Disconnecting Telemarketers

Anonymous Scientist at UMass sent in a story about opt-out telemarketing laws, and several people submitted this story about a spam bill in the Senate. New York's telemarketing law does work - since we put our number on the list, we've gotten a couple of calls from charities (not covered by the law) and a couple of calls from Time-Warner Cable, asking us to sign up for cable. Time-Warner's calls would be banned, except that we have a pre-existing business relationship with them - you see, we already have cable. Update: 05/18 15:30 GMT by M : Oh, and if you live in New York: NYNoCall.com.

Comments

Re:Scams

[shaldannon]

Well...once when I was a missionary in California City, I got a call from someone alledging to be from the Bakersfield FOP. He asked if I would be interested in giving them money. I replied with "I'm a missionary, so I don't have a whole lot of money...but if you're interested, I could arrange to have some missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints some share a message about Jesus Christ." He hung up pretty quickly...

The obvious solution...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

We form vigilante groups of 10 or so, for every major city in the country. We arm them with flechette round shotguns, incendiary grenades and train them for a few weeks. We have the various legislatures authorize law enforcement to investigate spamming, and inform the vigilantes of any known telemarketer lair.

We send in the troops.

Either that, or we pull a Sigourney Weaver... "We go back to the mothership, and nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Re:Simple solution

[glitch!]

Get rid of the land line. Cell phones are cheaper and easier. Telemarketers don't have cell phone numbers.

That's an excellent point. I carry my cell phone everywhere, and everyone I know has the number. (I guess "they" can track me, now...) Recently I have stopped answering my home phone, and let my 2-year old answer it instead. She loves it! "Hewwwwooo?" babble babble babble. I figure that if she is still talking after a minute or so, it is someone in the family, and I can take over. Otherwise, who cares? :-)

Re:101 Way to Waste Their Time

[Kintanon]

As a former telemarketer I can tell you that the highlight of my night was usually when someone did something like the above poster described. Anything witty, funny, or interesting was a great break from the normal routine of calls. And we get paid pretty reasonably in addition to our comission. So don't feel about about making our night more interesting.

Kintanon
P.S. My favorite phone call is still the one where I called up and asked for some girl, and the guy who answered the phone responds with, 'She's busy sucking my dick right now.'