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.

Comments

I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[crispy]

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.

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[ruebarb]

I use Qwest's call screening service.

Works fine...except when I get calls from Qwest asking me to upgrade my service or notify me of special offers.

Unbelievable.

RB

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[well_jung]

I actually quite enjoy telling the marketers off. It's a great way to vent the frustrations of 13 hours in the server room. And it's a lot better than kicking the dog (well, for the dog, anyway)

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[ahrenritter]

Just FYI, you should always ask to be added to a telemarketer's "do not call list" rather than asking to be "taken off their list". The latter can be legally interpreted by some companies to be "the list we are calling off of today". But the "do not call list" is required to be kept for something like seven to ten years or somesuch.

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[Erasmus Darwin]

"I realized those telemarketers are often people struggling in dead-end jobs for lousy pay, and yelling at them makes their already dismal days that much worse."

Of course someone calling me to waste my time, requiring that I stop what I'm doing, walk across the apartment, and answer the phone, helps make my already dismal day that much worse, too.

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[nahdude812]

There is always a person on the other end of the phone. A person has feelings. Yes, some of them need a job NOW or they lose their house, and telemarketing can pay well enough to prevent that from happening, unlike a lot of other menial dead-end jobs, like burger flipping. Telemarketing has decent pay because no one wants to do it. Do you think the person calling you is sitting on the other end of the phone thinking "SWEET, I woke him up from a nap!" I'm guessing there are probably a few like that, but I think they'd be the far minority.

If you've never been out of a job, looking, and needing money yesterday to buy food and pay bills, you simply can't comprehend what that's like. If you're threatened with homelessness, you'll take jobs like this, and they suck. They suck bad. They suck bad because of people like that. Are you allowed to be upset that they're bothering you at home? Yes, of course you are. Are you allowed to vent at them? Yes, of course you are. But should you at least take a minute to think that the person on the other end of the phone may not be any more happy about having to bother you at home than you are to be bothered? Yes, you should.

Don't like being bothered by them while you're at home? Politely say "I'm not interested, please remove me from your list." It has exactly the same effect as emotionally breaking them down, because you know what? The person you're speaking to isn't the owner of the telemarketing company, the owners, and source of the problem are completely insulated from this because they're sitting in their offices with their blinds drawn, wondering if it would be more effective to get a large bald shirtless guy in there beating an onorous rhythm on a drum. Don't think to yourself "I wasn't really that terrible, just swore at him/her a few times," because if all you do all day is take a small amount of abuse repeatedly, it will break you down.

Don't assume that because you've never been in that situation, that others don't have to be. Don't think that because you have skills and talents to market that will be snatched up immediately, making you never in need of a job that other people have the same advantage. You hear the horror stories of IS related job hunts. People looking for *gasp* 6 to 10 months!! Guess what? That's still better than a lot of industries where that could well be considered a short job search! Try to find a terratology or zoology job, and you'll know what a long job search is. And in five years, when there's a honest glut of competent computer technicians, and you're spending 18 months looking for a job, do you seriously think that you'd rather starve to death living on the streets than telemarket? Placed in that situation, you'll be there filling out a job application just to stay alive. Don't know if you have kids, but I'll tell you that when I do, there isn't a job in the world I wouldn't take to make their and my wife's life as good as possible. When it's a choice between my whole family starving, or being the scuba diver who scrubs the bottom of septics with a toothbrush, I'll use my own if I have to.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't make it wrong.

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[nahdude812]

Not quite true. At least in Pennsylvania (don't know if it's state or Federal law), it's one year. You say "Don't ever call me again," they say "Ok sir, we'll remove you from our list" or "We've placed you on our list not to call," and they only have to stick by that for one year. That's one year per company, and that doesn't prevent them from reselling that information to other companies.

I have no idea what rights you have against them if they violate that, or who to call, but I actually had a credit card company call me, I said to never call again, they said "blah blah blah" (insert appropriate statement), and called me the very next day. Of course when I asked for a manager, I got a lot of "Sir, we're very sorry, but it takes 48 hours for that list to update" sort of crap, and I just raised a big stink and left it at that because it was my senior year in college, and I knew I wasn't going to be at that number in another year. As long as I successfully got myself off the list for that year, I was happy.

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[Glytch]

I used to do that too, but then I realized those telemarketers are often people struggling in dead-end jobs for lousy pay, and yelling at them makes their already dismal days that much worse.

I thank you for understanding, and may your deity of choice shield you from working in a call center for your kindness.

I used to work at a call center (just doing surveys, not selling stuff, thank god) and I just couldn't handle it. I quit after five shifts, even thought I needed the money to pay for upcoming fall classes. It's a horrible job.

Why does this industry even exist? Does anyone actually buy from telemarketers? Why do companies spend so much money?

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[Eil]

Ah, but you see, the problem here is that Qwest sells your number to the telemarketers in the first place. But using their "Telemarketer Blocking Service" all you do is pay them to take your number off the list they sell to the telemarketers.

What's the point?

[aliebrah]

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! :)

Re:What's the point?

[xinit]

I worked in a soliciting house back in high school. That kind of response generally got a number flagged as "no answer, call back." Seemed to be pretty standard procedure; best way to get back at someone who cursed at you and hung up was to call back.

Re:What's the point?

[British]

No, I've hung up on AT&T numerous times and they kept calling me on an almost daily basis until I told them to put me on the list.

Now only if Qwest would stop bugging me about custom choice(I must have a certain set of features turned on to provoke them to bug me abuot it) since I wouldn't use half of those features anyway.

Re:What's the point?

[S.Lemmon]

Here's my favorite telemarketer trick: when they first ask for someone say something like "hold on, I get them..." then just leave the phone off the hook. Check back 15 minutes later or so. If by some miracle they're still on the line, repeat.
Hey, let 'em call back if they like - see how much of their time you can waste!

Re:What's the point?

[rknop]

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! :)

You must not get many telemarketer's calls then. They are incessant. Many times an hour. I have caller ID, and never pick up the "Number Unknown" calls. But, already, that annoying ringing coupled with having to go over and look at the box is a hassle. No, not a big deal once or twice, but when it's all the time, it gets hard to have a conversation, or be able to think for any sustained period of time.

If the Telezapper really reduces the number of calls you get, that would be great. If it just disconnects that call, and doesn't delete you from databases, then it won't do much for me.

Already, most of the time, I just let the answering machien field the calls. I'm seriously considering turning off the ringer on my phone, and only having the answering machine answer calls. Of course, the problem with that is that as soon as somebody I actually want to do it uses the same telemarketer solution, it becomes nearly impossible for us to reach each other on the phone; we just get each other's answering machine....

To my mind, phone telemarketers are way worse the spammers. With spam, a quick delete gets rid of it, and it's faster than dealing with telemarketers. Plus, I get to choose when to read my E-mail, and so I can steel myself for it. I don't get to choose when my phone will ring.

-Rob

Re:What's the point?

[JesseL]

Qwest offers a (free) service to block calls that are caller-id blocked (as long as you already have caller-id). They will receive a message telling them how to temporarily unblock their caller-id blocking if they really want to talk to you.

Re:What's the point?

[gfxguy]

But some people calling from cellphones don't have a choice.

Also, the vast majority of the nuisance phone calls I received were from "out of area" simply because the telemarketers used cheap local phone companies.

Re:What's the point?

[posmon]

what about a revival of the chinese food scene from 'dude, where's my car?'.

AND THEN?

It's kinda simple

[StormRider01]

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.

How it works

[.@.]

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.

Re:How it works

[Cap'n Crax]

It's a "SIT" tone. "Special Information Tone" or something similar. If you put it as the first thing on your answering machine, the telemarker's auto-calling devices will log your number as "out-of-service" and won't call you anymore. You can get the SIT tone here.

Re:How it works

[dachshund]

See this page for a table of frequencies and durations of "SIT" tones.

Good luck.

Re:How it works

[madcow_ucsb]

Seriously, though. If the damn thing knows enough to tell you you need the fucking 1, WHY THE HELL DOESN'T IT JUST PRETEND IT'S THERE AND KEEP GOING????? It's like they go out of their way to make it annoying.

Re:How it works

[Ben Hutchings]

Some day, those numbers may well map to something else if you don't include the 1. They're warning you now so that you make the change before that happens. The same thing happened here in the UK with the changes to London numbers and the change to all UK numbers. In fact London suffered through 3 area code changes in the last 15 years - from 1 to 71/81 to 171/181 (national change) to 20 with 7/8 in front of the local numbers.

Re:How it works

[Overclocker]

Actually it doesn't use the normal 3 tone signal that people are used to getting for a disconnected number. It uses a single short tone that sounds pretty much just like an answering machine beep. So it may confuse people into trying to leave a message before your answering machine (if any) is ready, but they are not going to think they got an invalid number.

Re:How it works

[Zeinfeld]

I have spent the last four years of my life implementing the dialing systems that instead of bothering you with an operator during dinner, hung up on you because our only goal was to leave spam on your answering machine!

You utter bastard.

I think I'll set my PROCMAIL filters to send all the SPAM to jawatts@pacbell.net.

Re:How it works

[egburr]

When you add the 1 it becomes a toll call. How would you like to open your bill and find a whole bunch of toll calls you thought were local calls because you didn't dial the 1 and it still went through?

Re:How it works

[madcow_ucsb]

Not Toronto, but a couple places like that. As I recall they were trying to do that in the Bay Area a while back but I seem to remember they backed off after a lot of pissed off people complained.

I'm a lazy American. Why should I have to push 4 more buttons because of poorly designed systems? If I only push 7, it should assume that the first 4 are like the first 4 of the number I'm calling from, like it's done for years. If I want it to use a different area code, I'll explicitly tell it, like I've always done before. It seems quite simple to me...

Re:How it works

[unitron]

If it doesn't lie between 300 and 3000 Hz, it doesn't get from one telephone to the other because of the phone company's filters, whether it's someone's voice, tones generated by a machine, or the output of a modem.

Re:How it works

[Chelloveck]

When you add the 1 it becomes a toll call.

That hasn't been the case for a long time now. The division of area codes and the addition of overlay codes (with mandatory 11-digit dialing) have long since done away with the "1-means-toll" guideline.

I've lived here in Illinois for about 12 years now. In that time, local billing has always been based roughly on the number of central offices your call is routed through. Your 'A' band is everyone else in your CO. Your 'B' band is one or two hops, etc. Everything outside of the 'A' band is billed per minute. (NOT a pleasant discovery for BBSers like me who moved from an area where "1-means-toll"! *sigh* And getting the phone company to cough up a list of which numbers are in which band was no mean feat, either.)

What always griped my wagger were the areas where you could not use the full 11-digit number. Local numbers must be dialed with the 7-digit number. What bozo thought that up? It really annoyed me when I was trying to put together the phonebook for my term program.

Better Idea

[InfinityWpi]

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.

Re:Better Idea

[CmdrPinkTaco]

I am a 24 year old male (don't worry, there is a reason that Im telling this). At the time that this occured, I still lived with my parents. One morning after a long night of heavy binge drinking I was awakend at the gawd awful hour of 11:00 to my phone ringing. Since I was the only one home at the time, I picked up. On the other end of the line was a telemarketer who was far too perky for my likings that was inquiring about the availiblilty of my sister.

"Yes, this is so-and-so from such-and-such a company, may I speak with Jessica?"

To which I replied in my gravely, gruff, I-smoke-2-packs-a-day-and-you-just-woke-me-up voice, "Yeah, this is her."

The part that really cracked me up was when the perky telemarketer went on to give me the sales pitch.

I just hung up. I have found that to be a very effective method in ridding myself of telespammers.

Re:Better Idea

[marcop]

I did this too. Some drone called once asking to speak to my wife, Rebekah. In my very masculine voice (not drunk though) I said, "this is her". The drone pauses for a second and says "O. K., Rebekah I am calling from blah blah blah..."

I simply interupted him after a few seconds and told him to take me off his call list.

Caller ID

[Skynet]

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.

Re:Caller ID

[SteveMonett]

There is even a way to answer an "Out of Area" and still avoid the telemarketers. Pick up the phone but instead of just saying "hello" pretend to be an answering machine. The autodialer computer listens for sounds that are short, like "hello", or long like a typical invitation to leave a message and only connects you to a human if the burst is short. When my kids use calling cards they show up "unavailable" so when I see such a call after 8pm I use my little speach that ends in "how may I help you." Most real people catch on quickly enough to stay on.

Shrill tones

[Green Aardvark House]

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.

Re:Shrill tones

[The God Soldier]

No, they're copyrighted by those guys from Australia...

Re:Shrill tones

[BradleyUffner]

Even better, record a few seconds of the handshake sound of 2 modems and use that at the beginning of every call. That should annoy them enough that they don't bother calling back.

Re:Shrill tones

[CyberKnet]

Automated dialers (specifically, I have experience with the Melita Predictive Dialer) detect what is an answering machine and what is not automagically. I dont know how, but they do, and they are often ran as campaigns, ie a person records one message, and it is broadcast out onto 1000's of numbers answering machines if that is what picks up, directing them to call a specific person/extension at that company... common practice is for that work to be spread out over the whole inbound call center. The reason being that inbound calls are statistically worth a bunch more than outbound calls, since the person that calls in USUALLY wants to speak to you more than the person who just had their dinner interrupted. On a side issue, no, I dont work for a tele-marketing company. I work for a call center that calls out to all its registered customers.

Why waste it?!

[clinko]

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.

Re:Why waste it?!

[Telecommando]

A friend of mine loves to mess with them as well. For years he'd listen to their pitch, then start breathing heavily, "Hehhh, Henh" and ask "What kind of underwear are you wearing? Is it soiled? Can you send me a pair?" They'd usually hang up right away. Once one of them called the police and reported him for making an obscene call. He explained to the cops that the telemarketer had called HIM and told them what he had done. I guess the cops were still laughing as they drove away.

Now his favorite routine is to try to "convert" them.

"Have you taken our Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior? Have you welcomed him into your heart? For LO! He is coming. Coming to cast all vile sinners into the firey pits of..." And that's about as far as he's ever gotten before they hang up. Pity, he's got about a 10 minute routine worked up. Funniest thing about it is when he receives one of these calls on his cell phone in a restaraunt. You should see all the other diners shut up and listen in, then nervously go back to their conversations.

Re:Why waste it?!

[Jace of Fuse!]

I have some fun myself...
The following phone conversation really happened, but I'm having to recreate it pretty much from memory so the wording is probably not exact...

THEM: Hello, I'd like to tell you about our Vinyl Siding... (rest of sales pitch here)

ME: I don't need Vinyl Siding. I live in a doghouse.

THEM: Oh really?

ME: Are you calling me a liar?

THEM: Uh, no it's just...

ME: It's just what? How many people do you know who put vynil siding on their dog houses?

THEM: (click)

My solution to telemarketers

[atrowe]

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.

Re:My solution to telemarketers

[British]

What about if your home landline # rolls over to your cell phone? That's why I keep my cell phone off during office hours.

Re:My solution to telemarketers

[FattMattP]

In my locality (Virginia, US), it is illegal for a solicitor to call a cell phone.

Better yet, if they call your home phone, ask them "Are you aware that you're calling a cell phone? It's illegal for a solicitor to call a cell phone in this state."

Do it even if they call your land line.

Re:My solution to telemarketers

[jerw134]

I'm not sure if this is a nationwide law, or just a local one, but it's certainly worth looking into.

It is a nationwide law, and THANK GOD FOR THAT!

Re:My solution to telemarketers

[atrowe]

A good Idea, but I'm not sure if it'll work. It is possible for telemarketers to tell, just by looking at a number, if they are calling a land line or a cell phone.

Certain information is able to be discerned based on one's telephone exchange (the first three numbers, e.g. xxx-1234). Each locality is issued an exchange, and cell phone companies are issued different exchanges. For example, if your number is 123-4567, most of your neighbors would also have the 123 exchange, but if your number is 987-6543, other cell users who obtained their phone through the same vendor as you would have the 987 exchange.

Re:My solution to telemarketers

[SonCorn]

I am not sure about other states, but here in Missouri there is now a No Call Law. Basically you go to http://www.ago.state.mo.us/nocalllaw.htm and enter your name and info and phone number. Once you do that (there is a small delay) it is illegal for a telemarketer to call you. As of September 26, 2001 the state has collected from telemarketers $102,500 in fines.

Seems to me like more states need these laws, write your state legislator. I know I am on the list, and my parents and we never get any telemarketer calls.

Re:My solution to telemarketers

[grytpype]

I got rid of my landline phone a year ago, and I don't miss it. The quality of cellular is not as good as landline, but you can't beat the use-practically-everywhere convenience. In NYC, a cheap cell plan costs about the same as landline (maybe a little more).

Re:My solution to telemarketers

[theNAM666]

I haven't gotten a call from a telemarketer for years.
I don't have a home phone.
I give the number to my cell phone

Doesn't work here in the Bay Area, and we have the same law. I get incoming marketing on my cell all the time. The real annoyance is repeat-dial fax SPAM, coming in at 3am, when I've left the phone on because I'm call... now there's a use for the disconnect tone!!! though I'd really like something that mucked up their fax system.

This will work great! (for about a week)

[nyquist_theorem]

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.

Even easier

[Tim Macinta]

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.

Phone answering machine

[Alioth]

You can do this quite easily with a phone answering machine - just record the three-tone "invalid number" message at the start of your greeting.

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 :-]

A polite but firm...

[ktakki]

"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.

Re:A polite but firm...

[Fjord]

It depends on the state

Just hang up...

[sterno]

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)

Re:Just hang up...

[Lord Ender]

I worked for a market research firm. If we called somewhere and it hung up right away, we would hit the "no answer" button on the computer and the number would come up again in about two hours...

So you're wrong, just letting you know.

I'll save you all money!

[FortKnox]

Simple solution. No gadget needed, no CallerID, no privacy checker. Once you get a telemarketer call, say "Take me off your list"

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 :-P

Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[MadCow42]

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.

Related question

[John Harrison]

One or two times a day I receive calls with nobody on the other end. I usually say "Hello..... Hello??? Anybody there?" for a while and then hang up.

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."

Re:Related question

[Rackemup]

One or two times a day I receive calls with nobody on the other end. I usually say "Hello..... Hello??? Anybody there?" for a while and then hang up.
I have been told that this is a telemarketing system seeing if my number is "good". Is there any truth to this?

Most likely... they program their computers to try a number several times. If someone answers it gets flagged as "active" and you go into the caller databse.

The same thing happened to my parents last month. Every day for a week they get ghost calls (no one on the other end), then a week later someone calls to ofer them a credit card, carpet cleaning, etc.

Re:Related question

[Dredd13]

Telephone marketers use what are called "predictive dialers", which (if you examine the problem from their end) is a nifty solution to the problem of "maximising the time a telemarketer is on the phone".

Telemarketers don't dial the phone at all. They are repeatedly presented with calls that a computerized system has made. The system is tracking calls and knows "how long an average call takes", "how long it takes on average for a called-party to answer", etc.

So telemarketer is talking on the phone to you for 30 seconds. The system knows that "60 seconds is an average call" and it takes 15 seconds for a called-party to answer. So, when you reach 45 seconds, it dials the next number, figuring that "on average" you [or one of your cow-orkers] will be ready for the call when they answer the phone.

What you're seeing is that the calls in the call center are taking longer than average (which is actually sorta unusual because the more calls they make, the better the sample-rate is, and from the experience I had deploying two of these systems, they're REALLY good at it). So, because there's no telemarketer "Ready for your call", you're getting silence... the dialer is "hoping and praying" (so to speak) that one of the marketers gets off the phone quickly so it can hand you over to them.

Re:Related question

[Dredd13]

hey, it was a long time ago, and the company was 3 months from going out of business anyway. Someone was going to get their consulting bloodmoney, and my landlord at the time really preferred it would be me. ;-)

D

Re:Related question

[msheppard]

Ghost Calls: I get these as well. I am not able to *69 them either.

Guess I should pay more attention and maybe see if there is a pattern. Maybe the next day at the same time I think... anyone know anyone who works for one of these companies that wants to clue us all in about how they really work? Might be interesting if not usefull.

Re:Related question

[n8willis]

Sometimes a "ghost call" is actually a telemarketing call. There's a company I've seen advertised (sorry, don't remember the name) who calls the client's list via computer, and then records a message on the answering machine if one picks up. If a person answers, it hangs up.

This is the source of a lot of credit card calls that act like some guy leaving you a message:

"Hi. This is Bill Johnson with Reliable Capital. Sorry I missed you. I just wanted to tell you that I've sent you the information packet I mentioned before. Give me a call back at 1-800..."

...but it always sounds like a recording anyway, so I don't know who's fooled.

Nate

Re:Related question

[TheEviscerator]

Even more annoying than the predictive dialers are the latest dialers - they deliberately dial 4 or so numbers at once, then disconnect everybody they're calling, with the exception of the person that was first to the phone.

In the event that you pick up the phone after 3 or so rings, and hear nothing on the other end, you'll typically have your number placed right back into the queue. Expect another phone call within 5 minutes or so.

I consulted for a company that used these in their AR department (read: collections), and they apparently saved the company an incredible amount of money.

...at your time/expense, of course.

Re:Related question

[AntiPasto]

We get this too! That has been our major reason for getting the tele-zapper. Its in front of me as I type here... Anyway... short tone... I dunno... we still get the ghost calls, but less frequently.

Don't have that problem

[jmv]

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.

Re:Don't have that problem

[Rackemup]

Are you sure? I've heard of a local company (in Halifax) doing auto-dialing marketing. Some poor guy in the newsgroup would get several calls a day from the auto-dialer... he just kept getting madder and madder but had no one to swear at since it was computer-dialed. =)

Re:Don't have that problem

[jmv]

...Or maybe it's just the province of Quebec. We used to get calls from auto-dialers and it stopped about 5-10 years ago when they passed the law. I haven't received any such calls since then.

Re:Don't have that problem

[garett_spencley]

Interesting. I live in Canada and I get those automated calls all the time.

Do have any resources related to that law that you wouldn't mind sharing?

--
Garett

Re:Don't have that problem

[jmv]

Sorry, as I said in the other thread, it was probably Quebec only. I haven't had an auto-dialer call for quite a long time.

Re:Don't have that problem

[jmv]

In Quebec, a surprising proportion of the population insist they can't speak English.

Yes, I do that often. It's very convenient, a bit like saying you can't read when called by the newspaper telemarketers.

...and by the way, a lot (probably 30%-50%) of people in Quebec can't speak Englih.

Re:Don't have that problem

[eap]

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.

Yes, it is also illegal in the U.S., but that doesn't stop it from happening. Visit the FCC's web site and read about the Telephone Consumer Privacy Act (TCPA). It forbids automated calls to your home, among other atrocities.

I still get these calls, but I managed to call the number that the recording gave and got the company's address. I used this information to report the violation to the FCC and I recently got a snailmail stating the matter is under investigation. The FCC has fined companies for violating the TCPA. Next time it happens to you, file a complaint and you may get the satisfaction of costing a telemarketer a lot of money.

Other "Opt-Out" Strategies

[soup]

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...

It's hasn't been much of a problem lately...

[dpbsmith]

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.

Re:It's hasn't been much of a problem lately...

[Russ Steffen]

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've found that this is the single most effective way to cut down on telemarketeing calls (aside from hunting telemarketers for sport, of course). I started doing this about a year and a half ago. At the time I was getting 2 to 3 calls per night (and about a dozen during the day judging by the caller-id box). Now I get one call maybe every six weeks or so. That I can handle.

When I do get a call, I just interrupt them as soon as it's clear that they are a telemarketer. I always use the phrase "place me on your do-not-call list". If you just say "take me off your list", they will - but as soon as they buy some more numbers that happen to include yours your're back on the list. The "Do Not Call List" is different, as once you are on it, you should never get an unsolicited call from that organization again (and all telemarketers are required by law to have such a list).

junkbusters.com has lots of good info on the subject.

Re:It's hasn't been much of a problem lately...

[LordNimon]

But some real messages from baffled people end up there, too, so I still do need to listen to it

Why would you want to talk to anyone that dumb? In fact, I would simply add a third option, "Press 1 if your I.Q. is less than 80."

Re:It's hasn't been much of a problem lately...

[coyote-san]

They may be required to identify themselves (both company and individual) upon demand, pursuit to the "DNC order" since you must be able to document who you told not to call you again (d'uh), but about half the time I demand this information they "accidently" disconnect me before providing this information..

By some amazing coincidence this almost always happens with blocked caller ID information. I could probably call Qworst and ask them to trace it, but I know that it's a dead end.

I only happened once, years ago, with valid caller ID information. For a long distance carrier. I couldn't reach the same department, but I reached another department and had a chat with the supervisor about the consequences of hanging up on people exercising their legal rights to stop solicitations - something that was especially pointless in this case since they were trying to sell me business services for "distinctive ringing" on my home phone number, not a separate business line! She couldn't give me the name and numbers I requested, but did promise to forward my demand (not request, demand) that a senior manager contact me on the following Monday about their violation of federal law. They never called me back, of course, but they never called me back *at all* so I let it slide.

The other scam some have tried is to claim that it could take "up to 90 days" for the DNC order to be processed. I tell them I didn't care, if they call me again they can tell it to the judge. They try to insist that the federal law permits this, I repeat that I don't care - if they call me again they'll be explaining it to the judge.

I'm sure that the law *does* allow a "reasonable" time for the DNC order to be processed, but that should be a few weeks at most with a manual system that depends on paper forms physically mailed to a central site, then physically mailed to each site in an update list. With a computerized system, the DNC order should go live either immediately or some time during the middle of the night.

This give me an idea...

[jgerman]

... 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.

Re:This give me an idea...

[jgerman]

I should no better to reply to flambait but here goes anyway. She calls my cell phone when she needs me, I didn't think that was that difficult to understand. Not to mention that it's trivial to distinguish between a payphone and a Unknown caller.

I'm sure this violates some federal law

[Zen Mastuh]

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.

This used to be illegal

[swm]

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

But that's no fun....

[Lizard_King]

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?"

Seems a little expensive doesn't it?

[Rackemup]

The Telezapper is basically a tone generator, it just sends out a special tone when you pick up the line. In theory it's a good idea but I see 2 things wrong with it:

#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.

What a waste of money

[ergo98]

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.

Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[cobol4me]

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.

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[merlyn]

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.

But is there a demand that you answer it when called?

I've got a home phone line that I use for my home alarm system. It's also the number I give out to the average Joe who wants "my home phone number", but never anyone I'm interested in talking to (for them, I give them my always-on-my-belt cell phone). I have one ringer on in the very far end of the house. I hear it ring occasionally (when the DVD player isn't on), but I don't answer it. I couldn't care less. It's like having a lightning rod for useless calls. {grin}

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[Jeffrey Baker]

You are perfectly free to not attach a phone to that line.

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[GigsVT]

You mean exchanges, the YYY in (XXX) YYY-ZZZZ

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[drodver]

Actually if you don't tell them then it's no big deal , I lived with just a cell phone while I waited for my regular phone to get hooked up by a much cheaper carrier. When I moved in I didn't even have a cell phone and none of the utilities cared one bit. When I got my cell and updated the companys with the number not one gave me any grief.

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[krugdm]

Come to think of it, it's too bad the phone company doesn't have the equivilent of a /dev/null phone number in each calling area. Well, there is, kind of... When filling in forms and such that *require* a phone number, just use 555 as the exchange. No matter what the last four numbers are, all the caller will get is Directory Services.

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[Lish]

That's wierd. I can understand wanting a local number, because they shouldn't have to call long distance to reach you. Yes, they can tell if it's a local number, and if they want, they can figure out if it's a cell number or not. But there's no reason to care as long as it's a local call. I mean, would they rather have you give them a cellular number, or a friend's landline number?

Did they have a legit reason for wanting a landline number, or was it "just because"? For that matter, why would you not have a cell number that was local?

Interesting. Maybe it's your area; anywhere I've lived, everyone wants a contact number where you can be reached, but nobody cares (or asks) what kind of number it is. My old roommate gave out her cell number for everything, which was not a local call, but since she was never home anyway it made more sense to call her phone. Heck, some people here (broke-college-student town), don't have a phone at all; as long as you can give a number where they will be able to get a hold of you, that's good enough.

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[theNAM666]

most potential employers, landlords and utility companies DEMAND a local, home number be on file.

Hmm. Haven't had a local phone # for several years. I always provide one of my cell #s or a business line. I don't know how they'd know the difference, as only telemarketers are likely to do a search, and have never had the problem above.

In most jurisdictions, neither landlords or utilities are going to have a right to demand a 'local' phone number. They provide 'public utilities,' and are going to have to provide those Utilities to all comers, regardless of what kind of phone numbers their customers may be able to provide.

I also know several security/privacy phreaks who would not provide a phone # as a matter of policy, don't know that they've had a problem getting service. Personally, I just give out 555-1212 to anyone I have a problem with :)

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[egburr]

I've had a few places demand home and work numbers, and eventually ended up arguing with the manager about it. I work from home, and only have one phone, and haven't yet decided to just start making up numbers to make these stores happy. I'll never understand why these places always want so much contact info on us; the only thing they do by calling me is convince me to avoid them in the future.

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[ragnar]

I also don't have a local phone number, but the person who brought this up does have a point. At least in Washington DC where I live it is a big pain. Utility service isn't that hard, but getting a parking permit is absolute hell. The person you deal with is entrenched in beauracracy and probably won't budge on the requirement. Eventually you can find a sensible person, but it is a big pain. Hopefully this will change in time.

For what it is worth, back when I had a phone line I found the phrase "put me on your do not call list" to be fairly effective. Conversations about how the person should get a real job or stop harrassing me weren't helpful in stopping the calls.

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[Skapare]

You obviously have a personal problem trying to convince people what your phone number is. Ever heard of "portable" numbers? In many areas you can take your phone number with you when you move. Eventually, this will cross area codes (it may even be now). Just give your cell phone number. If they don't believe it, it is they who have the problem. Explain it to them.

Re:Adam, this wont work and here's why:

[Skapare]

Since you are the ONLY person who has this problem, maybe you should explain just who THEY really are. Are you dealing with uneducated HR people? Give us exact names. We'll send Vito over to take care of them.

In a related story...

[Uttles]

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!

no call list

[bpowell423]

In Tennessee, at least, there is a state-run no call list. You can sign up over the web or the phone. It's ILLEGAL for any business to call you unless you have recently done business with them. In other words, Sprint could legally call me, since I use their long distance, but AT&T can't.

The only thing I miss is getting to pick on the poor telemarketers. Oh well.

Legislation - There's some Hope

[Kozz]

A bill has passed (warning: PDF file) on Aug 30, 2001 by Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCallum that allows Wisconsin customers to register in an "opt-out" list from which telemarketers must filter their call lists. It's going to be implemented some time in 2002. I can't wait.

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.

You should ask them not to call

[victim]

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.

You people are getting it all wrong... try

[Lostman]

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?

Re:You people are getting it all wrong... try

[MrResistor]

well, it worked for the software industry, right?

Sort of...

Actually, that's what led to the invention of Unix. It replaced MIT's Multics, which had some sort of pay-per-use license.

That's the way I remember it anyway...

The only thing to do...

[NaturePhreak]

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

Re:The only thing to do...

[rknop]

I work for a company that (among other things) sells predictive dialer systems to telemarketing services.

No offense, but...

...can you sleep at night?

-Rob

Re:The only thing to do...

[(H)elix1]

and ask to be added for 10 years -- don't forget to add the max time limit!

disappointed

[Dr. Awktagon]

TeleZapper

Aww, shucks, I saw this and I thought it would be some clever system that involved high voltage.

Re:disappointed

[ameoba]

I think what you're looking for is something more along the lines of the infamous Blotto Box.

...and why it DOESN'T work....

[iceT]

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.

Re:...and why it DOESN'T work....

[srw]

Unless the telezapper presents such a low DC load (high resistance) that the answering machine doesn't detect it. You can still insert AC (sound) onto the phone line without loading the DC.

I'm assuming that the DC load is how your answering machine detects an extension going off-hook.. If not, ignore me.

Re:...and why it DOESN'T work....

[iceT]

Then nothing would pick up for the Telezapper when no one is home. (From the FAQ, this is the recommended way of using the Telezapper: let the answering machine pick up the phone).

Re:...and why it DOESN'T work....

[LinuxHam]

Boy, +1 if I had it... EXCELLENT point. I never thought about that.. back to recording my outgoing message on my laptop and prepending the sit tone before playing it into the machine.

And I want to stress this to others. The telezapper does not play all three tones, just the first one, so it shouldn't confuse your human callers.

Looks to be a national law...

[corky6921]

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.)

Re:Looks to be a national law...

[Skapare]

Claiming it is NOT a cell phone, when in fact it is, gets them off the hook, I suppose. But if they have a normal way to tell if a number is a cell number (shouldn't be that hard) then they should not call it for telemarketing. Anyone who "demands" a land line number instead of a cell phone number must be planning to sell the list to telemarketers. Tell them what you think about that idea.

Re:Looks to be a national law...

[Skapare]

I doubt it. Since they would be calling a number that is a landline number, they would be "off the hook".

OH CRAP

[Drunken_Jackass]

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!

Re:Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[Thagg]

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

The Telltale Pause

[ddkilzer]

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".

• DMA: How to get off a mailing list
• DMA: How to get off a telephone list

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.

Re:Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[e4]

Why not take it one step further and make a career of it, like this guy did?

Why this wouldn't work

[rumpledstiltskin]

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

Re:seems simple enough

[kilgore_47]

They could hire a telemarketing service to sell these things!

"You could have avoided this call if you ..."

Telemarketers

[mindstrm]

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.

Try to get the telemarketers to quit

[wayne]

When I have time, and I get a telemarketer, I try to get them to quit their job.

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.

Re:This will work great! (for about a week)

[GigsVT]

*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.

If you live in Connecticut...

[deacent]

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

Fun telemarketers story

[Nagash]

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

the racket

[operagost]

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.

Not sure if I understand what you mean.. but...

[mindstrm]

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.

Re:Not sure if I understand what you mean.. but...

[IronChef]

If I didn't have a ReplayTV I would not have a land line at all. And as soon as I have the time to monkey around with an in-home PPP server for it, I may rectify that situation.

Before the Replay, I was cell-only for about a year and it was GREAT. It felt really weird ditching that land line at first, but it worked out famously.

Re:Not sure if I understand what you mean.. but...

[mindstrm]

Ohh. Okay. Gotcha. It just wasn't clear in your first post...

That's wierd.

Re:simple solutions also work

[mdpowell]

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.

Some details on this sort of thing are at http://www.scn.org/~bk269/bug.html

--mdp

The short answer is yes.

[mark-t]

Could it be as simple as playing back the three shrill tones I hear when I dial a wrong number?"

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:

• NC - No Circuit Found: 985.2 Hz, 380.0 ms; 1428.5 Hz, 380.0 ms; 1776.7 Hz, 380.0 ms
• IC - Operator Intercept: 913.8 Hz, 274.0 ms; 1370.6 Hz, 274.0 ms; 1776.7 Hz, 380.0 ms
• VC - Vacant Circuit: 985.2 Hz, 380.0 ms; 1370.6 Hz, 274.0 ms; 1776.7 Hz, 380.0 ms
• RO - Reorder (system busy): 913.8 Hz, 274.0 ms;1428.5 Hz, 380.0 ms; 1776.7 Hz, 380.0 ms

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.

Oddly enough

[jayed_99]

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.

Re:Oddly enough

[therick]

Yeah, as a college student, we always seem to get calls in our dorm rooms trying to get us to sign up for a 2.9% APR introductory rate credit card (that QUICKLY escalated to 29.9% or so). One particular evening, someone from one of those annoying companies called asking for my roommate. I frankly told them: "Oh, sorry, he's dead." They appeared to have flunked first grade english because the actual response I recieved was: "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that... I'll try again some other day." Wow. And someone actually HIRED that person and PAID them money to work. Makes the minimum wage for them seem a little over-achieving, doesn't it?

Missouri's telemarketer problem is solved!

[Mustang Matt]

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.

wisconsin

[psychalgia]

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.

Phone telemarking E-mail

[azizlumiere]

At least with the telephone I never get telemarketing calls offering me to
ENLARGE YOUR PENIS 3 INCH++

the New turing test

[geekoid]

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.

"Get bent" does not work

[iconnor]

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 :)

Anti-Telemarketing Software

[PingXao]

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.

Re: Sexual Harassment

[No Such Agency]

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.

Connecticut residents have a cheaper solutions

[southern]

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.

A lady I know bought this thing

[thejake316]

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.

Re:A lady I know bought this thing

[eap]

This sounds like exactly what I've been looking for. Do you have more information on what it is and where to get it?

FYI: Canadian regulations

[spanielrage]

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

Voice card fun

[AndroidCat]

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.

Another Solution

[Calle Ballz]

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!

And the problem is

[CaptainZapp]

that those computerized calling systems will be upgraded next week to ho!ho!ho! on any such three tone thingie.

It's usually quite effective to advise such folks to fuck off. But then I don't get that much of their attention.

UK has similar...

[larien]

It's called TSC, and I registered on it. However, it's not overly effective, as marketers can still call for "market research".

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").

I don't think it's nationwide...

[Preposterous Coward]

...but if it is, wow, that would be cool to know. Because the most persistent telemarketer that I get calls from is Qwest, which happens to be my phone company. And they always manage to get me on my cell phone (they are the service provider), to ask me stupid questions like "Would you like to upgrade your plan to 1200 minutes a month?" (when a cursory look at my billing record would show that I rarely use more than about 60). Idiots.

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.

Re:I don't think it's nationwide...

[Tassach]

There are times when I can be in my apartment and my cell phone will beep because it's suddenly decided it's "roaming"

This is just a failure to RTFM. It's easy to disable "local roaming", just read your phone's owners manual.

It helps to understand how cellular works. In any given cellular service area, there is an "A" provider and a "B" provider. Let's say you have service through provider "B". The "B" network is now your "Home Type". By default, your phone will try to find a cell on the home type network. If it can't, it will look for one on the non-hometype network ("A", in this example). Since you don't have an account with "A", it's handled as a roaming call.

On my phone, (A nokia 2150i), the magic sequence is: menu-4-4-2-2-"home only". RTFM to find the appropriate setting for your handset.

My Script for dealing with telemarketers

[Zeinfeld]

I have used variations of this script on a number of occasions. The reason it works is that the telemarketers are told not to hang up.

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.

Re:SIT manually?

[Chmarr]

can it be created by hitting a series of 3 buttons on the phone?

No, the tones are pure tones, not the dual-tones your DTMF keypad emits.

Some DTMF diallers are cheaply made, and you can force it to emit single tones by pressing two keys in the same row or column simultaneously, but I doubt you're going to be able to find the right frequencies, or get the right timing manually.

However, some voice modems (specifically, those with the Rockwell chipset) can be programmed to emit pure tones of any frequency.

Anyone know what the required frequencies are?

CallerID firewall?

[SCHecklerX]

I know there are (EXPENSIVE!!) commercial ones, but are there any open-source ones out there? If not, I guess I'll write one when I finally get around to buying a voice modem (for this exact purpose). Features Mine will have (eventually):

• Display on TV using video overlay on incoming calls
• Display on any computer in the house that has a daemon listening for info (have it pop on your main box, or maybe add to a web-logger, whatever) The cool way to use this would have the callerid firewall just send a broadcast message on your LAN.
• based on callerid string:
  • Drop
  • Drop with Default Message
  • Drop with Specific Message
  • Take message, answer with default message
  • Take message, answer with specific message
• Each filter rule will perform one of the actions in the above list, and will also be configured for number of rings to take action on, and whether to log the event or not.

This should be a really simple project, and yet I don't see anything like it anywhere.

Re:CallerID firewall?

[phillymjs]

I've got something like that on my Mac-based home-automation server, connected to a modem that has Caller ID, and using XTension and MacCallerID, all glued together with healthy doses of Applescript.

MacCallerID offers you the option of dumping incoming calls with blocked/missing/incomplete Caller ID info, but I can't use that since some of my friends block theirs, and some of my relatives' calls only generate "OUT OF AREA."

What my system does do, however, is send notifications of incoming calls to whatever computers (well, the Macs, anyway) it detects on my network when the call comes in. It also speaks the name of the caller via several small wireless speakers placed throughout my house. I could do the TV text-overlay thing, but it's kinda expensive and I'm usually working on a computer while watching TV anyway. If I don't know the incoming number or there isn't one, I just don't pick up the phone.

~Philly

How some telemaketing systems work...

[Lizard_nut]

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

Obvious drawback

[update()]

It's a "SIT" tone. "Special Information Tone" or something similar. If you put it as the first thing on your answering machine, the telemarker's auto-calling devices will log your number as "out-of-service" and won't call you anymore.

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.

The actual tones in question...

[Rain]

First, here's a cut-and-paste of the actual tones everyone's talking about (in case you want to synthesize them or some such thing):

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.

Re:Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[sjames]

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.

Telephony cards and Operator Intercept (tri-tone)

[davie]

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.

Re: Sexual Harassment

[John Miles]

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.

My favorite tactic.

[trilucid]

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. :).

Re:Voicemail recording? Not likely

[LinuxHam]

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.

Credit Bureaux

[Zeinfeld]

Each time I have moved into a new house we have had serious trouble with some credit beureux calling up for the previous user of the line. I used to think that this was simply because we had by chance been assigned numbers that had been used by deadbeats.

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.

Re:Credit Bureaux

[SuiteSisterMary]

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.

Scott Adams described this as 'buying time.' It's the same concept as parking tickets; it costs less in terms of time and effort than it does in terms of cash to just pay up. Otherwise you have to go through hell to get your credit record cleared, show up for court, whatever.

Re:Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[mpe]

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.

Mod this parent up...

[Mustang Matt]

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?

No-Call Registry

[questionlp]

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.

Re:No-Call Registry

[questionlp]

Forgot to include the link to the "No Call" website for Oregon. The site is www.ornocall.com

How I deal

[TheFlu]

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...

Re:Me No Speak English

[mpe]

My standard reply to telemarketers starts with "Yobosayo" followed by a litany of Korean phrases interjected with broken english..

Arabic might not be the best language to use though. Some "spook" might mistake you for a terrorist.

Re: Sexual Harassment

[sjames]

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.

It's a potential red flag...

[Skip666Kent]

...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.

Re:Waste Their Time

[SuiteSisterMary]

Take a few hours out of your life to record a tape/mp3/cd/medium of choice of yourself going 'yeah....uh huh.....yeah....oh yeah? Cool.....ok.......could you explain that a bit more? Ok....sure......yup.....pardon me? Oh, ok.....would I need anything else for that? Oh....ahhhh......ok, sure.....' You know; good listening noises.

Re:Do It Yourself.

[SuiteSisterMary]

Bell Canada has a neat feature called 'call privacy.' What happens is that anybody with 'unknown name/unknown number' or private, or blocked, gets a prompt. "This number does not accept unknown calls. Speak your name at the beep." If they same something for the beep, your phone rings, and the computer says 'you have a call, from, *blah*. Press 1 to accept, press 2 to decline, press 3 to direct them to voice mail.'

My success story..

[LinuxHam]

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.

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 /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:

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. /click/"

Re:Move To Hawaii

[sik puppy]

actually i think you'll find its one zone over. Nebraska is infested with telemarketing scum, to the point that they even have a state senator in their pocket, who has publicly stated that they will fillibuster any attempt to blanket outlaw telemarketing.

Re:simple solutions also work, but can be costly

[Zero__Kelvin]

"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.

Privacy Manger is extortion

[PD]

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.

Re:Privacy Manger is extortion

[dattaway]

Or do what I did. I programmed my ISDN box to only allow calls that had 0 - 9 as the first digit. In other words, if no number ID was sent with the call, it would not ring and they'd get the busy signal. No telemarketers.

But, ISDN wasn't worth it. Cell phone and cablemodem is cheaper. Never had a telemarketer on my cellphone yet. If I do, I'm gonna track down the motherfucking satanist scum bastard who tried to solicit crap and kick his balls so hard he (or she) will never be able to call another day sleeper again. Justice will be served. Amen.

Plain Old Telephone Service is the infomercial channel. No thanks. The telephone company won't get my business again.

Re:Privacy Manger is extortion

[j_snare]

IANAL, but if I remember right, there's a federal regulation about solicitation calls on your cell phone. The telemarketing companies have to be "reasonably sure" that the number that they're calling is not a cell phone. If they don't take steps to ensure that they don't tie up cell lines, they can face some pretty heavy federal penalties.

Re:simple solutions also work

[WickedClean]

I don't know man...that sounds kinda weird. Still, nothing beats the satisfaction of screaming profane nonsense into the phone and then hanging up. I once yelled "I GOT BALLS IN MY FINGER SANDWHICH" and then hung up.

Arizona no-call policy

[ecloud]

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

Unhelpful telco messages (was Re:How it works)

[Guy Harris]

Or, at least, tell you something more useful than "We're sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed". What, am I supposed to stand on one foot and dial with my nose? Will the call go through if I dial it that way?

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....

Don't beat 'em, (ab)use 'em!

[TACD]

To me, telemarketer = stress relief. Had a bad day? Telemarketer rings up? It's crazy time! Unwind your brain! Just take off all the everyday filters and let the mashed up gook inside pour out!

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!

Omaha Steaks

[dfenstrate]

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

Re:Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[McSpew]

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.

I was a telemarketer

[dfenstrate]

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.

Neat little gadget

[Nihilanth]

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.

Market Research and You. (From an industry worker)

[Bahumat]

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!

Simple solution

[evilviper]

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).

Re:simple solutions also work

[KurdtX]

I did the same thing, except my message was "Hey, it's [me]" - but my friend did one better. It was absolutely amazing and got me a few times, and she didn't have any problems with messages from people who didn't get it (unless they were really dumb). It went something like this:

H-hello (sounding like she had just woken up - being in college not unbelievable)

(pause for just enough time to say "hey, what's up?")

W-what (still sleepy)

(pause for enough time to repeat greeting)

Wha.. Who is this?

(pause for a little bit longer)

Gotcha! &ltBeeeeep&gt

Re: Sexual Harassment

[lizrd]

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.

Menu-driven answering systems could stop spam

[eap]

I've been thinking for a long time that a simple menu driven voice system, similar to those encountered when calling most companies, could stop telemarketers completely. Here's my scenario:

[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.

Re:FYI: Canadian law

[RhetoricalQuestion]

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.