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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.
Three Little Words That Work !! (1)The three little words are: "Hold On, Please..." Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt. Then when you eventually hear the phone company's "beep-beep-beep" tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task. These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting. (2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end? This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone. This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a "real" sales person to call back and get someone at home. What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Since doing this, my phone calls have decreased dramatically. (3) Another Good Idea: When you get "ads" enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these "ads" with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away. When you get those "pre-approved" letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope. Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 37cents postage "IF" and when they receive them back. It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before! the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes. One of Andy Rooney's (60 minutes) ideas. Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back! If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you send them. You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! Eventually, the banks and credit card companies will begin getting their own junk back in the mail. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they're paying for it...Twice! Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea ! If enough people follow these tips, it will work---- I have been doing this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.
I never got laid back in gradeschool, but now that my plates full, these ladies ain't actin' so hatefull..
You can't, but the telco can. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be required to give you that information. At one point, before I started insisting on DNCs and saw the dropoff, I actually opened a case with the cops and had traces on my line -- of course, I got a form letter from the telco saying they couldn't "find enough information to generate a complaint". BS.
Allthough an individual might not get rich out of these practices, the power of the mass counts. By sharing this information with the rest of the world more people can sue. Maybe $500 won't hurt the telemarketeer but I bet 1 million people all suing for the $500 will...
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We have the same thing here in Canada. We rarely get telemarketing calls.. probably once or twice a month. I have heard that in some parts of the USA, a person can potentially get up to 9 calls per day from telemarketers.
That's just crazy.. But of course, they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't make money off of it, so the best solution is to have no-one ever buy anything over the phone from a telemarketer. This would be the same reason that spam is still going strong. Enough people actually buy the crap to support their continued spamming.
Ohhhh.... This is soooo much more than just keeping one of them busy. In fact, you screw up their ENTIRE operation, even if they have 100's of telemarketers. Why? Explanation below:
In order to raise the productivity of their employees, they save them the time dialing, recognizing answering machine, ringing-and-ringing, busy signals, tone waiting etc.
How? The use these machines which are called predictive dialers. Why predictive, you ask? because they predict when the next agent will end her call, and based upon lots of parameters (call duration, busy signal rate by time of day, time to recognize voicemails etc.) - will place a call BEFORE that agent hangs up, so the moment she hangs up - she has the next call ready for her, with an actual person on the line.
Now, it is rather clear that if you hold just one agent on the line for a LONG time, then you screw every statistics the predictive dialer has, and so the agents lose sync with the dialer, and as a result - their productivity dives....
Which is what we wanted.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
Exactly where was the "hilarity?" This is just a short article on how he tracked down the guy with some simple online tools and then sued him under a law he was familiar with. There isn't even any wackiness or insanity here. It's just, well, kinda boring.
mr.nobody
--Don't you wanna go where nobody knows your name?
While it is illegal for a telemarketer to intentionally block their phone number it is still possible that the CallerID (CLID) information will not be sent due to system limitations. Digital Exchange Access (DEA) Line-side and V-Net Service, which do not support the transmission of calling party number comprise a large percentage of line-side connections.
Of course in my case it may have been different - I got a call from someone trying to track down someone else, so I probably had someone's old phone number, but I can't explain my wife's as anything but "let's dial all the phone numbers and see who picks up!"
Schnapple
Absolutely, positively, answer these calls! Talk nicely to the poor dweeb on the other end of the line, and find out the name of the company. Politely refuse the offer. Then report them to the Federal Trade Commision (assuming you're in the states.) It is illegal. This will not necesarily produce an actionable case, but if you and your fellow pissed-off citizens do it enough, then they will get swatted.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
The bad thing is that "non-profits" do not have the same restrictions as a business.
Do not need to use do not call lists, can call you over and over, can use pre recoreded messages.
I think 75% of the Tele calls I receive to day from from such "non-profit organizations".
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
While you're keeping them on the phone, try to talk them into another career.
For "charities" (police benevolence society or whatever), ask them how much goes to the "cause", and how much is used for admin and overhead. They'll offer an 800 number, try to get THEM to call the number. I try to convice them they are working for crooks. Quote GWB's "you're either on the side of good, or the side of evil".
I don't know if it does any good, but it always makes me feel better.
When VPNs are outlawed, only outlaws have VPNs.
Ah... but a judgement in court (even small claims court) goes on the persons credit history... (and stays there even after it is paid) and a few unpaid judements dont look good at all when trying to apply for credit....
--
Time is on my side
If it has 1 line, certainly. If it has 4 or so like the author states, you'd probably have to coordinate the "defensive attack" Operation Telephony Freedom.
It's absolutely true- I interned at a credit card company last summer running the dialer program. It's like being an air traffic controller- everything runs smoothly as long as the calls are predictable, but the dialer algorithms run really poorly and inconsistently when calls go on for long periods of time.
It's not just while the call is goin, either- the dialer uses that call as part of its statistics for the entire calling job, so for several hours it's running on poor data.
It was a fun couple of summers (I never did outward calling, but I took inward, angry, card-cancellation calls the first summer I worked there), but I'll never do that again!
Read jack phelps dot net
I used to work for a telemarketing firm (yes, I'm still filled with self-loathing over it, thank you very much--you know, the scent never leaves?) and routinely we would record our calls (for verification)--standard procedure. If we ever called anyone and they said that they were going to record the conversation, we were under orders to terminate the call immediately and remove them from the calling list.
Worth a try, I've never used it because I only get calls that are just dead air...must be the Illuminati or something.
Instead of hanging on a long time, could it screw everything up by keeping the conversation too short?
For example, when you recognize the automated message, just hold down a number key for about a minute. If they hadn't answered after a minute, keep it on another minute. When they answer to the high volume tone, they'll hang up immediately, thus making the call TOO short.
Now, the autodialer should start making the next calls too soon and have people hang up while waiting. That should help screw things up, plus annoy the calling party
So now I answer my home phone as if I were at work. Mwahaha!
irb(main):001:0>
Yes, but isn't the point of their calls to eventually find some idiot who is actually interested in their product/service? Presumably, that call will last much longer than the standard "Not interested, FOAD! *click*". So, when they get a "live one" to place an order, that messes up the predictive dialer? That makes no sense.
Perhaps there is a way to signal the dialer when they get a sucker on the line, so as not to mess up the stats?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
When I've gotten telemarketing calls, instead of saying the typical "I'm not interested" I'll say the first ridiculous excuse that comes off the top of my head and it seems to work. I used to be called at least 2 to 3 times a week (and no I did not buy their products) and now I rarely get a call during a given month.
For example:
1) Lawn care companies? Tell them you have a turf lawn or similar. Or tell them the overspray from the company spraying your neighbors lawn is taking care of your lawn as well. Its worked quite well.
2) Newpapers? I tell them I'm illiterate.
3) Alarm Systems? This is the best of all! I acutally convinced the guy I live on a military base in a nuclear bunker and he bought it! Funny thing was, he tried selling me fire and theft insurance. Of course, I explaied these are theft and fire proof as they housed nuclear weapons.
Who needs lawsuits? I have fun with them and I get rid of their calls. I've had to threaten the repeat callers w/ small claims court suits and it works. However, we need stronger/clearer laws against telemarketing and spammers.
Please don't mod this as funny. I'm quite serious even with the Alarm system thing. The idiot bought it but they also stopped calling.
Having worked on the phones way too much in a college infested town, I realize that even though these techniques may hurt the company and cause the telemarketer to hate his job even more it doesn't usually reduce the calls you get. In fact the ruder that you are the more likely that a telemarketer will get his only form of revenge on you by dispositioning the call as a no answer or not avaliable. This can cause the dialer to call you back within minutes with an unsuspecting new telemarketer on the line ready to give his pitch and annoy you again. Sure this makes the telemarketing company lose money, but you will not beat the odds in the end.
Besides suing the company that calls you, the only way to gaurantee that you don't get called again is to ask to be put on the do not call list. This actually blocks the number on the dialer, and telemarketers would be much more likely to do this to a sensible and nice person who asks for them to please not call them. The average telemarketer hates his job and understands that people hate their calls. They hate getting calls too, so they will empathize with the one person that is actually decent and nice.
As long as there are broke college students that will do anything to pay for their pizza, tuition, and books these marketing companies will always have cheap labor.
I'd be interested to see what the laws are in Canada.
Visit us at http://www.iblist.com!
If you can identify some real estate of the telemarketer then (at least in some juristicions) you can put a lien against the property.
My dad had a deadbeat client in his small business, took him to small claims and won. The other party didn't even show up. It took a few years, but the guy got a rude shock when he tried to sell his house and didn't have a clean title. My Dad had practically forgotten about it when the check arrived.
the worst telemarketer fraud is from companies operating in canada, in order to avoid US law. canadianus telco rates are low enough that its economical enough for them to operate like this.