How To Profit From Telemarketing

jsprat writes: "From the Seattle PI: A man gets an automated message from a telemarketer. He complains. Two weeks later, he gets a check and an apology! In the article, another man is mentioned who claims to have collected $2650 dollars over the last year for illegal spam, faxes and automated calls. Another weapon to fight these clowns?" What's your personal cash-won record?

Comments

Ben Livingston's success

[Jerky McNaughty]

Ben Livingston has a web page with a lot of good hints for anyone interested in suing these people. He also has a complete list of everyone he's sued, the outcomes, and in some cases, even a scanned image of the check they sent him.

So far, about $3250

[Anonymous Coward]

And counting. Not bad for a poor grad student. I make sure I post to Usenet quite a lot and surf random porn sites. This seems to be the way they get hold of your address. Once they have it on one list it will soon migrate.

The key here is persistance. Its amazing how almost anyone will crumble when faced with a legal threat. Think about the way Scientologists went after slashdot, thats how I go after spammers. I may even be on thin legal ice so to speak, but the mere threat of the law usually sees these guys settle. At the moment, its cheaper for them to do this.

Its also worth noting that I am Canadian which makes it a whole lot more complicated (and therefore expensive) from a legal perspective.

I would urge slashdotters to take up my hobby, it takes about 1hr/week and can be very lucrative.

$500

[Blue23]

You know, $500 is not a lot. Especially compared to the actual cost of a lawsuit. The number of people who know their rights, and properly preserve the evidice is low. It might just be part of business-as-usual for YourHomeCareer.com to pay those who know the law.

They get PR (and all PR is good PR), come across as "ok, we did something wrong but we're good upstanding people who are willing to be good members of the community and make amends." They come out smelling like roses for a fairly paltry sum. It's a wonderful thought.

=Blue(23)

Telemarketers have evolved...

[Gruneun]

(I was on the fence about putting this out as someone may start doing it, but...)

I received a phone call a few months ago. The call rang once and ended before I could pick it up. When I checked the Caller ID (never go home without it) it had a number outside of my area code with a label, "Prize Claim Dept" attached.

When I checked the area code it was somewhere in the Carribean. I have seen more than a few jobs listed in the classifieds that had similar numbers, charging $20 a minute (legally) without warning.

This was pretty crafty, though. First, they get you to initiate the call, making it much easier for them to get your money. Second, if there ever was a problem, they could easily argue that they dialed the wrong number, realized it, then hung up. They didn't expect you to call them.

Ethically lacking, but pretty crafty.

Re:Telemarketers have evolved...

[Alexius]

I saw this warning a while ago, in an email. I figured it was about as realistic as the warnings about my kidneys, but before I told the person that it wasn't true, I called my operator and asked. It turns out, this may be legal, but while I was on the phone, I found something else out. My phone company, PennTelecom will not a.) pass along any third party bills, (except for a long distance provider specified by me), and b.) will not give out any personal information on me. The effect is that if I dial any number that is supposed to collect money from me, the company that is supposed to collect the money has to send me a bill themselves, they can't just add it onto my phone bill. However, they also can't send me a bill because my phone company adheres to their privacy policy and won't give them my name or address.

I used one of the 10-10 numbers once, and I got a bill from AT&T mailled to me, addressed to one of my aliases. Obviously they'd pulled the name from some marketting database and managed to match up my phone number that way, but they obviously didn't have any actual evidence to force me to pay that bill, or ruin my aliases credit.

Re:Destroying the telemarketing industry.

[Croaker]

Hmm... imagine what could be done with this technique given:

1. A reserved phone extension someplace.
2. A phone sound card connection for this phone.
3. A PC with voice recognition/voice synthesis software. Voice synthesis would have to be very convincing... perhaps just using canned voice samples. For voice recognition, you might only have to catch a phrase here or there, or maybe just detect silence.
4. Faux "AI" software, such as Eliza or Racter. Perhaps seeded with marketspeak phrases ("yes, but what's the ROI?", "How do you address the currently shifting business paradigms?") The longer the conversation gets, the more surreal and random the AI should get ("Is it effective on monkeys? Our server room is full of monkeys. Flying ones. They glow blue. And they are tiny.") The AI should also throw out bones form time to time, to keep the marketeer on the hook ("Excellent!" "I can see a need for this in our organization, RIGHT NOW!").
5. An MP3 server to let everyone else listen to the precious sounds of a telemarketer slowly going insane.