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

[Surak]

What about thoe bogus "firemen" that call up asking for donations?

That's a very good point. I used to work a company that did that. (Hey! Stop looking at me like that! It was legitimate IT work! :)

Non-profit organizations like the International Association of Firefighters, the Police Officer's Assocation of really do exist. They often do not do their own telemarketing, and instead hire outside companies to do it.

The company I worked for published free newspapers and magazines for the organization in exchange for the organization allowing them to solicit 'advertising' and other 'donations' from companies. The non-profits get like 1% or something ridiculous like that.

I would imagine since the agreement between the telemarketer and the non-profit is legally binding and the non-profit did hire the telemarketer, then it would not be banned, at least no under the New York law mentioned in the article.

German telemarketing laws work

[benb]

In Germany, telemarketing is forbidden. A company may only call you, if you have an existing business relationship with them. (And you can terminate that relationsship and demand that they delete data about you.) I.e. opt-in, not opt-out. That's IMO the only sane way.

It works - I don't remember *ever* being called by telemarketers. And that although I am listed in the phone book.

BTW: In Germany, all my data belongs to me, too.
BTW2: It does not work for faxes. I made the error to enlist my number in the fax phone book and get spammed by fax about once or twice a week.

Some of what I said might be wrong.

Bellsouth's Privacy Director

[Athyra]

We use a $5 a month service from Bellsouth called "Privacy Director." If the number would show up as "Out of Area" or "blocked" (or anything similar) on caller ID, the phone doesn't even ring. The caller gets a message telling them that Privacy Director is in effect, and if they are a real person with non-commercial business, they should say they their name. Then, and only then, the phone will ring, and we'll hear a recording of the name, at which point we can choose to put the call through, put them to voicemail, or reject them with an anti-telemarketing message.

The nice thing about this is that since most telemarketers use computerized systems to dial, few ever make it to the point of leaving their name. And fewer still have the chutzpah to do so. And (as an added bonus), bill collectors also use "out of area" frequently, so many of them get zapped as well. :-)

Our telemarketing calls went from about twenty a day (based on caller ID when we were out, too), to nearly zero (occasionally, a local call slips through). It's a great setup.

Re:Telemarketer blocking devices

[lanalyst]

I think eventually the predictive dialers will be programmed to avoid them. I did download the SIT tone wav file to a PDA, assigned it to a button and played it into the phone for out of area/unknown caller calls. It did seem effective. Didn't have to pay Verizon for the call blocking service, etc.

"Why can't we all just get along?"

[Observer]

FWIW, here in Switzerland you can ask for your phone directory entry (dead tree and online versions) to be flagged with an asterisk, which means "no advertising, thanks". Do this, and the lists that the directory company sells for telemarketing don't contain your number, and - mostly - if someone calls you despite this they're sensible enough to back off immediately when you point out that your number is flagged in this way. There is no charge for this flagging, btw.

"No advertising" stickers on your physical mailbox are - mostly - also respected here.

I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe that both of these mechanisms are merely advisory with no legal sanctions behind them. Companies operating in Switzerland seem to have worked out that if people signal that they don't want junk mail and junk faxes and junk phone calls then it's a bad idea to irritate them by ignoring these signals. Of course, in Switzerland the citizenry gets to vote directly on issues at all levels of government from local community up to national, and if telemarketeers and their like really pissed off the general public they might find that the federal government would be instructed by voters to Do Something About It.

--Worked In Telemarketing--

[ImaLamer]

You must understand that phone numbers on some systems are just sequentially dialed - yes, we used war dialing.

But the first rule to cold call dialing is to NEVER (yes, bold and italics are necessary) use the information provided by whomever the list is bought from - even the phone company.

While I know that your problem was with a company which didn't take care of their lists (lead-lists should be taken care of very carefully), the phone company could also help by letting the company know who has changed their numbers or moved.

Lead lists are a whole 'nother thing. If you have a list of leads or subscribers, etc, then you absolutely need to take care of those lists.

If you don't, there is your sales force.

The only effective way to stop telemarketers is...

[Rai]

Talk to them. Let them throw their entire sales pitch to you. Act interested and ask them as many questions as you can think of. Keep them on the phone for as long as possible and then tell them you're not interested. Time is the only asset they have that you control. If You just hang up or block them, and they'll move on to the next potential customer, but if you waste as much of their time as possible without buying whatever they are selling, you'll do much more damage to their business. I did this for a few months and now I almost never get telemarketing calls. I kinda miss hearing that enraged "WHAT?" whenever I keep them on the phone for 30 minutes and then say I'm not interested.

Re:101 Way to Waste Their Time

[cheezedawg]

If you want to waste their time without wasting your own time, just start out the call nicely to get them started on the "pitch" and set the phone down. After a few minutes they realize that nobody is listening and they give up. Although I have to say that the parrot approach sounds pretty funny.