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Telemarketers and Cell Phones?
jjshoe asks: "I have received one bumbling voice mail from a woman who seemed very confused as to why I wasn't there, like her auto dialer transfered her call to my cellphone in time for my voice mail, one missed call, and one in which I actually talked to the woman. My concern is that this all costs me minutes, which of course equals money. What laws are out there for me? What bills are out there waiting to head their way towards becoming laws? What can I do to be compensated for time? After I screamed at the tele-marketer lady she said she would mark me as a wrong number, but I still don't believe this is enough." Considering most tele-marketers use auto-dialers, would it be so hard to grab the definitive list of area-code/extensions that are exclusively used for cellular phones and just apply that to their dial-out lists?
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's website was the only site I could find that had any information on cellphones and solicitation.
Note the first question from 'JOHN PUHATCH':
Q: Regarding the sole use of wireless phones as an alternative to a land line connection, as I have done for nearly two years: You stated that tele-marketers do not call wireless phones. If only that were the case. Tele-marketing agencies have regularly contacted me on my cell phone concerning everything from vacation homes to long-distance service. My assumption is that these agencies secure my cell phone number by buying information from the plethora of forms and applications that require home telephone numbers but leave no place for a cell phone.And the answer basically amounts to, although we do have some protections, we can still be screwed:
'A: [...]In short, John, you lost your chance at a telemarketing-free life when you filled out those forms with your phone number. May others learn from your mistake.'Does anyone have any advice on things I can do to get these tele-marketers to stop calling on my cellphone?"
Most land-based phone companies allow anonymous-call blocks these days. Are there cellular phone companies doing anything similar?
just ask this guy.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
A guy I work with gets calls a few times a week (usually at odd hours, so he gets voicemail.) The calls usually are along the lines of "Hey this is -firstname- from -companyname-, the state says it is ok to dig. Thanks, seeya." When he does answer, the people don't seem to want to talk and tell him who they were expecting to get.
We to this day don't know who the callers are trying to get, but there sure are a lot of callers, and whoever is supposed to get the calls sure digs a lot of big holes.
Someone probably has a document in their customers hands with the wrong cellphone number on it. Makes for a good laugh every now and then.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Me: Hello, Hello?
Telemarketer:Hello sir, I'm calling from [some bank name]. I'm offering credit cards at special low rate.
Me:Yeah, what cards are you offering?
Telemarketer:We offer AmEx, Visa, Mastercard, and Diners Club.
Me: Cool, put me down for all 4!
Telemarketer: Pause... Umm, we only give you the one with the best rate.
Me:Oh, Ok, put me down for all 4.
Telemarketer:Pause. Ok, sir, I just need you to answer a few questions... Is your household income over $1000.00 per month?
Me: Nope.
Telemarketer:Ok, um household is EVERYONE in the home. Is it less that $1000.00?
Me: Yep, we make around $750.00 per month.
Telemarketer: Is this Mr. Mike Douglas?
Me: Nope.
Telemarketer: Who is this?
Me: Who is this?
Telemarketer: My name is Mike Pringle.
Me: What are you selling?
Telemarketer: I'm offering credit cards. Who is this?
Me: This is Mike Pringles. I'm Offering you a low low rate credit card, would you be intrested?
Telemarketer hangs up.
Solid Gold!
A buddy of mine comes up with some good anti-telemarketer lines. A couple of weeks ago he was called up by someone hocking the local paper.
Telemarketer: Hello, would you like to recieve the [local paper]?
Guy: I... can't read.
[pause]
Telemarketer: At all?
"All right," she said, "I just need your name."
"You don't need my name. You just need to put the phone number you just called on your do not call list, as required by law."
"I can't put you on the do not call list unless you give me your name, address, phone number, email address and answer a few questions about why you don't want to save money with us."
So I told her my name was John, I live at 123 Main Street, and my email address is abuse@yahoo.com. At that point she hung up on me. Someone else called from AT&T the next day, looking to sell long distance. I told him about the ordeal I went through the day before, and he promptly hung up.
Ever since then I just put them on hold whenever they call. "Yeah, I'm really thinking about switching my long distance, because I make so many calls and my bill is so huge. Can you hold on for a minute?" Five minutes later: "Hi, you still there? So what was it you said you were offering? Uh huh. Oh, hold on a sec, it's my call waiting." And then I leave them on hold for about an hour before hanging up.
My roommate prefers to waste his time driving them crazy. He'll wait for his turn to speak, pick some abstract word, like "Cheese" and stick with it.
"So how are you doing today, sir?"
"Cheese."
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."
"Cheese."
"Um... OK. I'm calling from AT&T and we thought you might like to take advantage of the opportunity to save some money on your long distance bill."
"Cheese."
Ah, so that's why we're putting new cover sheets on our TPS reports!
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
When I was a young, pimply faced pre-adult (as opposed to now, when I'm a middle aged pimply faced childish-adult,) the only jobs I could get were with telephone soliciting companies.
Now this was in the days before (a) do-not-call lists, (b) war-dialers and (c) calling-line ID. We worked from pages torn from the local phone book, holding our heavy 2500 set phones uncomfortably to our ears as we vainly tried to sell whatever warez we were pushing for minimum wage.
People didn't scream at us that much in those days, but you always got a few who did. When it happened, you made a "stress relief" call, to one of your carefully collected list of numbers of people who were either (a) always drunk, or (b) never home and had answering machines.
My favourite was leaving messages that their moose was sick and they'd better get down to the vet's office soon before it died. The next day, you'd leave another message, saying the moose was dead and "confirming" their name & address to send the large bill for the funeral to... and leaving as a phone number that of a pizza store.
Ah, fourteen...
One of my finest moments was getting a call from Sprint offering to change my long distance service.
"I'm sorry, I don't have a phone."
(pause, pause, pause) "Then how am I talking to you?"
"I'm... not really sure."
(pause, pause, pause) "Thank you." {click}
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
Me: (after some looking to see where the ringing was coming from, opening the little door, and picking up) Um... Hello?
Telemarketer: Good afternoon. This is the Seattle Times we have a very special...
Me: Do you realize you've reached an elevator?
Telemarketer: (puzzled pause) Uh...Sir, let me check if we have your correct address...
Me: It's the 17th floor.. no wait.. the 18th.. no, wait.. now it's the 19th...
(And so on)
Apparently some office building are rigged so that even the elevator extensions have direct-dial...
A man, a plan, a canal: Suez!