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Suing Telemarketers Made Simple
Lord of the Distinctive Rings writes "Telemarketer calls victim in wee hours. Victim is lawyer. Victim sues telemarketer. Hilarity ensues, as recounted in narrative replete with links and information on how you too can sue up the wazoo." Well, one's certainly not ever going to get rich or anything going after telemarketers on a one-off basis, but every bit helps, I think.
This gives a nice HOWTO on suing people who abuse the system. Here in the UK there is a opt-out system in the form of the TPS (Telecomunication Protection System) to stop people doing this sort of thing. Failure to comply get at £10,000 fine. Haven't had one call since signing up :)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I don't know how the system works where you live, but here a lot of "Reply Paid" stuff is barcoded and they could (theoretically) find out who you are by scanning that barcode.
"Hold On, Please..." Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately)
Actually, the *people* (as opposed to the companies) who make the telemarketing calls often *love* when people do this. It gets their talk time up; it shows their superiors that they're can keep someone on the phone for a long time, presumably talking about their product. I'd even bet the telemarketing companies (assuming they're hired by whoever is selling the product) like it too. The only party who doesn't like this is the company paying for telemarketing, but the telemarketers themselves often love it.
As a crusader for freedom on the internet, I believe strongly that unwanted calls are an avoidable nuisance. To help my fellow freedom fighters, I offer these links:
Suing Telemarketers without those sneaky lawyers taking your money!
Suing Telemarketers by Ben Livingston - they say he's crazy, but I say he's a hero!
Remove.org - you can add yourself to the global do not contact list to opt out of all advertisements!
SueTelemarketers.com - because they take away minutes of my free time when I'm trying to eat food, I invest hours of my free time trying to track down and sue telemarketers one by one.
That's all. Good night, and good luck!
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
More specifically, my information says that when you don't hear anyone on the other line what has happened is that the system they use which automatically calls people based on the average call time of their employees, has misestimated when to call (or all the employees are unavailable), so there's a silent pause. If the pause is long enough, the computer simply hangs up. Consequently, anyone who calls me from an unlisted number and gives me silence for three seconds or so I hang up on. If it's someone important, they'll call right back.
Schnapple
The telco is not blocking the caller ID information. Caller ID is not guaranteed to work out of what is called your 'LATA' (Local Access Transport Area) If you live in NY, your LATA number is 132 which covers all 5 boros of NYC, Westchester County(?), Long Island and a little piece of Greenwich CT. The caller ID information is stored in a database that's part of a separate packet network called SS7. Your telco provider makes a 'dip' or databse query into a CNAM database to get caller ID info based on the number that is calling/called. This SS7 network is used in setting up calls and tearing them down as well as a myriad of other features it can provide. If Caller ID was guaranteed to work across the country between every carrier in the US, the length of time it would take to setup a phone call would be prohibitively long...That's just the basic jist of it. You don't realize how much goes on from the time you pick up your handset, dial some digits and get audible ringing.. Hope that clarifies the situation for you. Please don't mod me down as GEEK
That's a little incorrect.
The dialer is dialing a certain number of calls based upon how quickly the agents are coming available. If you keep an agent on the phone for longer than a few seconds, the dialer recognizes this and drops them from the number of agents that will be available.
After all, they are trying to sell you something. The dialer has to be able to compensate for long calls, because I doubt any agent can sell you something in the time it takes someone else to hang up.
And just so you know I am not talking out of my ass, I used to be an admin on a dialer, so I do have some experience with this.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Just a reminder: Californians can pre-register for the Do Not Call list at http://caag.state.ca.us/donotcall/ (effective October 2003). Other states can simple Google "statename do not call" for the relevant linkage. YMMV.
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