Telemarketers Plan Counterattack

Chris Hoofnagle writes "CNN reports that companies who heavily use telemarketing are planning to counterattack consumers with a barrage of spam and junk mail in October, when the new do-not-call registry goes into effect. Slashdotters should be aware that, as well as anti-spam email software, there are tools to avoid junk snail-mail, such as Junkbusters' free Declare, Private Citizen's excellent service and the Postal Service's Prohibitory Order service, which is described at the EPIC privacy page."

Comments

Why don't they get it?

[Chiascuro]

I can understand the logic behind a company who's business model relies on calling customers switching to spam and direct mail when the DNC registry is implemented but why can they not see that the reason it is being put in place is because of them and if they persist they will merely succeed in getting do not spam and do not mail lists created.

If your business model requires hassling your customers then when they prevent you doing it via the phone it's time to change business models not the method you use to hassle.

It's self defeating and why business's think that customers want you to cold-contact them I do not know. Find a market, advertise on mass media or in media that your customers read and then sell to them. Don't bother everyone else with your crap.

Another way to SHUT THEM DOWN.

[johngaunt]

I got a call from a company many days in a row, and it played the nice DTMF tones that cause the phone companies computer to ignore your switch hook, so when you hang up, it doesn't recognize that you have done so. after about 3 days in a row of this, I stayed on the line until I got to a real live person. I asked that I be taken off their list, and was told it would be done, but could take a few days. I Politely asked for the companies name, phone number and address, which was given to me. (it is a violation of federal law not to). I then called the phone company and after getting ahold of a person there with some real power, (this is the hardest part) explained that company A was twiddling with their computers using aforementioned DTMF tones. This is a violation of almost all phone companies TOS. The engineer type said he would look into it.
The next day, I did not receive a phone call from company A, so I decided to call them, and darn it, there phones had been disconnected.
True story, it really works. If you are persistent, you can get their phones turned off.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:They are asking for trouble.....

[kramer2718]

That's a really nice tactic. Unfortunately, it only works with small local companies. Larger companies have phone-trees, caller-id blocking, etc.

Does anyone know how to find out where a telemarketer is REALLY calling you from?

Wouldn't that be great, you could sell a telemarketer's number to other telemarketers?

Re:STOP BUYING.

[zornorph]

Idiots, yes, but I think a lot of their sales come from the elderly.

Unfortunately, I must agree with this. When I was younger, I took a job doing telemarketing calls. On my first day they gave me a list of numbers and a script to follow. After about an hour, I started to notice that most of the voices on the other end of the phone sounded fairly old. Unfortunately, the older folks were the ones going for the script too, which made me feel pretty crappy, so I threw out the list of 'leads' I had gathered so far and quit the same day.

We need to put pressure on the companies that hire these types of firms. Without any money to support them, these telemarketing/spam/etc companies will simply go away, as they are motivated by greed.