your expired copy of Windows XP and McDonalds pop up Big Mac ads in the middle of your web page.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Wasn't there a Calvin and Hobbes strip like that? I think the line Calvin used was something like, "Hello, I'd like to order a large pepperoni pizza," and the punch line was, "I like to make everyone's day a little more surreal."
sed 's/In Soviet Russia/In NSA America/g' < yakov-smirnoff-jokes.txt
Caller-ID and a phone trace have basically nothing to do with one another. Caller-ID doesn't show, and call block doesn't work, I'd think, because the phone system is actively refusing to tell you this information, because they probably pay extra to get it this way.
That doesn't mean the phone company doesn't know who it is. If you dial the call-trace number, the call info is immediately logged and made available to telco security personell. THey just won't tell YOU the number.
Get a cellular phone instead. They can't telemarket to cellular phones, it's illegal. Plus you get caller-ID automatically.
Believe it or not, this is exactly how simple it is. For your enjoyment here is a list of the four SIT's, with the frequencies and the length of each tone, and their meaning:
Not being a phone company myself, I cannot guarantee that the above tone sequences will always work, but they are the published values.
In case anybody's interested, a recent issue of Poptronics Magazine had an article about SIT's and how they could be used to defeat telemarketers. Sorry, I don't recall the month, but it was quite recent... a perusal in the library through this year's issues should turn it up, if you are curious.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I suggest the following alternatives:
I delegate on my answering machine. I never ever pick up the phone - if the caller wants to talk to me they will leave a message. I get three or four calls every evening and, more often than not no message is left. Only when the caller leaves a message and I want to talk to them do I pick up the phone.
The plans to make this are in the May 2001 Poptronics.
Page 37 TELEMARKETERS' NIGHTMARE
An easy way to get your telephone number off the contact lists. - John Carter
Scott Woodward
I watched this happen last Saturday. I'm over at a guy's home office setting up a FreeBSD web & mail server for him.
His phone rings. I watch him pick it up and say, "I'm sorry, Mr. Moreland passed away yesterday."
Then he says, "No, Mrs. Moreland is in custody as the prime suspect."
I nearly pissed myself.
http://www.ago.state.mo.us/nocallfaqs.htm
Attorney General Jay Nixon implemented this program this summer and I've only received one telemarketer call since compared to the 10+ a week I was receiving before.
I highly recommend that you try to convince your state reps to mimic this program.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
in WisKin there was a bill signed by former governor Tommy Thompson (now secretary of Health and Human Services) that gives rights to the consumer to have their name added to a list that denies telemarketers the right to call you. I guess this is supposed to work really really well. Unfortuanetely there are a lot of unscruplous telemarketers CALLING to CHARGE you for this service you already pay for here with your taxes. Check it out.
________________________________________________
This SIT tone, can it be created by hitting a series of 3 buttons on the phone?
If so, you could manually punch that in when you get such a call.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
What you do is tell the TM that the person they wish to speak to is dead... THey then say they are sorry then they hang up.
At least with the telephone I never get telemarketing calls offering me to
ENLARGE YOUR PENIS 3 INCH++
-Linux is SO fast it does an infinite loop in 5 seconds.
Personally, my favorite is the one where the funeral home calls him to sell him a cemetary plot and burial services. He pretends to be suicidal and that the caller is the sign from God that he should kill himself and that he's interested in what the man's selling. The best part is when the salesman gives up trying to console him after a few feeble efforts and then goes into his sales pitch to the guy thinking of killing himself, going so far as to ask him to wait until this afternoon for them to send the paperwork to his house.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Just say "I'm not interested. Please remove me from your list."
They HAVE to do this (and indeed, they all do).
It may take one month for lists to reflect this request, but it truly does work. I receive like one marketing call every 3 months.
Were that email worked as well as this law regarding telephone marketing does.
tone
So where's the amazing new troll you announced for Monday morning? I hope this isn't it, because it's crap.
I always start asking the telemarket-girls out. Keep flatering them on their voice. Ask them where they live. Ask if they would like to go out with you. Ask for their phone number.
Not only does it keep them from talking about their product, I actually got a date from a real cutie who lived about 50 miles from me. I don't think she liked it much. I am fat and ugly, but she was real eye candy.
Create a program that a telemarketers is an actual person, and see how long you can keep them on the line.
Mind you this is just to annoy telemarketers. If it was a test of intellegence, you're going to have to sample from a different pool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You need to take advantage of the TCPA and extract $500 damages from them. Some people have extracted more than $40,000 from these people. To learn more, visit:
:)
Junk Busters
Use Enigma to log the calls
See if the FCC is already after them
I have already been offered $250 from one telemarketing firm - but I want to go to trial. Also, since I have used the JunkBuster anti-telemarketing script, I am lucky to get any calls at all. The last call was from Qwest on last month - a month after I was sent a letter from one of their lawyers explaining I was on their "do not call list". That call will make me $500 to $1500 when we go to court
Market research is a benign, legitimate business practice that is used by the company you work for.
This may be a program recommended by Junkbusters (not sure) ... ENIGMA . This baby guides you through the relevant questions to ask when those annoying scum-of-the-earth telemarketers call. It allows YOU to take control of the call and ultimately ends up having them add your number to their official Do Not Call list, which they are required to maintain by law. It also keeps a log of the calls and allows you to document persistent offenders in cases where you might have the opportunity to sue the bastards for violating the law.
When I first got Enigma, I was being bombarded by TM calls. One round of calls with Enigma and now I am virtually telemarketing free! Yay! I actually wanted the bastards to call back so I could sue them and/or make documented complaints to the proper authorities. Unfortunately they haven't been calling so I haven't had the ultimate joy yet, but some day I know they will call back. I'll be waiting.
That's not very nice. Do you think that being nasty to the person on the phone (ie. call-centre-galley-slave) will make any difference in the amount of telemarketing that goes on? All you succeed in doing is making a working person's shitty day even shittier by being an asshole perv to her when she's not allowed to hang up on you. A friend of mine was a telemarketer for a while, they're just people like you and me, who need to pay the rent, and feed themselves.
Freedom: "I won't!"
If any of you live in Connecticut you can goto this web site and have you name removed from all telemarketing list. I put all my numbers on about a year a go and haven't had a telemarking call in about 9 months. It isn't very high tech but it works.
Chris Southern
Only very primitive predictive systems will be fooled by the SIT tone. 95% of the calls you get are from digital dialers, which means they use ISDN signaling, not dtmf tones, and get call status info 'out-of-band' on the D-channel. They know when your phone starts ringing, if its busy, when it goes off-hook, etc, all without listening to the chirps, rings, beeps, and clicks on the audio channel.
Are you aware that if a telemarketer calls you back after you've asked them not to you can make $500? Everytime you are called, ask what call center they are calling from. Pay attention to the language they use. If the caller says they are calling 'on behalf of', that means they are at a 3rd party call center. Ask them the name of the call center and request to be put on the 'do not call list' for both the 'behalf-of' client and the call center. Write both the names down, along with the date and time.
If you get called back, you just won the lottery. Write letters to the organizations and they will send you the money to prevent you getting the law involved. If you don't get your money, call your district attorney.
I know this because I owned a call center.
Declare Bankruptcy, then ya'll drop off ALL lists to be called. Has worked quite nicely for 44 months, only 7 years until off my credit report..
that answers "If this is a personal call, please press "1". If you are a telemarketer, or this is a commercial or unsolicited call, please hang up now and add this number to your "Do Not Call" list." When you press 1 it rings a speaker on the answerer a few times and then takes voicemail if no answer. Apparently the operator of many predictive dialing systems can't manually dial numbers (like "1") so they don't get through.
AC's cheerfully ignored
If you're in Canada (like me), the CRTC has some good information on telemarketing regulations here: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/ENG/INFO_SHT/T22.HTM
None of the solutions people are offering actually stop telemarketers from calling - if the phone rings at all, it's a nuisance call. Like spam, instead of filtering it out of my mailbox, which has limited success, it would be ideal to have it cut off at the source.
So I finally wound up with "privacy director". Yes, it's a lot to pay (few bucks a month) as an extortion fee from the phone company, but it's worth it to simply not be annoyed. Any anonymous or out of area calls are stopped, and the caller is asked to identify themselves. Only after is the call forwarded to your phone - your phone doesn't even ring at all unless the people identify themselves.
So, yes, still annoying to friends and family who call from blocked or out of area locations, but the kicker is a new feature - my family has the code to bypass the identification. As soon as they hear the message, they dial the code and go right to my phone.
In my first five months with this I got ONE nuisance call. Before that I'd get upwards of 12 per day. I'd come home from work, my wife having not answered the phone at all, and would see 8 or 9 out of area calls, no messages, then we'd get three or four more throughout the evening.
So yes, I pay, but it's worth it to me. The difference, for those being harrassed as much as I was, is unbelievable.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I have found that begining a loud, verbal 30 second countdown and then hanging up is very disrupting to telemarketers. Just start out at the begining of their pitch talking loudly over whatever they say, and hang up at 0 if they have not already. it's kinda fun, then after the fun wears off tell them to put you on the "do not call list" that will work, but have fun first.
I configured mgetty to answer all calls that show up as Private on my caller id on the second ring.
Telemarketers get to hear my modem.
This also provides a means for me to login remotely to my system. When dialing home, I just prefix my home phone number with *67 to make my call private. Mgetty answers the call and provides me with a login prompt.
The tones created by a touch-tone set consist of two frequencies transmitted at the same time (hence the technical name, DTMF, dual-tone multi-frequency).
Special information tones consist of only one frequency at a time.
Theses companies are all involved in VoiceSpam or Voice Broadcasting as they like to call it.
www.messagebroadcast.comwww.vmbc.com
www.soundbite.com
-jw
Procmail phone filters are a good idea, but /ignore people in real life. Not "pretend
even *better* would be to have the ability
to
they are not there" ignore, but "completely
disappear from all of your senses" ignore.
That would be something.
/ignore thisannoyingperson!*@* all
While visiting my parents in St. Louis, Missouri, I found out that they have a new opt-in program from the state. By signing on, any telemarketers that call them are forced to pay a fine to the state. Since signing on in August, they haven't received ANY telemarketer calls. Apparently, the fees go to the state highway fund. Heck, it could go into some politician's pocket for all I care, as long as I don't get anymore calls. Why can't they make that into federal legislation?!
http://www.the-cma.org/consumers/dnm_dnc.html
The Canadian Marketing Association
You put in your name and address, and they put you on the "blocked" list, distributed to the companies quarterly for 3 years. That'll cover about 80% anyway, they say.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
I've seen a few programs that do similar things to stop spam - they forge a bounce message, making the spammer think the address has gone inactive. This works OK, except for spammers that forge their return addresses.
What you need is a program for a voice card that drops random "Uh-huh", "Yeah", "Hmmm", and "Okay"s, especially when it detects a pause from other end.
Of course, it would need a top 10 list for longest stringing along of a caller.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I contacted the NY Attorney general's office and they refered me to the Direct Marketing Association's website. They maintain the "do-not-call list" that NY telemarketers must abide by. Just fill out this form and mail in for free to submit online for $5:
http://www.the-dma.org/cgi/offtelephonedave
I'm sure I've seen another device advertised where, once you realize it's a telemarketer, you hit a button & it delivers a recorded "Put us on your don't call list" speech. You still would have to answer though. I think it was around $20 or so...
The most annoying solicitation are no longer the human ones its the machines that call over and over.
They say "If you are interested in purchasing the world's largest cheese wheel, leave your name after the beep" etc. At every opportunity I curse at the beep.
Since someone eventually has to listeen to these they get upset that their time is being wasted by my cursing.
This has significantly cut down on those calls and provided me with endless hours of fun.
Rantbait
When living in So. Cal. and Tucson, I resorted to do-not-call requests and hang-ups many a time. Since moving to the 808 area code, it's been bliss.
During the day, the idiots disconnect when they get the machine, and I haven't gotten more than a handful of sales calls during the evening in three years. Could being six hours off of EST make that much difference?
Luke, help me take this mask off
I read through about half the posts, and I'm surprised I haven't seen this already....
Keep them on the phone!
First of all, I live with my parents, I do not control any of the bills. When a telemarketer calls trying to get me to switch to their phone service, I listen to them, I ask questions, I prod, I get as much information as I can. I've kept telemarketers on the phone for so long that they've hung up on ME. Now, before you assume that I have no life... I am usually doing this while working on some odd project on my computer... So i'm not actually wasting time, just doing 2 things at once. Next time you get a call from a telemarketer, keep them on the phone for as long as you possibly can... eventually they will hang up on YOU!
Telemarketers aren't the only calls you'll be blocked. Companies like Sears and your credit card companies also use these dialers. So if someone runs up your credit card and they try to alert you, they won't. This is just one example. I'm sure there are pelnty of others.
nonsense, they are evil sick twisted people who work for evil sick twisted people. I don't pity a wh0re just because she is "trapped" in a role of her choosing. the telemarketer, as well as the prostitute, can both go flip burgers at mcdonalds to make ends meet...nobody's holding a gun to the callers' heads and forcing them to call innocent victims and annoy the shit out of them.
they are not people like you and me. They are evil people without morals who care not a whit for the feelings of others. They KNOW we hate them...they KNOW we don't want to talk to them...yet they continue to bother us constantly. WHY, I ask you, WHY should we be even civil to them, much less nice to them?
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
It's usually quite effective to advise such folks to fuck off. But then I don't get that much of their attention.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
This is illegal. Didn't you see the episode of the Sompsons where Homer got the autodialer?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Worst case was fairly recently. Got called up, said, not interested, please remove me from your list. "Oh, if you don't want to be called, register with TSC". "I have!" I replied. Drone promptly mutters goodbye and hangs up. I was not impressed.
What we really need to stop telemarketers is Hastur in the answering machine (see "Good Omens").
The problem I have with using a cell phone as a primary phone is that, in a lot of areas, reception is still way too spotty for my taste. Hilly cities like San Francisco (past home) and Seattle (current home) seem to be particularly bad. There are times when I can be in my apartment and my cell phone will beep because it's suddenly decided it's "roaming". Other times it just cuts off in mid-conversation -- fun.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
NME: Could I speak to XYZ
Me: Hello is that Alice?
NME: [It really doesn't matter at this point]
Me: [Distractedly] Alice said she would call
Me: [Asside] Shoo, goddam pidgeons.
NME: We would like to ofer you XYZ
Me: Well that all depends on whether I jump or not.
NME: Where are you
Me: Twelfth floor
etc. etc. etc.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
It won't be long before the telemarketers find a way around these things. As the phone company will always use the same "This number is not in service" recording, the diallers will just do a voice analysis of what comes after the tones.
As I do some work for telemarketing companies, the best way to stop unwanted calls is to pressure your federal government to create a nation-wide do not call list. This was proposed here in Canada and is getting good reception by the people on both ends of the telemarketing call. Already some states in the US do this (Oregon I believe)
This should be a really simple project, and yet I don't see anything like it anywhere.
My girlfriend works for Sprint Canda, and we have talked about this Telezaper deal it may work, however the call center is using a calling list that has been purchased from an outside agency usually. The Zaper only removes your number from the current list. So if you want your name removed for good STOP signing up for everything in the free world. In canada you can actually contact the CRTC (canadian radio and telecommunications comission and have your infromation perminatly removed from contact lists that means no more phone calls or junk mail
If I can just find what box my Commodore 64 is packed in.
I scanned briefly all the articles, and didn't see any descriptions.
Here's what it does:
When you answer your phone, it plays the three tones that the TelCo plays when you call a disconnected phone number. it plays them SO fast that it's virtually impossible to hear unless you are listening for it specifically.
Most automated dialing systems used by telemarketers will automatically hang up on that, and go to the next number - while removing that number from their dialing list. No sense wasting time trying to dial disconnected numbers.
As they sell their list of good and bad phone numbers to other systems, it gets passed around as a disconnected number.
From what I understand, it takes about 6 months before the system will then check the number AGAIN to see if it's still disconnected. People who've used them have told me that it took about 2 weeks to eliminate virtually all telemarketing calls - and this is from people who got A LOT of calls.
The one thing it doesn't affect are those poor blokes that are sitting there with a speakerphone/headset phone and a dial pad, with a paper list of phone numbers to try. heh.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Yes. Because we should take Simpsons as truth.
There's holes in that show that you could drive a Mack truck through... and then some!
a smart idea.
You could've hired me.
Unfortunately this device would keep you from participating in a research survey/opinion poll.
Thus limiting your ability to put in your 2 cents on advertising/politics/products/etc. Sure you could a write an unsolicited letter to the company, but you may have a greater affect by being part of a study THEY pay for!
Think about it.
That stuff can be expensive-you better believe they look at those numbers!
Someone suggested that to me a few years ago. It sounded like a good idea for the first few seconds -- until I pictured {the job I just interviewed at / the chick I gave my number to at the bar last night / Ed McMahon with my prize money / all my friends} calling, hearing the tone and immediately hanging up and tearing up my number.
Yeah, that'll reduce the disruptions in your life.
Go to The AT&T Telemarketing Revenge to laugh a bit about telemarketers. It's an old joke but on-topic here. Enjoy.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
From their FAQ:
"If you answer your telephone and there's no one there, the odds are that you just zapped a telemarketer. After about a month, you'll notice that fewer and fewer of these calls arrive."
And a bit lower:
" Order now and we'll ship you a brand new TeleZapper to try in your home for 30 days! If at any time within the 30 days you're not completely satisfied, just call 1-866-786-7225 for free pickup and return."
Um, sure, that's a good business model.
Error tone:
0 330ms 950Hz -15.0/-15.0/-15.0 dBm0
1 330ms 1400Hz -15.0/-15.0/-15.0 dBm0
2 330ms 1800Hz -15.0/-15.0/-15.0 dBm0
3 5000ms Silence
(source: 'show call progress tone usa' on a Cisco 5340)
Second, a story from about 5 years back about telemarketers:
My mom received a call from a telemarketer (well, looking back, probably someone involved in a telemarketing scam) to which my mom politely replied "Sorry, I don't buy things through telephone solicitations." At this point, the telemarkter got really indignant and my mom simply hung up.
Several times during the nights following this, we started receiving several "ghost" calls with nobody on the other end (this was rare happening for us) which my mom deduced to be the evil caller from a few nights before. What I especially love was her response to this: At the time, the local telco switch was rather broken (don't ask me how, exactly, I don't know much about telco switches) in that if anyone in our town didn't hang up the phone, the other caller *could not* hang up their phone. One night, my mom received one of these calls again and simply left the phone off-hook for about an hour, which basically made it impossible for the offending party to hang up their phone (probably running up a nice charge for whoever was calling.)
We never received another ghost call.
Thank you. Everyone being mean to these poor people, while fun, is not cool. One of my friends was a telemarketer, and she did perhaps the most productive thing in the fight against telemarketing; take the company down from the inside. She told the customers that the product wasn't good for them, they said thanks, and she still got paid. Everyone she talked to, she put on the do not call list.
That works so much better than being nasty and rude to the poor people, don't you think?
See http://www.sxlist.com/techref/pots.htm. The lameness filter won't let me post the info, it has to many "junk characters".
Aren't you paying for the call if a solicitor calls your land line? Or do you, for some reason, get free phone service?
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
One of the telemarketing calls that I enjoyed the most was when I recieved a call for a home security system. Since I had some time, I decided to play with the guy. He spent about 15 minutes telling me about the wonders of whatever it was he was selling, and every time he paused, I would exclaim about how wonderful it all sounded. I remarked on how cheap, easy to use and secure it all was.
The entire time I could tell from the sound in his voice how excited he was getting. As he wound up towards sheduling the install (I think he was running out of air anyway), I once more broke in with more praise of the AMAZING deal this was, and tossed in one comment, "Man, this makes me wish that I owned a home!!!"
The change in the guy's voice was worth it all. :-)
I have to echo whoever said it above. If we all wasted their time, telemarketing wounldn't be cost effective and would stop.
Market research is a benign, legitimate business practice that is used by the company you work for.
It still interrupts my evening without warning. It's just that instead of trying to get me to give them money in return for something, they are trying to get me to give them my valuable time ind information for nothing.
Thus, telephone market research is more like door to door panhandling.
First, I fill out all questionaires with my age over 70 and my income less than $15,000 per year, so I get very few calls.
Second, when I get a telemarketer, I instantly tell them I have to get rid of a salesman at the door and that I'm puting them on hold. Then I leave them on hold and go about my day.
If you really want to discourage telemarketing, hit them where they'll notice -- in their pocketbooks.
The best solution I've found is to answer and then, when they launch into their canned spiel, carefully set the phone down and continue doing whatever you were doing when they called. Then when you finally hear the "off-the-hook" beeping noise, go and hang up the phone. This wastes the telemarketing firm personnel's time and runs up their phone bill, with a minimum investment of effort on your part. Often they'll keep talking for two minutes or more before they realize that you're not there.
I vaguely recall that the Dialogic boards we used to build voice mail systems in the 1980s could recognize the three-tone Operator Intercept, sometimes, if they were properly 'tuned', but it was a crap shoot.
Most of the work I was involved with was answer-only, but we did do an Emergency Notification system once, and one of the problems was recognizing the Intercepts; most OI calls just came up as 'no answer', which bothered me to no end, because a channel was tied up waiting for an answer on a line that had already indicated there would be no answer.
I said all that to say that unless the technology used to build these automated nagging systems has improved significantly in its ability to recognize OIs, your results won't be very consistent.
slashdot broke my sig
Most of my calls are from AT&T and MCI. When they call, I just tell them what i pay for long distance, they say thank you and hang up.
no big sig
My method for dealing with telemarketers: the second you know they're one, say "Excuse me, could you hold on a second?" and put down the phone. I few minutes later I hang it up.
Do you think that being nasty to the person on the phone (ie. call-centre-galley-slave)
You need to spend some time with a dictionary. I don't think you have a good grasp of the meaning of the word slave.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
About 6 years ago I worked for a telemarketer that used an auto dialing system, it was my job to keep all of those annoying people working. Anyway at that time I had the idea to build a device like this that would connect to your phone line and detect the difference in line voltage and play the tri tone that you hear when you call a disconnected number.
The autodialing system that we used detected these tones and immediately hung up the phone to save the company money then it marked the number as disconnected so it wouldn't get called again.
My idea was to play this tone when you answered the phone, before you've even gotten it to your ear, a little annoying for your callers, but probably well worth it. The way the phone system works is by changing the voltage comming down the line. An inactive phone line is ~10 Volts, when the phone rings the line is sending ~12 Volts spikes that the phone uses to trigger the ringer, when you answer a call the line drops to ~8 Volts. This device probalby reads that line voltage drop and then plays it's tone.
Back in the day when I still lived with my parents, there was a 6 month period where we were receiving an average of 3 telemarketing calls per night from long distance phone service carriers.
Smile. My father's an engineer with AT&T.
I think the record for the longest I kept 'em on the phone was something like 45 minutes. They'd give me the standard pitch about how much money they could save us over AT&T, and I'd politely insist that there was NO WAY that was possible...
Of course, I had to be nice to them, so I always asked them to go into detail on every plan they offered. This takes quite a while, needless to say, but I didn't care (watching TV, using the bathroom, whatever while they yapped).
You see, their call success averages depend on their ability to sign up a certain number of customers within a given period of time. I was *bad* for their numbers.
They just loved it when I finally got around to giving them a boarding pass to the Clue Train, inscribed with the message "Our long distance is free... my dad works for AT&T... he might quit soon though." I suppose my sense of humour is a bit sick, but they deserved every ounce of it.
Yeah, but...
Does it really work?
;-)
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Most answering machines have what's called a "toll saver" mode. I know you said voicemail, but I can't speak to that. In toll saver mode, it will let the incoming calls ring 4 times unless a new message is waiting, at which time it will answer on the first ring. That feature is usually switchable, allowing for 2 ring answer all the time.
Intelligent Life on Earth
One Question.... ;o)
Can you get charged for sexual harrassment if the other party calls YOU?
I'm thinking those 1-900 numbers are a bit more expensive...
This little device reminds me of when I used to build "boxes". Not that I ever built anything complex(black box, saves on long distance $$$), but I wonder if this is actually in the list of existing boxes. I haven't seen boxing texts in years, and all mine are gone with a crashed HDD. *sniff*
On the note of telemarketers finding a way around this box; anyone know the DMCA thouroughly enough to tell me if "circumventing electronic measures that function to protect privacy" or something similar, is forbidden in the DMCA? Just a thought.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Then I made the mistake of buying a washing machine from Best Buy on its 'interest free credit'. The scumbag finance company deliberately credited the final payment to the account late so they could claim a huge interest penalty. I pointed out that NACHA credits take hours to clear, not 10 days. We had the scumbags calling up every day for months trying to get us to pay $650 that was definitely not owed.
Interesting fact was that sending the original finance co a cease and desist had no effect. When they put the alleged debt out to a third party collection agency they stopped calling almost imediately they recieved my cease and desist.
It seems that a lot of Americans just pay up when faced with this type of fraud - which is why the stores can offer 'no interest' credit I guess. If you need credit (which I don't) then they can get you blacklisted with Equifax or TRW. In Europe the directors of the companies concerned would be sitting in jail, in the US they purchase legislation.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
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Oregon has a law almost exactly like the one
in Tenn. Go to www.ornocall.com for a sign-up
form. It works great, I haven't heard from
telemarketers in ages.
Even though it's an Oregon law, businesses outside
the state still have to obey it.
Ah, but there is! Just transfer them to 1-888-SPAMCOP and they'll call you back with a brief set of options on who you want to report the telespammer to. Rejoice when they loose thier telephone service for violation of the telco's AUP.
Help us build a better map!
Telemarketer Won't Take Fuck Off And Die For An Answer
Unfortunately that's just a blurb, and didn't make it to the online version. Sucks, cause that would probably make a good story. It also has a story Freedoms Curtailed In Defense Of Liberty which would have been a good comment for a few recent news items.
Me: Hello?
TM: Yes, my name is Harcourt Fenton Mudd, and I'm with the--
Me: Hello?!?
TM: Ahem, yes, my name Harcourt Fen--
Me: Hello?!?!? *CLICK*
:D
Or for religious solicitation of any kind, I memorized the 24 hour recorded Jehovah's Witnesses hotline. Gave it to some Mormons who called me once!
This tends to work nicely:
Telespammer: Hello, this is blah blah blah... and we'd like to sell you some crap...
Me: Ah... soooo... what are you wearing? (in Butt-Head making a pass at a woman voice)
It's useful no matter what gender the conversants are too!
My standard reply to telemarketers starts with "Yobosayo" followed by a litany of Korean phrases interjected with broken english..
Careful on the 'died' one; if you wind up noted as 'dead' in the national big-brother network, who knows what will happen!
AFAIK there is no law against impersonating a vampire though. Which should really confuse them.
It's available at http://www.twpyhr.com
under one of their sections.
Many states are enacting telephone privacy laws that telemarketer's must adhere to. In my home state of Indiana, you can add yourself to a list of numbers telemarketer's cannot call at the Attorney General's site. [www.in.gov] Unfortunately the legislation, while passed, won't take effect until January 1st, 2002, but oh, what a happy new year we'll have.
All it takes is enough letters, emails, and phone calls to your Attorney General to get your state to take action. So complain to yours today.
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This is what we need... Or better yet, has anyone developed an answering machine that runs under linux and has caller ID features built in?
All these companies building appliances ought to build something useful like a high quality digital answering machine that has callerID built in and you can check your messages across the network.
Also, you could play different messages based on the callerID information.
I would pay big money for such a device. Does anyone know if anything of this sort exists?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I ran accross some information about a DIY version of a device like this at Scott Bidstrup's page about telephone solicitation.
He explains in his section on "Caller ID Filtering" that "One way to filter calls is to use a telephone answering machine to answer the phone with a special recording. If the answering machine message is preceeded by "invalid number" tones, computerized calling machines will falsely sense an invalid number and disconnect you automatically. Many even automatically add your number to their Do Not Call list! You can download a recording of the "invalid number" tones by right-clicking here."
I don't know about the device that you saw advertised, but maybe it works the same way?
In Oregon and a couple of other states have a "Do-Not-Call" law that get fined for each unsolicited calls and some states require that the phone number list is made available to the state or to the public. Here's an article (Google cached) about the No-Call registry and provides some background/information about it. To get on the list (at least in Oregon), it's $6 for the first year and $3/year after that.
The most effective way I've found to deal with telemarketers is simply hangup if the party on the other end doesn't say hello immediately. The reason this works, is that it takes about 2 seconds (a bit less sometimes) for your call to be routed to the telemarketer on the other end. I think I've only hung up on one friend so far by using this technique...
--It's Pimptastic!--
What I do is call their autodialer back. It usually only takes four or five redials before my incoming call coincides with their autodialer going off hook. Now I have the fuckers. They can't hang up on me because almost all autodialers don't go on hook for more than about three seconds. I gently set the phone down and walk away while their autodialer goes *click* beep beep boop beep boop boop beep *click* repeat... At around 9:00 PM I give them their outbound line back again.
Most of them use voice recognition, so if you say "Hello" into them after they've dialed, they'll either transfer you to a human, or if they're intent is to leave a prerecorded message on your answering machine, they'll play a chirpy "Sorry, I've got the wrong number" at you and hang up. Those are more rare because they're flat-out illegal. Some are smart enough to realize that they don't have a dial tone, and will try to get one by going on hook and off again, but others just advance to the next number and dial it into your ear.
Using autodialing equipment to leave prerecorded commercial messages on residential answering machines is in violation of telephony laws - $500 per incident - but good luck collecting, as the telemarketers that do it are the hard-to-track-down timeshare condo seminar sleazers that change their business names every six months.
I have one of these. It doesn't really seem to do much. When you pick up the phone, it beeps. I'm not sure how effective it actually is, since most of the time I just hang up immediately if I have to say "hello" more than 2 or 3 times. Also, some autodialers may ignore the tone.
I'm an old fashion guy... when telemarketers call i just put the phone down and let them talk to themselves. I go on with my work ... after a while i hear the tone that tells me they have hanged up.
Related (tried by an old roommate of mine):
Hello, this is ABC Company. Is Mr. Asdf in?
No, Mr. Asdf is not in.
Oh, then can I speak to Mrs. Asdf?
That son of a bitch is MARRIED???
I tell the person on the other end "Dude, this is a pay phone ... I'm outside Denny's ... You got my stuff?" That gets my number removed, and they don't call back.
they're just people like you and me, who need to pay the rent, and feed themselves.
By the same token, I'm just a person like them who would sincerely like to get through an entire meal without a telemarketer calling for once. A nice quiet evening at home would be really nice.
...for various types of subscriber fraud. This flag will probably be used less and less over time as more and more otherwise qualified consumers abandon land lines.
**>>BELCH
I tend to try to be exceedingly friendly with them. When they say, "Hi, may I please speak to ___", I say, "Oh, you're a telemarketer, aren't you?" That will sometimes catch them off-guard, and you can have a little chat -- sometimes more or less related to whatever they're selling, although I recently had a conversation with a university student about midterms and how bad the workload at at this time of year. Often it's obvious that the person on the other end is happy to talk about anything other than the product they're selling. (Cusomter service reps are even better for this.)
It doesn't hurt anyone to be friendly -- after all, these people are just trying to make a bit of money, and probably get abused quite a bit.
That just lets them know that your phone line is a regularly used one. Best to just ignore it.
Last post!
Seems like I remember (1980's) that there used to be a product offered by Consumertronics called "The Shrieker Box", or "Shrieker Module" or something. Said device offered a button, that when pressed by the callee would send an intensly loud piercing noise down the line to the caller.
This was back when phones were real, solid phones, and callers were directly connected to callees. Probably wouldn't work anymore...
The start of every call from them (and I used to get a lot from them for some reason) was "How are you today?" I started answering "Lousy." This led to "Is now a good time to talk?" Answer: "No." After two calls like this, they stopped calling.
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk
Telephone Preference System
I signed up for it ages ago and it works a treat. We've even had companies writing to us to ask for permission to call us!
It plays a set of tones that matches the phone company's error signal. I found the proper frequencys to pull this off after searching google for a while. This should work if you put it at the begining of you awnsering machine message.
Lots of people are explaining how this works (sends some tones down the line so that automated tools are tricked into thinking that the line is disconnected).
However, over here in the UK, I don't believe that (any?) telemarketers use automated tools that can be tricked by other automated tools!
I worked in a telemarketing office about 5 years ago (it was hell) and the only things we got were a long list of numbers and a sore finger from dialing!
-- Mike
I am on the New York "no call" list, which is an initiative that's about a year old now. I will most undoubtedly curse myself by saying this, but the program has been very effective. The big negative is, I do miss being able to vent when idiots call... I will just have to take out my agression in more constructive ways. More info can be found at http://www.nynocall.com or 1-800-NYS-1220.
l a- 000072832sep09.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
Looks like California is considering something similar. Predictably, telemarketers are fighting it tooth and nail:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
-- This
My wife and switched over to cell-only service - no land line. Now not only do we have the convenience of a cell, but we no longer get telemarketing calls (one law I agree with).
I didn't realize just how much telemarketers annoyed me until I stopped getting their calls...now I wonder how much happier I'd be using email if I no longer received any kind of spam?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
After installing Junkbuster on my firewall, I also started keeping track of callers. I would tell them to take me off the caller list, not knowing that the phrase "Do Not Call List" was important back then. I would also tell them that I'm keeping records of the call and make them spell out the name of the company and their phone number. Before they could get into their pitch, I would oh-so-nicely say, "okay, thanks." and hang up on them.
/click/" or "I can't believe I woke up to talk to you /click/" Also when a long distance company calls, I either say "I [send email|do video conferencing] instead of calling long distance." or "I'm required to keep my LD carrier for my work." And my favorite is with cellular companies:
/click/"
My best success came with Omaha Steaks. They called one night at dinner. I told them not to call me anymore, and told them that I was writing down that they called. They called a week later:
TM: Hello sir, this is Omaha Steaks.
me: Oh, cool!
TM: Wow, I've never heard that before.
me: I told you guys not to ever call me again just ONE WEEK AGO! Now I can collect $500 under federal law! I'm saving up for a big tv.
TM: um, uhh, um, we don't have any record of that.
me: Obviously not, because you called me again.
TM: So sorry sir, it'll never happen again.
Never heard from them again. Also, the *only* purchase my wife made off of QVC that was worth anything was a phone with built-in caller ID filtering. It beeps in between the 2nd and all additional rings if the caller is in the "priority" or "normal" list.
Sometimes I've been known to say, "oh shit I thought you were someone important
me: "Hey! Sounds great! In fact, I'll transfer BOTH of my cellphones! All you need to do is pick up my early termination fees."
them: "Well, how much is it?"
me: "$175 per line"
them: "Oh, uh, I don't think we can do that."
me: "Yeah, I didn't think so.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Um, sorry Market Research is as much, if not more of a racket than telemarketing. Worked as a programmer for a sketchy company in Portland OR. Did lots of surveys for Microsoft. Figures were made up out of the blue. They twisted coded responses to suit their own purposes. Trust me, I worked with the data, it was as about as far away from 'scientific' or 'legitimate' as you can get.
Want to have some fun? During the "Open Ended" questions in surveys (like "What are your feelings on the new bus system?") ramble on about insane and perverted stuff. The interviewer has to transcribe everything. Always made my day when I saw that.
Indiana has also passed something similar, but it doesn't go into effect until January 1st, 2002...
a cy /Index.htm
http://www.in.gov/attorneygeneral/telephonepriv
I think this was probably a little more appropriate back in the day. In the modern day this seems more than slightly harsh due to outsourcing.. These people are crammed in some cube trying to make a living a company a couple-thousand miles away. This solution sounds great.
A little more on the realistic side in my household... A modern solution would be to manually screen the call. If someone sounds like they're giving a sales pitch, then hit a button that sends a signal to the serial port of a *Nix database server (or whatever menial task you have a 486 or low Pentium performing) in the corner house. Said *Nix box would have a 2400baud modem connected the phone line and play a WAV recording of cordless phone static for 30 seconds. Then hang up. If the phone rings again immediately, repeat. Otherwise, the WAV could be your voice giving the legal line of 'take me off your list' repeated again and again so the scruplescrabble of interrupting someone isn't necessary--leave it to the machine to be rude.
Also, I'm not sure if telemarketers typically take numbers off of their lists when they get a disconnected tone. The recording of the 'take me off your list' would be a sure bet.
Another tip, kiddies...remember that telemarketers are forbidden by law to call you after 9PM in your timezone.
I saw this trick in a electronics mag a few months ago. Three tones ( same as a 'number not in service'. you can record it yourself with a mic stuck to a phone (dial a number out of service). Then add your message to the end. I found that within 1 week I reduced the crank calls to 1 a day and after two weeks almost none at all. Between that and the answering machine w/speaker I have not talked to a sales droid for over 10 years.
It works is this: the automated systems 'listen' for this tonal sequence and put your number on the 'do not call' list automaticly - they don't want to waste their precious dialing time and cost. However; if one of those systems gets a human/answering machine it calls back. If it gets a modem it puts you on the junk fax list and sells to other companies.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Your typical PRI will have 23 B-channels and 1 D-channel. Each B-channel carries one phone call. The D-channel is the interesting part. It carries signals back and forth about the B-channels.
When the dialer places a call, it sends a signal down the D-channel which says, in effect, call this number on this B-channel. If the dialed number is located in an area that supports ISDN (most places in North America), the dialer will receive status information about the call back across the D-channel, like call complete, busy, out of service, go to Hell, etc.
This is out-of-band signaling. As long as the dialer is getting call status information across the D-channel, it's never even going to listen to the tones that might be sent in-band. The only time this might work is if you live in an area that doesn't support ISDN. In such a case, the autodialer will be forced to use hardware DSP's to decode in-band tones, and it might be fooled if you send it some of your own.
I prefer to ask them if they can hold. Then I put the phone down and go back to what I was doing until they hang up.
Yopu for you?
I used to get lots of calls from local auto glass repair shops. They'd ask me if my windshield had any chips or cracks and they're having this wonderful special....
I'd respond that I do need windshield work (true) but I don't do business with companies that telemarket.
Haven't heard from any of them in awhile
-BigT
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
i love slashdot humor, but this discussion has gone a little heavy on it. anyway...
:) ). anyway, with this system, you could sample sounds on the line and program the system to behave differently if it heard them...there was no end to it. it was really fun to program.
i suspect this tele-zapper thingy will probably be useless tomorrow morning. the equipment that call centers use is very sophisticated, and can be adapted to almost any situation.
prior to my life of linux, i was the phone system admin at a fairly large call center (1500 operators). we did out-going calls via a predictive dialing system that would account for the number of available operators, the number of successful connects, etc, and would start dialing as many numbers as it though it could. the system could tell an answering machine from a real voice by just the quality of the sound 80% of the time. those numbers were re-queued into another call job that could be handled differently by the operators (say more aggressively
so, i think that this little gizmo will be defeated soon. at least by the folks with quality phone systems.
-d66
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
Who the heck still has something as outdated as a voice phone. This is 2001 not 1985.
I haven't gotten a single telelmarketer since I changed my answering machine message.
"Cactus"
"Cactus?"
"Caaactus?"
"Cactus!?"
"CACTUS!!"
BEEP
You're right. Those tones you get when you dial
a disconnected number will cause auto dialers to move on. Just make them the first sounds on your
answering machine.
That never happens to me. I get a call from a telemarketer, when I notice the slight pause before the person picks up, I hang up right away. I've never had them calling back with any more noticeable frequency.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Problem with such a piece of equipment is that they make another piece of equipment that defeats the first. For example: caller ID. To consumers, they hark caller ID boxes so they can screen calls and not pick up calls from telemarketers. Then, they turn around and create caller ID blockers and sell them to the telemarketers, thus defeating the purpose of caller ID. I'm sure a similar thing would happen with this product.
As a person who has worked in a technical roll for a market research company, and as a telesales agent (the job sucks, and screw alla y'all who think I'm evil because I worked for a telemarketer and could have gone to flip burgers at McDicks, I DID quit, and had to move back in with my parents three months later after I had spent my entire savings, due to the fact that I couldn't find a job), I can bring some ACTUAL information to this debate. I'm not personally farmiliar with the telezapper, but based on what I've read here it would be fairly successfull, if it generates the three signal tones.
Predictive dialers DO disconnect from these numbers, however many predictive dialers are also capable of telling when a answering machine picks up (tape noise in the background), when a fax or modem picks up, etc, some of these things are incredibly intelligent.
Also, telemarketers will prescreen the number lists that they purchase from outside vendors, as these lists often contain a large amount of invalid numbers, the prescreening process doesn't ring your phone, it is a process of testing weather or not the line is "live," a phone line will ring durring this process perhaps one out of one hundred times, and only once in that case.
Telemarketers are required to maintain private do-not-call lists, and filter their purchased numbers by them, this law does not apply to market researchers (people not trying to sell anything), there is a NATIONAL do-not-call list to which you can add your name by talking to your local post office.
In other tid-bits of legal information on telemarketers/teleresearch, they may not legally place calls before 7:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m. (in the US). It is illigal to send an unsolicited fax, or place an unsolicited call to a cell phone, though a company can usually get away with calling a cell phone if they can make a good case that they didn't know it was a cell phone and when they found out they disconnected promptly if there was a disconnect request (some areas do have mixed cell/land-line exchanges, therefore if you live in one of these areas you can expect to recieve telemarketing calls on your phone).
good info.
in my experience, a good PBX can use this tech in conjunction with other tech (maybe even a separate system) to work the call. that is, it can listen to the B channel and talk with the part of the system that is connected to the trunk line, or PRI, to tell it to disconnect, or whatever. see my other post "call systems"
-d66
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
> Too bad phones don't have the equivalent of procmail filters.
Actually, I am working on such an application. Watch my homepage - I'll release it soon.
Its actually quite easy. I used to work telemarketing over the summer cause the pay wasnt bad and the hours worked out nicely. When they call just say nicely please remove me from you calling list. If they dont they are breaking federal law. Also if you really wanna screw with them request they send written verification that they removed you. I dont know if all telemarketers do this but the one I worked for did but of course they didnt tell you this option do to the price of paper.
"It doesn't hurt anyone to be friendly -- after all, these people are just trying to make a bit of money, and probably get abused quite a bit."
:-).
And as an added bonus, if you can take up enough time during this friendly conversation, you cost the company, and their hiring client company, time and very possibly money
"A simple solution for me is to have an *extremely* short answering machine message: "Please leave a message at the tone" said very quickly. My answering machine message is so short that the tele-spamming autodialiers don't recognize it as a machine and go ahead and connect to the telemarketer instead of disconnecting."
"For a few months the result was a lot of messages saying "Hello . . . Hello . . . Are you there?" But the telemarketers then think it is a "broken" line, take the number off the list, and soon there are fewer telemarketers."
"Simple and free." (emphasis added)
I don't consider this solution to be free at all. The cost is that you can't answer your own phone without screening them. You have to let everyone know that the answering machine is not an indication you are away. Your bound to miss a few. Not exactly what I, or most people - in my not so humble opinion - would call free . In fact I would say, in your case, they have won the battle though not yet the war.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
1) You get phone service from phone company
2) Phone company sells your information to other companies.
3) You tell phone company to make your number unlisted.
4) Phone company sells your information anyway.
5) Telemarketers start calling you.
6) You get "unknown caller blocking" and caller ID to stop telemarketers.
7) The phone company sells a service to the telemarketers that allows them to get around the unknown caller blocking.
8) You're getting telemarketing calls again, so PacBell says to you: pay us some money and we'll protect you from those telemarketers.
9) You send them their $3 a month and you're safe again, until the next time PacBell sells the telemarketers a service to let them get around the privacy manager.
It's a fucking extortion racket.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
By law if You tell them to put You on a Do Not Call List, they can not call You for a year. And if they do they are liable to a lawsuit, first violation about $200.
"One of my friends was a telemarketer, and she did perhaps the most productive thing in the fight against telemarketing; take the company down from the inside. She told the customers that the product wasn't good for them, they said thanks, and she still got paid. Everyone she talked to, she put on the do not call list."
Didn't the company supervisor(s) ever catch on? How long was she able to do this? It's a GREAT idea, but it seems that *someone* would catch on and fire someone doing this after a short while..
Unfortunately we don't seem to have a state-wide no-call list but I found this info about the existing law: http://www.sosaz.com/business_services/ts/TeleSoli cit_brochure.htm
Having had some recent experience as a genuine obnoxious telemarketer, I can do some FYI for the /. crowd...
1. Not all predictive dialers even take answering machines into account. I would guess they're all supposed to in some way or another, but at my workplace (for a very big, very well-funded long distance company with up-to-date everything) we got answering machine calls all the time. And as humans, we recognize them as such (even though all we heard was silence), so we tell the computer we got an answering machine. I guarantee those numbers get called again, and soon.
2. You could move to Kentucky, Kansas, South Dakota, or Utah, which are "1-no" states ;-). As soon as you make any kind of "not interested" remark, telemarketers have to end the call.
3. The service mentioned in other comments where callers must provide caller ID info manually before a call will go through will keep out 99.99999% (I would almost dare to say 100) of telemarketers.
4. Do NOT ever just hang up or just say "not interested" and hang up. Your number will stay in the database, and depending on the competence/mood of the telemarketer you may get another call very soon.
5. "Put me on your do-not-call list". Learn it. Love it. It's your only hope (besides the pay service in #3).
i actually used to work as a telemarketer. people had a lot of hysterical responses pre-fabricated for telemarketers (i would rate them on a scale of 1-10 if they stayed on the line, but most would just crack the joke and hang up). the people who had just been dumped were the best though-- i can't tell you how often i would say:
"hello, blah blah blah, is Mr. Smith there?"
and get:
"that motherf#cker left me with that slut! if you find that bastard tell him to f#cking die!..."
thankfully, the organization i worked for didn't tape calls. so, i would get paid by the hour, minus 50% if i didn't make a certain number of calls, plus a dollar for every donation i got. so, when i got someone who seemed cool enough but was pissed at me for calling, i'd explain that if he donated 50 cents, the organization would actually lose money (and i would get a dollar to compliment my minimum wage).
moral of the story: telemarketers are minimum wage employees (or even prison labor in some cases), so it's best to just say "no, put me on the do not call list" and hang up. it's the companies that make people call you that you should find a way to harass back.
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/cld/articles/telem. cfm
"Telemarketers are required to maintain company-specific
"Do-Not-Call" lists. When you receive a call from a telemarketer and
you wish to be placed on its "Do-Not-Call" list, simply say so. It is
illegal for a telemarketer to call if you have asked not to be called.
Such businesses are also restricted to making calls between the
hours of 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Finally, if you decide to hang up on
a pre-recorded call, you must be able to regain use of your own
phone for outgoing calls within five seconds of the hang up."
HTH
XML causes global warming.
Kinda weak. Sorry.
But then, cartoons don't have to be realistic....
I seem to remember some human-interface type praising that message because it apologized for the problem, and didn't blame it on the user, and otherwise didn't hurt the user's sensitive feelings. If they just tell me what to do so that the call does go through, I'd put up with them calling me a blithering idiot....
And most importantly, you keep them from calling someone else! It's like the Nimda trap, but for telemarketers. :-)
Examples: while the 'marketer gives you his babble, just butt in with random animal noises. Or why not tell him your life story over the top of his sales pitch? Pretend to be psychotic! Slurp soup loudly, fart into the phone, try to talk backwards. Let them finish their pitch (or even better, interrupt them with enthusiasm) and haggle with them mercilessly; make THEM give up on the sale! It seems to me that an absolutely mindless release like this must be extremely good for stress. Especially when you get to hear the reaction of the guy/gal at the other end.
So come on people; don't worry about how to rid yourself of that annoying teleperson! Use them to lower your blood pressure, and get a geat laugh besides! Hooray for telemarketing!
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
wouldnt it be great if one of these companies who offered a service to stop unsolicited calls telemarketed their products?
What we need is a Arnold telemarketer responder. "I don't like you!" "You know what?!" "Who's your daddy?"... This might not accomplish too much but it's a riot! Must have speaker phone so everyone can laugh at telemarketer when they call at dinner. This would be great entertainment, I would be waiting by the phone for a telemarketer!!
You've always got it better, with your "national car insurance" and "great women". Well bah to you I say.
lol, I love politics!
Omaha Steaks also had a credit card program- maybe this is what you meant- administered by MBNA America, a company that runs credit cards programs for small banks and various organizations.
Anyway, I used to work for them. I was a telemarketer, and I think I called about Omaha steaks a few times.
But what you've read up and down this thread is true, all companies must keep a company-specific "Do Not call list", and must honor your request to be put on it....
However, the law allows up to six weeks for this process to occur, because the original legislators realized databases can be unwieldy sometimes- so it's only after a certain period you can collect the money.
just an FYI
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
A guy who was working from home got so aggravated by the endless telemarketing calls that interrupted him, he started messing with the telemarketers for sport. He wound up recording his calls and turned them into a CD called Revenge on the Telemarketers.
I heard some excerpts on morning radio when the guy was plugging his CD. The parts I heard were damn funny. Of course, I never got around to actually ordering his CD.
And It was a sucky job. The company I worked for, MBNA america, knew this, and paid us oddles of cash (for work your average highschooler could be trained to do in a week), trained us incredibly well about the credit industry, credit laws, telemarketing laws, and how to sell- it's always fun when I get called by a telemarketer, cause most of them suck in comparison to the standards MBNA held us to (very, very high)- they don't follow laws, stumble over little things like leaving their company phone number (which is absolutely required), making statements contrary to the fair credit act, and various telemarketing acts-
Remember, nobody would telemarket if it wasn't profitable, the people on the other end are just trying to earn a living. Be nice to them, even if you tell them, "Put me on your do not call list."
I'm sure your occupation offends someone, so be nice to them. I don't work their anymore, cause it's a tough job, and I had my fill after a year- but it was a great company to work for- unparralleled coporate culture, I think they've ranked in Forbes top ten places to work for the past several years.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I have a friend who is a police officer. When a telemarketer calls, he identifies himself and tells the telemarketer to identify himself as part of an ongoing investigation, informing him a failure to do so would be a cause for a charge of obstruction of justice.
If the telemarketer objects, the officer will tell him he is able to trace the phone numbers anyway, so he might as well not screw around with him (although he uses more genteel terms like cooperation and appreciation).
The telemarketers never want to give out their actual names, addresses, business addresses, home phone and business phone numbers, reason for calling, and describe to the officer their knowledge of his phone number and personal affairs.
Most are just trying to make a buck and get a little confused and worried when they start getting questioned.
This doesn't really do anything to cut back on the number of incoming calls, so read all the other posts about the 'do not call list' if you want to know about that.
Whenever a telemarketer calls, I simply tell my modem to answer the phone.
"Hello, Mr Cow-ard, would you like to lower your debt?" "dooo DOOOO SKREEETCH!" *click*
Is it intelligent to cheat on IQ tests? Provided you don't get caught, it would seem so.
I'm currently working at a RadioShack, where we keep a stack of these babies right by the Point-of-Sale as an impulse buy. At 50 bucks a pop, it seems like a big impulse buy, but we sell out of them pretty fast. Apperantly, this thing will respond to any machine-generated "wardialing" of the type typically used by telemarketers with those three tones you always hear when you dial a number that's "out of service" (boooo baaaa beeee!!).
The downside of this is that it dosent just kick in with telemarketers, but will activate in response to any call that uses that technology to mass-call people. Hopefully, insurance and banking representatives will continue to dial the old-fashioned way.
Ya, that's a great idea. The phone companys will block companys that are paying $500-$750 a month per T1 line, just because a few people don't like their call. That makes great buisness sence.
:)
The marketing company I work at (which is quite small) only has 2 T1's, and AT&T makes arround $5000-$5500 a month in T1 access and long distance off it. Do you really think they would setup something to block that source of income? And that's just the income from ONE _small_ marketing room running 12 agents.
Also, if the stats on "3 tone" numbers go too high, we'll just adjust our dialer to pass it to agent instead of hanging up. That's a simple enough change to do. (Remember, there's technical guru's running these predictive dialers, and it's great fun to beat a challange.)
Oh, btw, if you really want the best way to get rid of the marketer, just say something like, "oh by the way, I don't have a bank account", since most marketing rooms do all their buisness through ACH (direct bank draft).
Ok, here's a huge secret for you all, if you REALLY want to piss off a marketing agent (and believe me, that's all you're going to piss off, one poor agent who's making minimum wage), try this: most marketing rooms conference your call into a recording system (like the GENIE system). Let the agent get through the sale, stay on the line for 'Verification', usually someone else will come on the line, and bring up the recorded line. at that point, mash on the # button on your phone, and you'll be switching cue points on the recording system. Then deny it to the agent. You can get creative from there.
Oh, if you try that on anyone in my marketing room, I'll send your phone number as a free sample to a dozen lead brokers.
When a telemarketer calls to ask you to switch long distance services, tell them you do not own a phone.
I've had pretty good luck hanging an old external modem on the line. When I'm home to check the CID, the modem is set to pick up on the 4th ring, and I pick up sooner if it's a known caller. Usually I shut it off and let the answering maching do its thing if I'm not home. The automated dialers seem to recognize a modem tone and remove my number from the call list.
is some way to send a high-voltage charge back up the line to the call center.
Instead of merely getting our numbers listed as invalid, it would be *much* better to ruin their equipment.
Until then, someone needs to design a phone system version of a firewall.
Predictive dialers don't usually pre-dial to mark you active.
They do tend to dial more phone numbers than agents though. Say your contact rate is running at 25% answered, 55% answering machine, and so on. It'll see 25% are answering phones at this time, and dial 4 phone numbers per agent logged on. This isn't perfect, so if more people answer than anticipated, one goes to an agent, and the other gets hung up on. To run a dialer efficiently, you usually get your drop rate arround 15%. Anything lower, and your calls will be too slow to keep your agents busy.
Of course, when you're dropped, your calling priority goes up, because the dialer knows someone was there at that time, and trys to hit you asap.
In the UK there is a list managed by "The telephone Preference Service" and I beleive it is mandatory for companies not to call people on this list. As far as I recall it is free to register. When we used to do mass callings using an autodialler, I had the server pull the 3Mb (and growing) file every night from their ftp server and delete records that matched in our database before exporting and uploading the list to the dialler. Not only could we get into serious trouble for calling people on the list, we had to pay a subscription for the list!
:)
I can't recall the URL of their web site now - but it they do have one somewhere
This would work great iff every telemarketing department used a computerized system for their call lists. I had the distinct misfortune to actually work telemarketing last summer and the company I worked for simply copied pages out of the phone book. But it sounds like a pretty cool idea...just not always 100% effective.
Actually telemarketers can be quite funny, you can have a lot of fun when they call :)
.. besides, you have to call them back to have them stop (another thing you pay in europe..) and you cannot easily make sure the fax isn't going to be something usefull before part of it is thru.
:) do this at night, so no one notices and in the morning they get a 100 pages long flame :)
but fax spamming is really a pain, companies send more and more useles spam, and the thermal paper used in my device is actually pretty expensive
A great trick I did a few times is to locate a fax number at the spammer's company, take a blank sheet of paper and write STOP SPAMMING ME on it. Fax it out to them, but while the top of the sheet is coming out, bind it to the end of the sheet with some tape in order to form a roll that keeps going thru the fax
I used to do call center consulting for Fortune 500 companies, and set up a computerized call center. If I remember correctly (it has been some years) there was no "grace period" - if you tell them "put me on your do-not-call-list" they can never call you again.
HOWEVER, the DNC list applies to the company calling you, not the company they're calling *for*. So for example, if company A hires companies B and C to do telemarketing for them, you get a call from company B saying "hi, this is Shirley calling from company A and..." then you tell them to put you on the DNC list. Fine. Then company C calls - "Hi, this is Suzy calling from company A and..." and you throw a fit. However, even though they *said* they called from company A, they're really company C. So, you never actually told *them* not to call, so it's legal. Then company A actually calls you, and you go ballistic. But you never actually spoke to A, you spoke to B and C claiming to be A, so it's still legal.
This is my understanding of the situation anyway. A judge might not take such a lenient view of A's behavior. Good companies share their DNC lists with anyone they contract to, so this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
poptronics had an article about this a few months ago. they offered a sit tone to put on your answering machine:
ftp://ftp.gernsback.com/pub/pop/sit.wav
Instead of saying "put me on your do-not-call list" first. Try listening to about 30 seconds of their jibber jabber then interrupt and say "hmmm, interesting... I might be more interested if you talk dirty."
Now, I've only got a lot of really disgusted female telemarketers and some really confused male ones but one of my roommates claims a Bell South telemarketer actually did talk dirty to him. badly.
If nothing else, it's really quite satisfying to have THEM hang up on your for once!
The phone company wants to charge for an unlisted number, but they will list the number under any name for no charge. My line is listed as Melvin z. yammagucci. Mr. Yammagucci loves to accept free offers and will gladley make appointments to inspect your siding and try your magazine. Mr Yammagucci however never pays for any of this stuff. He does enjoy the free stuff tho... Mr Yammagucci has never been harassed beyond the occasional threatening letter. :)
1) Get an unlisted, and unpublished number. It's not in the book, it's not in directory assistance. If I want someone to have it - I give it to them. Otherwise, tough shit.
2) Don't give your phone # to people who don't need it. UPS doesn't need it, FedEx doesn't need it, your credit card companies, utility companies, etc. all don't need it... All they do is use it to harass you if you don't pay the bill, or they sell it when some schmuck offers them money...
3) When a company "demands" your phone # - make one up. I love 312-222-2222 (Chicago Tribune Classified Ad line). I tell out of state people that it's my cell phone #...
4) Anytime a telemarketer calls up - say "Put me on your don't call list. I don't want to hear from you or your affiliates ever again." then HANG UP. If they don't put you on the list, they're subject to hefty fines from the FTC - see www.junkbusters.org for more info
5) Sometimes you feel playful - the best ones to screw with are the surveyists. "Hi, may I talk to the youngest male in the house who listens to the radio?" ' Ummm, we don't own a radio' "No radio?" ' Nope... sorry, only the word of the devil comes through the radio. We read the Good Book. Don't own a TV either... Would you like to hear about some of what the Good Boo..... Hello? Hello?'
Add "Anonymous call rejection" and "Caller ID Block by Line" to your phone. Dial *82 to release your # to people who you want to have it before calling them. The rest of them see "PRIVATE". Anon callers can go screw themselves...
Guess what? I get about 1, MAYBE 2 telemarketers a YEAR now.
More gems:
Make up a language when they call "Hi, this is Tammy, can I speak with the head of household" 'Gummanaschnee! Flablahla! Yaka booka wagga!' (do it with your accent of choice...Mine is usually South African)
Tell them you were just about to call them!
Tell them you're looking for a job - where do they work? How much do they get paid?
Ask if they're going to remunerate you for your time (pay you for your time). Rarely do they know what "remunerate" means. I ask for a minimum of $100.00, and tell them that if they're willing to pay that they can mail it to me, and I'll call them back on their 800#... Otherwise it's $500 and I'll pay for the call in the continental US...
is dead... Are you the "wife/husband"? I'm the FedEx guy and I found the door open, and smelled the body... I'm waiting for the police right now... Plus, I need this package signed for...
Just repeat whatever they say right back at them - drives them nuts...
Play a porno, put the phone to the earpiece...
Tell them that they've won a contest, where they get $50, but that they have to pay $100 for shipping/handling...
Ask what they want on their pizza... be adamant about it... Whatever they want - it's $97.50 plus tax...
STart laughing... become hysterical... don't stop laughing until they hang up...
Start meowing on the phone...
Play the sound effect of a gunshot, yell "OH MY GOD", then hang up...
A common misconception folks here will make is that legititimate Market Researchers fall under the 'telemarketer' category. Legally, and duty-wise, Market Research is a world apart from telemarketing.
Primary difference of being, of course: A market researcher is -never- selling/promoting/'giving' anything.
Some market research companies use auto-dialers, some don't. I personally dial manually.
Some important differences and modus operandi you need to know in dealing with market researchers: (based off of working in Canada, laws differ by area)
1. Asking who the client is, will, under 90% of the circumstances, be useless. Most surveys are done double-blind for us, meaning the only folks in our call center who know who the client is would be the manager. If the survey is not double-blind, then the client WILL be named in the introduction.
1b) Asking about the subject of the survey. In my experience, this is revealed in the intro about 35% of the time. If it isn't given, don't get all paranoid. What a lot of folks don't understand is research companies are frequently interested in what people DON'T like, as well as what they do. It prevents bias, which keeps the responses recorded more accurate. IE: We may be doing a survey about pop, and you don't drink pop. You hang up. But our clients also want to know the percentage of the population that doesn't drink pop, and what they're drinking instead, etc.
2. The company 'calling on behalf of' is seldom the name of the company we're hired under. Reason: Companies spend big money on these surveys, and make their living making them. It's their property. Then they hire a call center company to do the actual calling. We're the pony the cowboy rides on. Without fail, we're instructed to introduce ourselves as the company that wrote the survey, and not with our call center company. (Only exception: When our call center IS the company which wrote the survey.)
3. The dreaded 'Remove me from your list.' command. Worthless. Here's why: Unless you were asked for by name, 99% of the time your number was generated randomly. Yup, it's inefficient, but it allows us to throw away lists and start over each time. In fact, it usually means we don't HAVE a 'list'. So we just nod, say 'of course', code as a refusal, and the number is tossed away. Nothing preventing it from being re-generated in the future however.
4. The 'Do Not Call' command. This is trickier. In Canada, there are a few provinces that have legislation about this, but there is no federal law requiring us to obey it. That aside, any market research company worth their salt will obey this nonetheless. If they're part of the Canadian Survey Research Council, they're bound to by the membership requirements.
5. Being funny might get you somewhere, but being rude will not. Rude, hostile respondents have a 'mysterious' habit of ending up with 'accidental' call-back commands by vengeful interviewers. (Or an entire row of them, if your number gets passed around for being a particularly intense lil' firebrand.) Most crack after the eight call in five minutes. Folks: If you're not interested, say so politely and firmly. Don't yell, don't swear, don't be rude.
6: Always a good idea to ensure who you're talking to is legit, if you're interested in the survey. A good way is to ask the company, if Canadian: "Are you a member of the Canadian Survey Research Council?" Follow this up immediately if they say yes by asking: "Can you give me the number for them?" (Should be: 1-800-554-9996). Then ask for the survey file number. Most of the time they will have to consult a supervisor prior to releasing this information. If they thereafter refuse, use the Do Not Call command and hang up. If they co-operate, hey: Ask for a callback and check out the data given in the meanwhile. If they're legit, do the survey!
7: Ask the length of the survey. Whatever estimate is given, add 3-5 minutes. It may not necessarily take that long, but in my experience, the script-writers are a little... optimistic in the timing estimates. Depends on the survey though. I've had some that say they'll take 25 minutes, that take only 15. On top of that, there's plenty of times where, quite honestly, the surveyer cannot give an accurate time estimate. Many surveys have questions and sections that change/appear/dissapear depending on the answers given. In my experience, 12 minutes is an 'average' survey.
8: Answering for other people / refusing for other people. Except under rare circumstances, we cannot accept answers from unqualified respondents. Translation: If you want your wife to answer the questions, first ask the researcher if that's possible. If not, either schedule a callback or terminate the call. By the same token, don't refuse calls for other people. If we're asking for someone by name, unless we speak with that person, we're under no obligation to accept refusals from others. (We usually do anyway though.) Besides, what kind of house were you raised in that you think that's acceptable?
9: Beware and be aware that there's times where market research and advertising tread a fine line. They're rare, and as a rule the folks working loathe 'adveresearch' questions that, if they weren't followed up by a question, would be shameless advertisement. It's hard to understand, but there's a lot of pride in the market research industry that "We're not the bad guys." We're the nastiest ones in the biz on telemarketers, because _they make our job harder_.
10: Best way to avoid getting called back by a market research company? Do the survey. I'm not kidding. Think of it as 15 minutes invested in avoiding further calls about the subject. Additionally, some surveys offer rewards for participation, hook-free. (When this happens, you bastards get paid more than us for doing the bloody survey. Be grateful!)
11: Be polite, but be firm. If you're not interested, say so. Don't hem and haw and schedule callbacks you don't want. A simple: "Thank you, but I'm not interested." will suffice.
12: Before you refuse, consider this: In an age where companies basically don't give a fuck what you say, we're their ears. It's a rare opportunity to actually say something to Brother Economy and be _heard_.
13: Finally, if you REALLY want to piss off a market researcher: Start the survey, and near the very end (ask periodically until you're near the ending) terminate the call. In every survey I've ever done, a midway refusal means the survey answers are tossed out and all that effort was for nothing. Big time anger for the researcher. (This cuts both ways though: If you have something about the subject you want heard, unless you complete the survey, you're just wasting your own time.)
Hope this was insightful/informative/funny and whatever else gets me some bloody karma already!
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
I give out bogus numbers any time I am forced to give a phone number by some clerk or other. I also bogus my address, as well. Normally, I change a digit or something (555-1312 instead of 555-1212), so if it ever comes back on me, I can claim I wrote it down wrong, or they copied it down wrong, etc.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
I happen to recall a very simple go-between device that will solve all your problems.
It's a very simple & small (matchbox size) device that plugs in between your line and phone, and allows you to set a 4 digit code that you give only to people you want to have access. You don't hear anything unless the caller has the right code, and you can change the code to your liking (if your number falls into the wrong hands perhaps.) You can use the same device to add a little security to remote-access modems as well.
It's called the Tele-Screen, and cost $40, but I couldn't find their site on the web (or in the EdgeCo catalog where I found it). be sure and post if you've got a URL.
But personally, I'm more interested in ELIMINATING SPAM as it is much higher volume, and more annoying (for me at least).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Of course, this might not have been as convincing if he had tried it with a man...
Speaking as a gay man, please allow me to tell you from experience that it works better.
I've also seen God on a few other FPSG's.
Someone hates these cans.
I (in my shameful past) once worked as a telemarketer for about 3 weeks for an ambucs fundraiser. We cut out pages of phone books and marked off people we got ahold of.
Of course, after the fund drive, we threw away the pages. We had no "do not call" list. The next year, everyone would get called again.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Did that one. On variation is "One moment please..." or something like that. After you confirmed they have the right person.....
/.) you can train your conversations. Ask them things. They did call you? ask them difficult questions. this might be a way to learn to talk to people.......
Just get their time. They get paid for their time, get their time back!!!!!
As a regular nerd (this is
Also if they talk to you thay do not have time to call me. (!)
I think we almost have an obligation to give telemarketers disinformation. If you give them a mixture of true, false and contradictory answers, then telemarketing becomes worthless and expensive, so they'll stop.
Well... in theory at least. It would probably take forever, and God knows whether they would even realise that their data is crap.
The exception is if you take a UK band mobile overseas and someone calls you. You then pay for the internation portion of that call.
excellent quality. Will copy profusely.
Having built systems that do this type of dialing (they are called predictive dialers), I know it may be possible to fool some of the newer ones. The telezapper, by responding with what sounds like a phone company message attempts to fool these dialing systems. Based on the way most predictive dialers are built, you have about 1-2 seconds before these tones are ignored by the dialer. While this device sounds like a great idea, I won't ever buy one. I've learned one key thing about why so many companies still telemarket like this. It still works. Enough people still buy crap from the telemarketers (I'd like to know who)! If everyone stopped buying from telemarketers (and I mean everyone, just not us geeks), they'd go away because it wouldn't be profitable. Take away their money, and they go away! Simple problem, simple solution. Enough said. The only problem is that this device will have the same reliability that the "fax/modem/voice" interpreter boxes do, in that it won't always detect right. It will probably make some people that call you regularly very unhappy as well.
When I put this message on my answering machine, we went from 6 telemarketing calls a day to 0 in less than 2 weeks:
:-)
:-)
"Thank you for your $50 contribution to the National Rifle Association! Your contribution will appear on your next telephone bill. If you've called this number in error, please leave your name and number after the tone."
You can't imagine the funny and desperate messages that that I got.
Of course, remember to tell your friends and family (or not, your choice
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
An important step is to not put your phone number (or anything else but your address) on your checks. Retailers do nothing with this info but sell it to telemarketers. My bank told me this in a newsletter. When asked for a phone number, put a fake one. Retailers have no legitimate need for such info. I get around 3 telemarketers a year. They get the "Place me on your Do Not Call List".
101 Unerbetene Anrufe
Anrufe - einschließlich das Senden von Fernkopien - zu Werbezwecken ohne vorherige Einwilligung des Teilnehmers sind unzulässig. [...]
</german>
<translation>
Calls - including fax - for advertising purposes without prior consent of the called person are illegal.
</translation>
And two years ago they amended that provisiont to cover UCE and UBE as well.
We do not have a problem with telemarketers here in Austria.
/ol
Telemarketers have overheads too: time spent calling and long-distance bills they have to pay.
What do most people do when a telemarketer calls? They either hang up or cuss them out. Well, not me. What I do is act like I'm interested. Once they see that they start to read from their LOOOOONNNGG premade sales script. I leave the phone on the table. Go do something else, and then come back after 3 minutes. Surprisingly, lots of these guys are still talking!
The point? Waste their damn time and money with long distance calls to you. Works like a charm every single time.
eTrade SUCKS
Telemarketer: Sorry, I can't do that.
You: Why? Is it because you don't want people calling you at home?
Telemarketer: Yes.
You: Well, now you know how I feel. (hang up)
Magius_AR
Do not call list.
Check out the website for your attorney general and sign up to the do not call list.
In addition to making telemarketers purge their data against these lists, some states allow you to sue telemarketing companies if they call you and you are on the DNC list.
I sleep an odd schedule (early evening), get up a few hours to work and then sleep again for a few hours. Too many times telemarketers call when I am trying to sleep during early evening, so you know what I do? I physically unplug the phone and turn the answering machine volume down. People can call and leave messages while I am asleep and I am not disturbed. I check the caller ID and usually verify some dumbass tried to call and sell me some crap I don't need. They're LUCKY I unplugged the phone or they'd be afraid for waking me up. :)
A friend of mine was a telemarketer for a while, they're just people like you and me, who need to pay the rent, and feed themselves.
A friend of mine does spamming for various pr0n and "Herbal Viagra" concerns - perhaps you've recieved one (or a thousand) of her solicitations. She's just trying to make ends meet, too <snif>
My question is "How will you compensate me for my time?" Oh, I should participate in market research and benefit your company and your client for free? I see....
Shamefully I worked my first job out of college as a telemarketer for a few weeks. The number one rule a telemarketer has is "don't hang up first or your fired!"
So whenever a telemarketer calls me now, its free phone sex as I see it, I mean they can't hang up, but I guarantee you that they won't call again once you finish.
Most TM's start the conversation by asking, "How are you today?" or the equivalent. Since no one I know would talk like this, I always say, "Fine, just fine." Click. That is, I hang up.
Don't know if that lessens the number of calls I get, but it sure is satisfying.
If you need to do something immoral and noxious to make ends meet could you at least choose something a little less repulsive? Perhaps you could try selling crack to kindegardeners.
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
The Phone Butler
http://www.phonebutler.com/
A friend of mine got one for his Dad and swears by it. When you hear the telemarketer start to say anything to you, you hit the * key and a precanned message asks that you are to be put on the 'do not call list'.
Advantages:
1. Removes all the effort from having to deal with them.
2. Puts you on the 'do not call list'
3. Doesn't confuse your friends (unless you want to!?
Disadvantages:
1. Its $50
2. Its got a really lame voice.
On a second note, i've been using my cell phone in LA, CA for about a year without any problems with NO LANDLINE.
[phone rings] machine: "Hi, this is [me], if you're a telemarketer, please add this number to your do not call list and hang up now. If you are not a telemarketer, please press 1 and you will be connected to [me].
My home phone will ring only if the user presses 1, and if I don't answer they can leave a message.
Voila, nobody can get through or even leave a message unless they are legit, and you won't even get any annoying recorded ads on your mailbox since the autodialers aren't smart enough to know they have to press 1 to connect or leave a message.
The problem is, I haven't been able to find such a system for sale to consumers. All of the digital consumer answering machines that have mail boxes will default to storing a message in mailbox 0 if the caller just waits long enough. This defeats the purpose because I have to listen to all of those messages in case some braindead important person calls and can't figure out they need to press 1.
My question is, are there any programmable, menu driven voicemail systems available for regular consumers? I saw something a long time ago about how to set something up with vgetty and a voice modem under linux, but it doesn't sound like it has the flexibility I need.
I would appreciate any help.
Like Many in the Unwashed Masses, I too, was once a Telemarketer. Telemarketers are paid an hourly pittance, and a bonus based against the number of sales made, deals closed, etc. Basically, like everywhere else, Time IS Money. I jump with sardonic glee, when my caller ID announces a new candidate for the evening's entertainment. I simply engage them in conversation; witty, dull, bright, freindly, affable,whatever, just talk like you've not spoken to another living human in years. If this doesn't put them off within a few minutes, I'll often switch tactics(and Voices)and ask what they're wearing. Then ask what kind of underwear they're wearing. If they're still on the phone, I ask if they'd Like To Know what I'm Wearing. No one in 10 years of this has ever reached the point of me needing to describe my attire. The greatest Cardinal sin in TelemarketerLand is to Hang up First. The offended Agent will mark your name in the database as a(potentially psychotic and perverted) Nutcase, and Do Not Call. Never Fails. Cheap Enetertainment, and it helps to thin the ranks of those who would call.
"the smaller the mind, the bigger the noise it makes"
I used to be a Telemarketer. And to be honest with you, this idea is kinda old. I've seen people record it on their answering machines and stuff before. I used to count who tried this just for kicks. The fact of the matter is at the site I worked for, we were forbidden to leave messages on machines/voicemail, so that's just as effective as anything else in that area. The 'privacy manager' works very well too. I believe it was illegal for us to do anything to falsify our identification with those, and no one really wants to talk to someone who identifies themselves as telemarketers. And if you really want to stop them, ask to be removed from not only THEIR calling list, but also the National one. Theres more than one telemarketing company you know... If they say they cant take you off the national one, ask to talk to a manager who can then direct you where to go to do this. Good luck.
Mo Lybdenum
How will you compensate me for my time?"
We'll get your input on products and services you use, and ideally, this will result in lower prices or better services/products for the consumer.
Innovation needs a direction. Market research supplies it.
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
You can also use PIPEDA to stop Canadian companies from telemarketing you. Under PIPEDA, you have the right to know where they got your personal information from, who they may have given it to, what they have on you, etc. You must also consent to how they intend to use your personal information, and you may revoke consent at any time.
Currently, this only applies to federal companies, but as of 2004 (I think -- verify on the Privacy Commissioner's site) this will apply provincially.
It's worked for me. Plus, the moment you say "Under my rights as defined by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, I first demand to know where you got my personal information from, and second, I do not give my consent to have this information used for telemarketing purposes. By the way, who is your privacy officer -- you do know that under the auspices of the act you are legally required to have one and to provide me with his or her contact information for privacy complaints?" the telemarketer on the phone has visions of lawsuits and takes you off the lists.
The law is a intimidating and powerful thing.
I can spell. I just can't type.