Slashdot Mirror
Telemarketers Sue Over "Do Not Call" List
Joey Patterson writes "CNN reports that 'Telemarketers expanded their legal challenge to the government's do-not-call list, suing a second federal agency over the call-blocking service for consumers that the industry says will devastate business and cost as many as two million jobs.'"
The list works. What a shame
will devastate business and cost as many as two million jobs Telephonus Marketroidae are getting closer to the Endangered Species List.
Was there a constitutional right to profit that I missed?
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
I'm sure alot of people who work for telemarketers have their names on the list just so they don't get calls.
Gibble: Descriptive of an emotional state in which one's mind is scrabbling for some purchase on reality
one could argue that they never had a viable industry in the first place. I mean sure they were born during the gee-whiz days of telephone technology, but yesterdays novelties are today's nuisances.
...then later, then. Seriously, it should have been tackled long ago. What I'd like the government to do is say "OK, we'll compensate for those being laid off, but the list is staying." THEN we'll see the true side of the telemarketters.
FYI - if you work in email spam, better start looking for a job now while you have a chance...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
It SHOULDN'T be profitable to cold-call people and annoy them at home.
Another industry with a doomed business model resorting to litigation to address its (short-term) problems.
.
If I were a telemarketer, I'd be overjoyed at the prospect of a national do-not-call list. It should be seen as a list of people who aren't likely to buy anything from me, thus reducing the time I waste calling people who probably won't buy. The feds even pay to maintain it!
Also . .
The suit's argument that jobs will be lost is worthless. If they were motivated by providing jobs, I wouldn't get so many pre-recorded solicitations. I'm sure the industry would eliminate almost all their employees if they thought it would bring them more profit.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
What the heck has happened? Why do private businesses think that the Government is only there to ensure that they will always be profitable? If the people don't want the damn phone calls, and this is the only way to make them stop, then the Government is 100% in setting up this list.
Man, if you think it sucks to be in IT right now, it sucks much more to be a telemarketer... now, and every day.
Who put it in these guys heads that they have a right to call me at home to hock their mortgage and duct-cleaning schemes?
Every dollar they lose, the phone company (and via "trickle down" theory, me) saves by not shouldering the cost of their business.
Essentially their cost of doing business is being subsidized by everyone who pays a phone bill.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
They finally have to find a more dignified job.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Isn't this exactly like the candle manufacturers suing the electric utilities, claiming electricity will cause massive job loss? On the other hand, what are all those losers whose only skill is having a big mouth and being able to follow a script going to do for a living now?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
They're stating that not only has the FTC been distributing their intellectual property over P2P networks, but that it was also illegally incorporated into Linux.
(What? This is a different lawsuit? I thought Slashdot only covered the RIAA and SCO!)
to India etc... eventually anyways... Hey, if Dell, HP, and IBM do it, why not the telemarketers
*sheds a tear for the pain and suffering of telemarketers*
If the RIAA can get their continued existance legislated, it's only fair the telemarketing field gets the same treatment...
-insert a witty something-
Since when is a job a right? I'm glad I have a job while so many of my friends are laid off right now, but I don't think my job is a God given right that can't be taken away. I think this goes to more of a privacy issue, but will courts curtail privacy to save an industry money?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Exemptions included...calls on behalf of politicians.
So, even if I put up the telephone equivalent of a "Do not trespass" sign, the craziest of all businessmen are still allowed to call me?
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Cry me a river.
If they (the Telemarketers) hadn't been so pushy uptil now, then the List wouldn't be necessary.
But they were, and so it is.
The do not call database means that they won't get hung up on as often, thereby not making them as miserable, thereby making the world a better place.
Personally, just let them call any leader like Osama, Sadam, etc... one right after the other. Then again that might just be against the Geneva Convention.
Just realise the reality of the situation..... There is no reality.
So 2 million high school&college kids/temp workers with no invested education for their job are out of work. They can go work anywhere else that doesn't require training.
Now how about the IT industry planning to fire 8% of it's US work force and move 3.3 million jobs to India and other Asian countries?
We need to sue/pass legislature/whatever to secure our jobs, damnit!
no comment
I'm confused. This means that half the people that buy products from telemarketers will sign up and therefore prevent themselves from buying new products?
Someone's being really stupid here. Is it the people that buy products & prevent themselves from buying more? Is it the telemarketers making this up? Or is it just me?
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
Maybe those 2 million people can get jobs selling magazines door-to-door.
Oh wait. People hate that, too.
blog
The government is supposed to represent the population, you know, "We the people". The people have chosen not to be called at home. That is a valid request considering that the end user had to pay for the phone service in the first place.
Telemarketers, get over it.
Exemptions from the list include calls from charities and pollsters and calls on behalf of politicians.
But calls from people telling me, Vote for Dayton/Coleman/Ventura/ whoever else is running are the worst kind. And don't get me started on charity calls, It's bad when they try to sell something, it's worse when the ask me to give them something for nothing. Toughen the law even more, I say. Make those annoying "oops wrong number" calls a federal offense. I don't want my phone to ring for anyone I don't already know. In fact, add my family to the list. The only ones I want to allow to call me are single women.
SAILING MISHAP
You'd really think they'd notice the overwhelming response to the DNC registry and think "hey wait, maybe people really dont want to hear from us"...no such luck
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
following on the heels of the RIAA, i suppose anyone whose business model is made obsolete should just sue the hell out of everyone they can.
i mean, the end is inevitable, and the main riches have already been made - so why not just take a few parting shots?
corporations make me sick anymore.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
So, people that don't want to be called put themselves on a list. Alternatively, others can remain off the list and still receive calls.
The telemarketing companies end up calling only those that are willing to listen. Instead of wasting time, they call someone else that will listen to them and be a possible sale.
And.... they are complaining?
Just wait for them to become unionized, and then eventually they'll do a world-wide strike of all telemarketers. Instant solution! If that doesn't work, then world-wide, we can strike telemarketers!
Drugs dealers suing the government for ruining the market?
'...cost as many as two million jobs.'
Another group of people who went to the 'RIAA School of Maths'
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
testing out my trending skills
I have heard that, in the day of door-to-door salesmen, many such folk were actually thrilled to see "No Solicitors" signs, because they felt that such signs were indicators that the people there knew they couldn't stand up to a sales pitch. I'll bet the same logic might be applied here, so those of us who prefer not to be called might in fact have inadvertently invited twice as many.
What I don't understand is why the list officially does not apply to cell phones? I get sales calls on my cell phone, and it pisses me off. I pay for those minutes on incoming calls!
The CB App. What's your 20?
To get this bill passed into law it went to the highest people in the country, and passed. Now some lawyers want to undo what has been in the making for years? If they think that they can actually be successful in this suit then they have another thing coming. The bill was passed to prevent the negative effects of telemarketing, and their argument is EXACTLY what the law was designed to avoid, people being anoyed by calls.
What ever happened to a person's right under the constitution to privacy? and not to be harassed?
These lawyers are fighting for a lost cause.
It beats me why the telemarketers are complaining. Currently about 28 million numbers have been registered on the national Do Not Call list, of around 313 million phone numbers in the US - that's less than 10%.
Until 100% of numbers are registered I would have thought the telemarketers would have loved this. A tool that lets them to avoid wasting time calling people who don't want their services. This should make their operation much more efficient - in other words profitable.
If they really believe they offer a valuable service, then clearly 100% of numbers won't be registered and they can continue to operate a profitable business serving those who do want their calls. Those who don't want to be called aren't. Win-win.
Sailing over the event horizon
The FCC does something right. In fact, the FCC is doing what the PEOPLE want. 28 Million can't be wrong. Look what happens! They get sued by an entire industry. Thinking this says a great deal about the tenious relationship the government has with business.
Well, it's nice to see that America's industries are exemplifying the "American Way", if you don't like it, Sue it...
I always thought of telemarketers as cockroaches, so I'm surprised there aren't more of them.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Women at Augusta (Thats a golf club for you extreme geeks)
Telemarketers on our phones
*#(@ Spammers in our inboxes
Why do people feel the need to be places we don't want them? I don't want you calling me, and have sworn, burped, harassed, and insulted every telemarketer to call for years. I think the list is a good thing for them since it contributes to employee happiness.
how many of those 2 million jobs that they claim will be MIA are located in the US?
Maybe they are suing because this is the only good employment offered in prisons? And the companies make a killing (no pun intended) by using prison labor. They have to keep 'Bubba' happy!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
You are either a consumer, or you are with the terrorists.
Well, paraphrasing slightly, but I think you get the picture. If you can't be pressured into buying things that you don't want and don't need, then what's going to happen to all the people making those things, and applying that pressure? They'll have to get, you know, actual jobs.
I suggest they start making buggy whips, as most of us need them about as much as the current products and services that need to pimp themselves with unsolicited calls.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Hell has expanded its ongoing legal challenge to religion and is suing yet another church over the concept of salvation, which Hell claims is devastating its business and will cost millions minimum-wage demons their jobs."
It is as easy as that. Build a business on annoying people and then, when the annoyed people react, cry "But won't anyone think of the children (of our employees)?". The point is they shouldn't exist in the first place (the employees, not their children). It should not be everybody else's problem if you have a business model based upon a service no one wants (because if everybody wanted it we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?).
Now if we could just get a no spam list :-)
*... of the world's smallest violin plays for the ATA.*
Anyone else feel like starting up a telemarketing scam for telemarketers?
"Hello, sir. Are you pissed since people no longer want to hear your sales pitch during their dinners? Would you like to hear about a technology which beats that nasty 'do not call' list? With our new technology, we are able to allow you to get around those laws and continue letting you peddle your crappy interest rate credit cards and stupid health insurance policies without the federal government finding out about it all! Are you interested, sir?"
"What? It sounds like you're eating right now. Well, just think about how surprised your potential clients will be when they have the same thing happen to them. If I can just get your name, address, telephone number, credit card and social security numbers, we can send our informational package to you for the low price of $159.99!"
-Jellisky
Methinks I'd be wearing a disguise on AP picture day....
Call any leader like the situation..... There is 100% in which one's mind is a list is a better place. Personally, just let them more profit. This goes to profit that might just let them stop, then the only skill is no such thing as a God given right now, but I missed? If I think this is the Geneva Convention. Just realise the phone company (and via "trickle down" theory, me) saves by not my job now while you have a list is a phone calls, and duct-cleaning schemes? Every dollar they don't want the telephone technology, but there to call any leader like Osama, Sadam, etc... one right to profit that can't be taken away. I waste calling people on reality sure the industry money? So, even if they thought it would eliminate almost all businessmen are a job now while they're at it, I hope the time I don't get so they were, and so they will disagree. Marketroidae are still allowed to buy anything from calling people who pays a phone bill. -- They finally have to call any leader like the time I wouldn't get so pushy uptil now, then the situation..... There is a lucrative publishing contract! I don't think we want X to ensure that jobs will disagree. Marketroidae are a stupid question, but I were motivated by providing jobs, I waste calling people who pays a "Do not shouldering the true side of telephone equivalent of the telemarketters. FYI - Ratbert is the cost of a lot of the MO No Call list. telemarketer... now, and being subsidized by everyone who probably won't buy. The feds even if they will disagree. Marketroidae are laid off, but the Government is staying. THEN we'll compensate for the prospect of a lucrative publishing contract! I think my job now while they're at it, I waste calling people who probably won't buy. The feds even if they were, and this is staying." THEN we'll compensate for some purchase on the gee-whiz days of inquisitive idiots. are laid off right now, but that I waste calling people who aren't likely to ensure that I waste calling people who aren't likely to save a few dollars.
... and more effective than any do-not-call list.
Just start having phone sex with the next phone farmer who calls you. Don't worry if she's doing it too, it doesnt matter.
If she reminds you that mortgage rates are the lowest they've been in 30 years, you remind her about blasting a thick wad of cum all over her tits.
One of two things can happen. 1) she never calls back, 2) she calls back for more.
ITS WIN WIN
I'm not losing any sleep over these people losing their jobs. If you're in an industry whose major focus is pissing people off, you deserve to lose your job. If you look at it another way, the people who opt not to be put on the Do Not Call list (both of them), obviously don't mind being annoyed by these people and will be much more receptive to these calls. Should make the job of a telemarketer a little easier. Spammers look out, we're coming after you next.....
Approaching Normal
I can't believe how much the media and the courts let slip by. The CNN article should have been titled Telemarketers Attempt to Defraud Courts with fake job loss numbers and scare tactics.
I don't have a clue how many people the Tele-hacks employ, but I sure know that they never get any business from me. By using this list, I am saving them time - increasing their profits!
2 Million Jobs! You have to be kidding me!
Why can't the media see thru lies like this one, and the RIAA, and simply report that companies are lying in order to survive.
I live in Missouri where I have enjoyed the protection of a State Do Not Call List. I have received two calls in the (2 or 3?) years the list has been in operation.
Having a state do-not-call registry, I do not see how a national list will reduce the number of unsolicited calls.
You would think the national list will make it easier on telemarketers. It must be easier to deal with one list rather than 50.
He makes good points. Does this mean we can sue India for taking away all our programming jobs?
I don't understand how they can say this will cost them money. I thought that this would save them money.
I, for one, would never buy from a telemarketer. Ever. Nothing. So, by adding my name to the do not call list, they are no longer wasting their time by calling and offering things I will never buy. They can concentrate their efforts on the people who are receptive to this type of sales and avoid sadistic people like me who will let them talk and then leave them on hold for hours while I look for a credit card.
I would think that over the long run, they will see a higher percentage of sales per hour by eliminating people like me from the list.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
I am sure they could create about 2 million jobs as well. Ditto for prostitution.
My rights don't need management.
On the other hand, there are issues like Disney buying a never-ending copyright where the public doesn't have enough of an interest in the matter to care and so Disney can purchase that copyright without any trouble. Possibly the same deal with the RIAA running roughshod over the consumer. Now, my question to the Slashdot audience, how can we better educate people to let them know what is going on with both Disney and the RIAA so that if a politician does take the money from the lobbyists and make the WRONG votes, they are voted out of office?
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
A loss of two million jobs...of which a large number are convicts, currently serving prison sentences, who get paid below minimum wage, because it's a good source of cheap labor with American accents, and it's their only opportunity for work. See, e.g., http://www.stopjunkcalls.com/convict.htm
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
They think they should have the right to call people who don't want to be called? What exactly is their reason that they think they deserve this right? Who does it benefit? If the people are expressing that they don't want to be called, it probably means they don't want to be called! It doesn't matter if they're on the list or not -- they don't want to be called. I know people don't have a right not to be offended, but there's also no guranteed right to annoy people.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Why even complain about the do not call list if those people listed on the do not call list basically are saying that they don't want to buy stuff from the telemarketers in the first place!
That's like me getting a list of girls who would never go out with me. I'd love to have that list , it would save me time. Then again that list might be bigger than the do not call list, but that is beside the point.
[alk]
Maybe it's just that Sprint sucks. But a huge number of calls show no data on the caller ID. All tele-annoyer calls show no data. Most people that we expect to call us show at least the number, so we've started ignoring calls not showing data and letting them get dumped to voice mail.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Wow, a federal bureaucracy really put together a nice site! Clean, well-designed, excellent usability, good FAQs. Go, FTC!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
On another note, there are a few loopholes to the DNC list: "Police can still mass dial people under the guise of crime awareness...Even telemarketers conceded that the new national "do not call" list doesn't mean you're off the hook..."
Some of these loopholes, to my understanding, allow non-profit and/or political organizations and companies conducting so-called surveys even if you're on the do not call list. So while the original article mentions 28 million phone numbers are already on the list, one wonders just how effective it will be...
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
> 28 Million can't be wrong.
:)
Yeah they can. Not in _this_ case, but don't overgeneralize. Think how many people have bought Britney Spears CDs, then tell me again that 28 million can't be wrong.
1.99 million of them being out-sourced to other countries.
I didn't think spiders and bots were officially counted in the employment rolls, but maybe that's just speciesism on the part of us humans.
--
Check out our little bitty Linux Sysadmin Portal.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
This isn't about the government killing off an industry. It's about protecting the people who are "bothered" enough to request not to be bothered. If I called you every night at dinner time, and if you did not welcome my call, you would ask me to stop. If I did not stop, then by definition, I would be harassing you, and you would have some right to protection by the law.
The DNC list does not prohibit phone solicitations; it merely requires that solicitors prune their lists based on people's requests not to be contacted that way.
Most people in that line of work are paid by commission anyway, so I feel that I'm doing them a favor by having them not call me because I *NEVER* buy anything sold by an anonymous phone (or door) solicitor. Rather than sue, these folks should embrace the change for the better of all mankind!
The CB App. What's your 20?
according to the EFF, it will take them until the year 2048 to sue all 2 million people on the list.
To quote Seinfeld for a change...
.. I'm sorry, this isn't a very good time. Can you give me your number and I'll call you back later? What's that? You don't like being called at home by strangers? Well now you know how I feel. *click*
*phone rings*
Jerry> Hello?
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
Exemptions included...calls on behalf of politicians.
So, even if I put up the telephone equivalent of a "Do not trespass" sign, the craziest of all businessmen are still allowed to call me?
Of course. We've placed a dog to guard the henhouse from foxes, but that dog sometimes likes an egg or a hen from time to time.
Freedom of Speech is absolutely most protected when it's political. If they didn't exempt it, it could put the entire thing at risk of being overturned. Commercial speech, however, is quite regulatable.
Sorry, but this list can't be just cold calling telemarketers, they must be help desk types, right? So, if thats the case, why does the ATA lead me to believe that these non-nagging telephone jobs have anything to do with the do-not-call list? I think they are lumping the two in the same boat to make up that "2 million jobs".
I've got news for you. We are under no obligation to protect your business model.
Yeah, I tried it once, walked out on training on the second day, short of breath. I'd never had as powerful an attack of a conscience as I did that day. I didn't even know I had one before that.
Note that Charities, Politicians, and Surveys are exempt.
That means that instead of selling a product, they'll call with a slanted survey about the product. It will be an adaptation of the political calls known as "push polls."
Personally, I think the exemption for charities and political calls should be limited to non-paid callers. If the cause is legitimate, they should be able to find volunteers. (Oh, and pre-recorded calls should be banned, of course.)
I signed up for the DNC list because I have no intention of buying anything from a telemarketer, ever, period. I imagine others are the same way--if they wanted telemarketers to give them information on exciting new opportunities and products, they wouldn't have signed up for the DNC list. Telemarketers are not losing the business of the uninterested and annoyed, because they never had it.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
They mean two million jobs outsourced to Asia. C'mon, telemarketing jobs have long been outsourced to Asia (most notably India) a lot faster and for longer than IT jobs are going there now. I feel not the slightest bit of guilt or pity for telemarketing companies and as for the jobs - that's two million people who won't have to endure the most grueling non-labor 'office' job in existence.
Out of all of this, do you know what the mind-boggling thing is?
Someone actually has to buy these products, or they would all be out of business anyway. Who are these people, and where are they? I assume these people are the same people that buy from informecials. I want to sue them for emotional damages for keeping Don Lapre, Tony Robbins, and Ron Popeil on the air.
Set that and forget it in six easy payments of get the hell off my airwaves!
i wouldnt be suprised if the telemarketiung companies actually showed more profit. If they actualy lose the 2 million jobs and the people on the list wouldnt have bought anything neways it looks like more profit to me...they still get the same amount of sales with less people trying for it...makes sense
Cool stuff is done by idiots........thats why its cool
It's between that and getting into spam...
It's not like anyone who puts themselves on the national "do-not-call" list is going to buy something from a telemarketer.
I think that this law would actually be good for the telemarketing industry, because they wouldn't be spending money calling people who'd say "I'm not interested. Now f*ck off."
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
You'd really think they'd notice the overwhelming response to the DNC registry and think "hey wait, maybe people really dont want to hear from us"...no such luck
Marketers don't think like that. They believe that you may *think* you don't want to hear from them, but that's only because you haven't heard their pitch yet.
You know, technically, the Federal government is for the people, by the people.
So if telemarketers are sueing the Federal government, then they are sueing both the people who buy their products, and those that do not wish even to consider them. In effect, we are looking at companies sueing consumers to force them to hear free speech. Fortunately, freedom of speech grants the right to say something; not the right to force others to listen.
It appears Ockham lost his razor and grew a beard.
- Soldier
- Sex slave
- Tech support
- Actor
- Policeman
- Slashdot troll
- Truck driver
- Open source spokesperson
- Business consultant
- Middle management
- Band vocalist
- Corrupt corporate C.E.O.
- Door-to-door salesman
The possibilities are endless! I don't know why these people are complaining.Bash script for FP whores
Luckily, that federal agent put its name on the national 'do not sue' list.
Denny Dillon, center, leads a shift of telemarketers at Quality Service Management in this AP file photo
Quality Service Management !?!?!?! What the hell is that? Could they come up with a more non-descript name for a company?
I'm sure they picked that name so that it would look inconspicuous on the building index in the lobby, to confuse the people who want to blow it up...
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
I'm an asshole and you've made it illegal for me to be an asshole, but I make money at it! And so do others! You're putting us out of work! That's unfair! I'm going to have to do something other than being an asshole!
Or... I could go work for those SCO folks...
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
After buying a buggy whip for only $39.99, we will send a telemarketer to your house for a flogging. Order now!
Before everyone adds me to their Foes list, I want to say that I didn't last long: I quit. I was desperate for a summer job as a college student and thought that working indoors making a good wage was better than the crap jobs my buddies were getting pitching tar or whatever the hell they were doing in the heat. Funny thing is that I was selling premium television channels and I, personally, thought (still do) that TV was largely a waste. It took me a few weeks to develop my ability to sell something that I didn't believe in but pretty soon I was starting the heavy-sell over the phone. I was a hypocrite -- I personally thought what we were selling was crap.
Finally, one day I made a call and a very elderly woman answered the phone. I started into my sales pitch when she finally sobbed "Please, please, just leave me alone. My husband has died and I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills." And by god if I didn't have to bite my lip to stop myself from replying "You need some entertainment to distract you from your problems. Can I sign you up for the comedy channel?" Man, I was so programmed to try to turn a bad situation into a sale that it was just automatic! Fortunately, I still had some decency left and told her that I wished her best of luck and hung up. I quit the very next day. I still remember the look on the boss' face when I told him why I was quitting. I don't think he had ever had someone quit for moral reasons before. He was stunned that someone would voluntarily quit a high-paying, cushy job solely because of moral qualms. Because I had left before my shift was up, my ride wasn't there to pick me up. I walked all the way home in the rain. But I was happy. I had done the right thing.
Whenever I hear about the sob-stories of telemarketers, I simply remember back to those awful, awful people who I worked with those few weeks. Screw 'em.
GMD
watch this
"The American Teleservices Association, an industry group that sued the FTC in January to stop the list, asked the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver to reject new regulations set by the Federal Communications Commission."
Hey, I'm sure the judges have had positive experience with Colorado's No Call list. It's amazing, I went from an average of 3 phones calls plus 6 hangups a day to ZERO! It was a night and day difference.
Perhaps they should have filed somewhere else?
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Hey telemarketers, use the phone number above to call someone who gives a shit!
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
[...] the industry says will devastate business and cost as many as two million jobs.
Only two million jobs? Heck, Hewlett Packard did more damage than that in a single weekend and the investors went wild with happiness!
...the American Assassins Association has announced a suit aimed at countering laws that prohibit solicited murder.
"There are over 200,000 assassins that stand to lose their jobs because of these laws," says AAA head Jeremy Simmons. "We estimate that anti-civilian-capital-punishment laws are responsible for over $500 million dollars in lost assassination revenue every year."
Continues Simmons, "Sure, you can look at an assassination as an invasion of privacy. Heck, you could paint a bad picture of Mother Teresa if you tried hard enough. But when it comes down to it, hit-men perform a valuable service to their customers, and the current laws are standing in the way of a lot of profits."
you know i would like to sell crack on my corner, i hear it's quite lucrative
however, there is the small matter of the quality of life effect on my neighborhood, and my conscience about pushing an evil drug on people
where is the telemarketer's concern over the quality of life of the people they harass over the phone? and where is their conscience about wasting people's time?
who cares if it is 20 million jobs that are lost? telemarketing is an industry whose best place in the world is crumbling in the historical dustbin of defunct business models
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>> what are all those losers whose only skill is having a big mouth and being able to follow a script going to do for a living now?
Politics.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
I don't currently get [m]any spam calls on my cell phone becaluse I've been careful where I give it out, but I put it on the DNC list just in case. How screwed up would that be, if thanks to the DNC list, I start getting spam calls on my cell phone?!
Why should the gubment care? Millions of jobs are being out-source overseas & the gubment doesn't step in to save the jobs of IT personnel; Those who happen to work in less-despised fields that telemarketers. Why should telemarketers be treated any better than the rest of us?
There are plenty of jobs available at their local fast-food establishment and WalMart is cranking out stores faster than a welfare mom.
We have a "No Soliciting" sign on our Mailbox. I think it cuts down on the number of salespeople that ring the bell by about 50%.
Our immediate response is to point out the sign (right beside the front door) and the responses are pretty comical. Here are the biggest ones we get.
1. "I thought that sign was put up by the previous owners of the house."
2. "I'm not soliciting - I want to find out if you are interested in..."
3. "I'm sorry, I missed the sign. But while I've got your attention..."
4. "I thought the sign was only for the mailman."
5. "Your neighbor thought that this was such a fantastic opportunity that I should go knock on your door and tell you about it."
Montgomery Burns has it right when he says "Release the Hounds!"
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Boo hoo...
This from a group that represents an industry that once called me at home no less than 60 times in a five day period!
They failed to regulate themselves and now the government has stepped in. It is there own fault and I have no sympathy for them.
"marketing will always exist"...got me thinking...
Luke struggles to remove a small metal fragment from Artoo's neck joint. He uses a larger pick.
LUKE: Well, my little friend, you've got something jammed in here real good. Were you on a cruiser or...
The fragment breaks loose with a snap, sending Luke tumbling. He sits up and sees a twelve-inch three-dimensional hologram of Leia Organa, being projected from Artoo. The image flickers and jiggles in the dimly lit garage. Luke's mouth hangs open in awe.
VOICE: Help me, you're my only hope. My name is OBI-WAN KENOBI, if you help me by transfering $12BN credits into your account, you too can have a 12 inch Organa like mine!
LUKE: Aaaagh!!*%^$_"$£!!!!!?
Several telemarketing companies have a rule that says their people can't hang up first. It became quite a common policy a while ago, for sensible-sounding reasons. However, if you're an irritated householder who's being harrassed for the sixth time today, it leads to an interesting situation if you tell them you're just going to get your card and will be right back, and then put the phone down (without hanging up) and walk away. }:-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Ford and General Motors, every other Automaker in the US takes their profits back home, which isn't the US mind you...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
...rate as scum-sucking bottom feeders in the food chain of life.
Of course, they rate right ABOVE the lawyers who defend them....
Although high school and college students made up a good portion of the workers at the 2 telemarketing companies I worked for (in high school and college, natch!) another, possibly even larger chunk, was made up of low income, low-educational level single parents. According to this article quotes statistics (granted, provided by the DMA) claiming that 60% of their employees are women, 25% are single mothers, 33% are minorities, 5% are disabled.
From my experience, I think those stats are more or less accurate. While a lot of students work telemarketing jobs for a summer or a year or two, people who stay with a company for several years are more likely to fall into the categories above.
As a progressive, those are the kind of people you don't want to see put out of work. And if you're conservative, you don't want ANY people back on welfare.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the calls. CallerID doesn't do a good enough job of blocking them, and I would never buy anything from them anyway. I also don't feel very sorry for the corporations who will lose "50% of their business." So, I'm on the list. But I don't think much for the chances of the newly unemployed, with "compassionate conservatism" looking out for them.
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
I love the way all of the telemarketing companies and associations claim they do not want to call people who do not want to be called, yet they fight lists that do exactly that as hard as they can.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
If there are jobs that we don't want done, then they should be lost!
-Rob
There are much more efficient ways of bothering people and make enourmous amounts of money doing it...
Simply sign a contract with Bad Boy records.
We've had a "Do Not Call List", called the "telephone preference list", in the UK for over 3 years now. It works a treat. I haven't had a telemarketing call for over a year and if someone does call you just tell them you are on the list and they leave you alone sharpish.
Has it been devastating to companies in the UK? I don't think so. Maybe just to the shady ones that can only sell stuff over the phone because no advertisers will deal with them. I don't know about you but I think this is a good thing.
Consider this to be a "popular vote," as opposed to one that requires representation. I have cast my vote, and it says "go away."
It's kind of like having a speed limit on the highway. Yes, it restricts your ability to go fast, whenever you want. And yes, it places a restriction on how fast you can deliver material goods - which can be translated directly into "lost potential money" because it takes longer to deliver your wares.
Safety requirements "cost jobs" for manufacturers of toasters. Sound level restrictions on cars "cost jobs" for manufacturers of glass-pack mufflers. Telemarketing is an industry that is subject to federal/state/local regulations, just like all the rest.
So cry me a river. Deal with it.
...telemarketing? How much buissness would they actually loose. Two million jobs, yeah maybe if these people got educations they wouldn't have a telemarketing job in the first place. If the list gets shot down, well I guess I'll have to go back abusing the telemarketer, and leaving the phone off the hook so they can't hang-up(some systems let you do this) and waste the telemarketing companies money.
If I were asked what I would want blocked, these three would be at the top of my list...
Along with this, I would be concerned about companies "volunteering" to provide these services for the ability to get you on the line:
"Hello Mr. Predko. Like you, the Eagle Hand Laundry is concerned about cancer and we would like to talk to you about what you can to help us fight this terrible disease..."
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The American Association of Drug dealers sues the US government on claims that current anti-drug laws will cost the jobs of some 10 million drug industry employees.
> The question then becomes *why* we should have to pay a service fee and do manual filtering to avoid being harassed in our own homes.
;)
The same reason our ISP now has to filter out e-mail, the same reason filter software companies are "viable" businesses (and will probably sue to block any laws to outlaw spams...
Seriously though, I though a fair number of telemarketeers outsource their boiler room operations to prisons and countries like India, so I am at a loss as to just what sort of job loss the telemarketing association is referring to.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
"This truly is a case of regulatory overkill," said Tim Searcy, ATA executive director.
"This [telemarketing] truly is a case of pushy sales overkill" said mobileskimo, Annoyed phone owner.
The telemarketing industry estimates the do-not-call list could cut its business in half, costing it up to $50 billion in sales each year.
Go make money providing society with something usefull.
Implementing the list could also eliminate up to two million jobs, the ATA said.
Stop getting paid for being a schmuck and go do something usefull.
Quality Service Management
Don't get me started on this one.
And we wonder why our economy sucks when people wake up and smell the garbage they've been tossing around. Well, duh, if we're not producing anything and just making shit up to sell to each other, how do you expect anything of real value to be added to our world?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
is a Do-Not-Sue list!
I hate these people. Find a different way to make money instead of calling me during lunch and asking if I need my carpet cleaned.
Exactly how many people buy stuff from telemarketers anyways?
Yes, IN AMERICA, we have a responsibility to ensure that dead business models are here to stay.
First stop, we need to prop up all of those blacksmiths that have been out of work for generations!
You should realize that your rights are not granted to you by the constitution, they are inherent. The constitution just sets out several rights that, NO MATTER WHAT, cannot be infringed on. Meaning: no matter how much anyone begs screams and wails, a law that violates those rights cannot legally exist.
Your rights are not granted by the government.
the government is not "Killing off an industry". As the right to privacy AND the right to profit are both not guaranteed by the constitution, the government is not forbidden from doing anything about it. If the people dont' want these scumbags calling them, it is their right to do something about it.
The US DEA has initiated a crackdown on unwanted drug dealers in affluent neighborhoods all across the US, causing countless millions to be out of work... ~m
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
Wah!
What does it matter that this nuisance industry employs so many people? Who out there sees this as a valuable service besides the companies doing it and the companies that employ them to do it? Does anyone out there welcome these calls?
We ditched our line a year or so ago in favor of cellphones. Now when we get a call we just say it's a cell phone, and no more calls. They come rarely, but still a nuisance.
Snooze and you lose your sushi.
Just calls (more) attention to the list so people will know it exists and sign up.
Now that the telemarketers can no longer bug you on the phone, I fear that they will resort to spam. Leeches will always be leeches.
We say goodbye to 2M telemarketers and hello to 2M new spammers.
Why not have the Telemarketeers start calling foriegn countries? Like they could call the new calss of IT proffessionals growing in India, now that they have extra money to burn?
VoIP works both ways
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
The RIAA can use the help with the lawsuit backlog, and the ex-telemarketers already have "worked for huge evil industry" on their resumes.
, muggers and such start a suit in defense of their jobs? Finally forbidding thievery forced SO many of them work illegally and risk law consequences...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The government is just providing a means where we can say dont call us. Were not forced to put our numbers there. There have been laws for years that allow us to tell the telemarketer to stop calling us and providing a basis to sue them if they do not stop calling.
By providing my phone number I'm telling them all to quit calling me. I get at least 3 calls a day left on my answering machine that I dont want nor care about.
And, if you have some spare minutes when they call you, try to make the phone call as long as possible, pretending you will buy but are just hesitating over details. The phone advertisers must score a max number of clients in a day, so longish conversations that end with nothing (for them) is the worst possible scenario (for them).
Wtf?
It would be difficult, but well worth it if we could enforce intelligence testing and create a Do Not Sell registry comprising of all people that fail.
Personally, if it is created I would also recommend a Call All Others registry that notifies everyone else who and where these idiots live anytime they purchase anything so we can go over to their house and smack them in the back of the head.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
...ship the jobs overseas, to English-speaking countries (read India) which are already doing telephone work for American companies.
Their cost of doing business will certainly go up, but, barring some international treaty on telemarketing, they will be beyond the FTC's reach.
The nightmare of globalization just keeps chugging along...
The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
The dirty secret of telemarketing is that the entire business model depends on pressuring mentally or emotionally vulnerable targets.
People who actually want the product will find it and buy it without telepests. People who don't want the product and have no problem with saying so will reject it in spite of telepests. The only case in which telepests actually make a difference is when they use the immediacy of phone contact against people who lack the self-assertion or mental competence to stand their ground.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
One telemarketer made repeated hangup calls to me after I told him I was not interested in his product, and would NEVER be interested in his product. Called the phone company about it, but they claimed they could not trace or identify the caller in any way.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
I do not believe anyone has the "RIGHT" to waist my time.
I come home look at my answering machine.
Push Play >
"You have 5 new messages"
"Message one"
"Hi you have one a trip for 2.."
Delete >
"Message Two"
"We calling you because you filled out a form.."
Delete >
"Message Three"
"Thank you for your interest in product.."
Delete >
"Message Four"
"Hey Creep73, Just wanted to know if you wanted to watch that movie tonight."
"Message Five"
"Congratulations, You have won the right to enroll in our new car givaway contest..."
Delete >
--------
These marketers are abusing my answering machine and my phone line. I pay for that line for my use and benifit not theirs. If they want to use my time they should have to pay for it.
I don't fill out forms or enter contests.
I don't want to win that car I just want to be left alone!
They shouldn't have the jobs to begin with. heh... Imagine that, the list actually works!
Soon we'll hear this:
Spammers are united against anti-spam laws. According to them, spam generates 50 million jobs, both directly (the spammers) and indirectly (companies that produce and sell anti-spam solutions).
According to them, anti-spam laws would devastate business, creating an unseen global recession. They estimate the impact on the economy would be 2 times more than 1929's stock market crash.
They also said that spam is good, and the money generated by it is the only effective way to combat terrorism and help the hungry children in Africa.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Pick up the phone, listen to the telemarketer's pitch, then say "Oh, that sounds like a great deal. Too bad I'm about to kill myself." It's worked so far for me!
Actually, I suspect they have no way of effectively filtering millions of people who have requested to be on the national do not call list and this is going to wind up costing them a lot of money to the tune of $11k per hit. It's probably more cost effective to fight this in court than try to set up this kind of a data base.
The law says they are supposed to have one but, in practice, I don't think they typically do. I know that I had to jump though quite a few legal hoops to get a couple of particularly persistant companies to finally stop. One of these companies (sorry, won't say who) actually called me personally to negotiate how long I would be willing to give them to remove my name from the lists of every telemaketing firm they were using at the time. My answer was zero since I already had documentation worth several thousand dollars in fines against them. They found a way to stop calling me though.
However, I'm willing to make the telemarketing industry a deal. The law currently requires that you identify yourself on request. Comply with that law, and we won't need this list. Stop blocking your caller ID and provide me with contact information when I ask for it. That way we both benefit. I can use the existing laws to seek legal remedy if you persist in calling me after I've notified you to stop and you don't have to waste your time calling someone who will never-ever-ever purchase anything from a telemarketer.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Why is it that Americans seem to often make the argument that something
should not change because it would cost millions of people jobs? It seems
to me that capitalism is based on people having to earn jobs that are
useful, not the public having to to suffer so that a group of people can
keep their useless jobs, getting paid for useless work.
It's like a slave driving company arguing against abolition because it
will cost thousands of slave drivers their jobs. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
In the future, if you ever hear someone make the argument that something
should not change because people will lose their jobs, kick them in the
teeth.
While eliminating 2 million jobs might be legal for private industry, there may be a constitutional basis for the suit based upon deprivation of property without due process.
Personally I'd rather see them strip telemarketers of life and liberty.
5 marks for insisting that the taxpayer compensate these idiots for investing in a declining industry? What do you think this is, the airline business?
Frosty piss?!
Semi-OT
They're mutually exclusive, except for your cell phone provider. I believe it's simply the fact that use of a cell phone (if you answer the phone) can cost you money, thus telemarketers may not call them. The exception, as noted, is your cell provider, who can reimburse you any used minutes.
I've had the same phone number for three years, and have never received a telemarketing call (not even through my provider). All services (banks, etc.) I use call my cell phone, which is fine.
I have a shampoo recommendation for you:
Johnson & Johnson - No more tears
maddox
Caller: May I speak to Mr Yozepp Cleeboorn?
Me: Nobody by that name lives here.
*click*
I'm sure the last caller was the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. <sigh>
My wife's favorite strategy is to look at caller ID. If it's "unknown name & number", she quickly taps the answer & then the end button. This denies the caller the chance to tag our answering machine, which my wife says they get some sort of credit for doing. Dunno if this is true, but I've learned never to argue with my wife over this sort of thing.
Meanwhile, I'm still working on my telemarketer zapper device which will send a 140 db burst of noise up the line... And now it looks like the no-call lists will steal all my potential market :-(
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
They are just as bad as other telemarketers.
The do not call list should include all telemarketers, not just businesses.
These people should be suing because the law is not being applied equally -- in which case, I would have to agree.
From the article:The free government registry for blocking telephone sales pitches has grown to more than 28 million numbers since it was opened June 27...
Even if we consider this a novelty effect and cuts the monthly growth by half, it will take very little time for everybody (or everybody who does not want to be called) to be on the list. And I think that their business model would fail well before the 100% figure. It is not only a matter of calling, one must eventually sell. I doubt 10 or 20% of the phones would be enough to keep most current players in this industry.
So, since the US is a service industry, we no longer make anything, if you take away phone calls, then where does that leave you, there are only so many holes to dig, and trash to pick up when no one is employed, all that IT needed to keep the phone systems going won't be needed, bad enough much of it goes overseas already
Frobnozzles from Frobarrific, Inc.? Is this a spin-off from the venerable Frobozzco from the realm of Zork?
The CB App. What's your 20?
I've heard of someone telling blasting telemarket guy...
"you know what? get a real job.
Telemarketing job isn't a real job!
this simply wouldn't work, since in the equivalent to a constitution ("Grondwet") advertising is specifically NOT free speech.
flame on...
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Reagan: hello..huh?
telemarketer: is the Man of house home?
Ragan: what man ? huh?
telemarketer: the man of the house sir..
Reagan: what house..wha?
telemarketer several hours later: the man in the moon house flew over th spoon and the cat cried all the way moe..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
There has been a new story on the front page of slashdot for like 5 minutes now but its "Archived" and comments can't be posted.
CmdrTaco: fix your fucking code
Whiners. Just like spammers, this is a case of people determined to make a medium not intended for advertising into one. Where does it stop? If they cannot call you, are they going to stand in front of my house and shout?
This is laughable. Like travel/insurance/real estate agents and media distribution, this industry sprang up because of a particular circumstance of the business environment. Now that its changing, all these business are crying foul. Not so. They are slowly being replaced with online/digital mediums for searcing and sorting, micropayments and validation services.
IMO, I hope these services die a painful death and the people involved with them go looking for work elsewhere. Economic disaster, true, but I think it'll be good for our population to be forced into newer concepts rather than propping up the old ones. A certain percentage may even train to be part of the digital industry's workforce. Sadly, some may become spammers (if not already).
We're content overloaded and most of it is junk food. There simply isn't enough quality out there to warrant getting it stuffed in our faces every way possible. Let's have a phone/Voip be for private conversations, not substance-free radio blather.
mug
Wait, we're debating the constitutionality of a law created by non elected officials? I don't remember seeing anyone from the FCC or the FTC on the ballot last election...
It's called "No Soliciting". When you post that on your front door I believe the guest has the obligation to NOT SOLICIT (ie. not try and sell anything) to the property tenant. If they try anyway, it could be considered trespassing or soliciting. If you approach someone and harass them in a parking lot and ignore the answer "no" it should be considered assault. Sorry guy, I have no use for people selling unwanted stuff to me or my grandparents. If I want it, I'll find you. Try passive marketing. Get an ad in the paper, the phonebook, or get into a search engine database. Better yet, word of mouth from someone.
What a bunch of B.S. I bet the people on the don't call list don't buy from cold callers anyway. Not to mention I heard it doesn't stop people you have a relationship, like your long distance carrier, from calling anyway.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Honestly think about it:
Those of us who do not like telemarketers, will not talk to them, and would NEVER buy anything from them are SIGNING UP for the list....
Those who like to buy stuff and chat, WILL NOT sign up for the list. Basically those of us who sign up are saving the telemarketers valuable time, by NOT wasting their time.
Get it???
I honestly don't see what the problem is... it's really a win-win situation for both.
I mean.. did anyone really stop to think about it? It's not like we're all automatically signed up.. you have to choose, to not get calls.
------
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
Instead of "Do Not Call" list, it should be named "People Who Will Never Buy From A Telemarketer" list.. then the telemarketers wont be losing money, they will only be saving time and money by not calling people on the list.
2 million jobs here in the US or 2 million less jobs they can just send to $CHEAP_FOREIGN_COUNTRY?
Which is it, telemarketing industry?
Color me paranoid. I will never put my name on a government list of ANY kind. The DNC list, when read in the right light, by the right people, with the right motivation, can also be called a Against Free Market Capitalism list, or a Does Not Play Well with Others list. The next thing you know, your name has been added to two more government lists: the Persons of Interest list and the Giving Aid and Comfort to Terrorists list. If you're really against putting up your individual privacy and personal access to the free market, you might even be an Axis of Evil...
In America you're free only if you are off the radar.
The only reason ALL telemarketers aren't in jail right now is that harassment laws require that the repetitive activity be carried out by the same person or persons. If there were such a thing as a class-action harassment suit, every telemarketer on the planet would be dead broke in jail.
:)
I'm supposed to feel sorry for people who are so damn lazy that they'd rather sit on their ass at home and knowingly bother people, than walk to the local supermarket and bag groceries? Piss off.
Now, if they'd just enforce a national do-not-send-me-spam-email list too, and back it up with something appropriate like the death penalty, maybe we'd solve a few problems.
"If they really believe they offer a valuable service,"
I was a telemarketer for all of two weeks. The training period before they could fire me. It paid for prom and I was probably the only one who would decide for people if they needed the product or not and had no problem telling them "no." I was selling *information* on lower interest rate credit cards for $369. I said "no" a lot.
I'm a programmer and I had a TI-85 which I could bring to work so I wrote a program that calculated how much they would currently have to pay to get out of debt and how much it would cost with a hypothetical low interest rate + $369. I did the script and then added "if you don't mind, could you tell me how much you're currently paying per month?" One kid had a few thousand in debt and was paying $20 a month. I told him how much he was going to end up paying (10's of thousands) and told him "you don't need to spend more money on this program, just pay 100 a month or so and you'll save thousands." He said "thanks!" and I hung up.
The company I worked for was LGSC which I decided stood for "Let's Go Screw Customers." Even the management found that funny and not surprisingly the office I worked at is no longer there.
What we were selling was actually just a list of banks that offered low interest rate credit cards. We weren't guarenteeing anything except an additional $369 of debt. I told quite a number of people to just talk to their bank. I wasn't about to screw people over who were deep in debt. And people who weren't in debt didn't need to spend $369.
And that is why I don't feel bad about having been a telemarketer.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
There's been a lot of bashing of telemarketers here (ie: Now they can get *real* jobs) that I think is a little misguided.
Although I believe that telemarketing companies are just a little short of evil, and I certainly don't greet their employees who call me with enthusiasm, I am related to several poor and uneducated people who simply find telemarketing as the easiest and most flexible opportunity they have to make money.
One cousin of mine with no more than a high school education was delighted to be able to quit his job at the air conditioner factory (one of those places with a sign posting X number of days since the last "incident") so that he could sit in a cool room in a comfortable chair and even be able to arrange his schedule so that he could go home in the afternoons to make lunch for my ailing grandfather.
Another cousin of mine who dropped out of high school because of pregnancy was happy to find a job that allowed her to schedule hours around the availability of her daycare provider.
They're not happy about disturbing people's dinner any more than we are. They think the speeches they have to recite are just as stupid and irritating as we do. But that aside, I would rather there was a little more sympathy for the 2 million people who might suddenly have to find something "better" to do with themselves.
Did I sign up for the Do Not Call List? Hell, yes. But that doesn't mean I want to have my revenge on those who are going to be most hurt by this law. The people who deserve to be hurt, the executives who allowed the situation to get so out of hand, are going to pad their pockets with profit either way.
The whole point, I think, is that telemarketers make people unhappy. It's an industry right now, sure, but there are plenty of blackmarket "industries," and these industries are outlawed because they make life better for the majority of people. And so there it is, what is a crime but a thing that harms or makes people unhappy in some way? They're not physically hurting anyone (as far as I know, heh), and they're not taking physical money out of anyone's pockets, but they're taking away from people's time, and as we all know, time is money. So let's throw them all in jail for stealing! =P Seriously, though, anything can be a livelihood, but that doesn't make it okay. "I'm not a mugger, I'm a salesman! I sell the value-added service of not beating people too badly if they hand over their money quickly enough."
For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the concept.
Suppose the local baker has $200 to buy a suit. A vandal comes along and breaks his window, and it costs $200 to fix it.
One might say, "it is bad news for the baker, but good news for the local economy since the baker is providing a job for the glass maker."
But that is a fallacy because the job created for the glass maker is offset by the job lost by the tailor. Overall, society is also worse off because instead of a pane of glass and a suit, it only has a pane of glass.
What is with these people who think they have some innate right to have their business model preserved and protected by taxpayer money/laws? Nowhere in the constitution does it say "Congress shall make no laws infringing upon a person's current working business model." Why doesn't it say that? Well, 1) the constitution doesn't say a lot of things, and 2) the people who wrote the Constitution weren't total fucking idiots. The fact that nearly 30 million people have already signed up for the Do Not Call list is conclusive proof that it is needed and most certainly wanted. The good thing is, any politician who votes to repeal this will do so in the face of 30 million plus voters. I can't picture a court throwing this out, either.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
When the DNC list first appeared, the Direct Marketing Association shrieked that telemarketing contributed $600 billion to the GNP. That's 6% of the economy. A quick poll of friends showed they didn't buy *anything* from phone spammers, so that number was immediately suspect. Then the American Teleservices Association said it was $200 billion and 4 million jobs, but that wasn't believable either. Their bid is now down to $50 billion and 2 million jobs.
Those numbers mean each telemarketer's contribution to the economy is $25,000, as opposed to the approximately $40K to $50K to the GNP by each working citizen. Now, let us consider the telepests must be selling a product on top of getting paid - minimum wage is about $10K yearly, so with overhead we're talking closer to $15K, which means the products sold must be worth no more than $10K assuming full-time phone droids. This is supposedly a profitable industry, so one assumes the price would at least cover the overhead (in this case phone spammers) and cost of product. In this case we see the overhead is massive which means the end-user does not get value for money even if the phoners are getting minimum wage. Anecdotal evidence elsewhere in the thread indicates pay rates are better than that.
For the customers to be getting a good deal, the yearly rate must decrease considerably - the only way this can be done legally is to hire people part-time or offshore the phone banks. The aforementioned wage rates, coupled with the overhead of annoying hundreds, if not thousands, of people to make a single sale, mean the jobs must be far less than even half-time. In other words, the "2 million" jobs number is actually equivalent to a fraction thereof.
All the above calculations presuppose, of course, that the DMA and ATA are not merely lying sacks of shit. For the $50 billion and 2 million jobs they claim telemarketers "contribute" to the economy, I sure haven't seen any trace of that presence on the Fortune 500 list. For that matter, the demand for goods and services will not disappear just because Joe LoBrow isn't hawking them over the phone when you're eating dinner. The demand will still exist, and conceivably increase once the cost structure decreases when the inefficiencies of scattergun telephone marketing go away.
Francois.
I think that is a loss to the economy I will be willing to make...maybe they can get a new job as vacuumcleaner salesmen going door to door, that is not quite as annoying as the phone calls.
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
I hate this kind of reasoning. That profits should come before people's rights is not what this country was built on, but it seems that more and more people think it's so and go on screaming "capitalism" as the de facto answer to everything.
Anyway, my point is - isn't this the same argument used by Southern slave owners pre-1865? It wasn't the moral argument so much as the economic one that prompted the South to cedede. They argued that there was no way they could sustain their way of making a living without free slave labor.
Is this an argument that justifies slavery? I think most of us would now say "no." I'm not equating slavery to telemarketing, but it irritates me when "it'll kill our business" is used as an argument of why something should or shouldn't be illegal. It may be a part of the whole story, yes, but I don't think it justifies much. As many others are pointing out, there's no constitutional right to profit from a certain business model. Along the same lines as the issue of the RIAA/MPAA and their heavy-handed tactics, I think it's time for this industry to come up with a new business model. If a DNC list that most people welcome is going to kill their business as it exists right now, I think that's a sign of something bigger..
Well anyway, back to lurking.
...my phone number exists in a pattern of numbers somewhere in the SCO contested code, so I can countersue the telemarketers for distibuting unauthorized/unlicensed IP!
Or do like Billy Joel(TM) and just trademark my name... and phone number...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
My experience too. I stopped bothering with caller ID altogether because so many of the calls are UNAVAILABLE.
Back when common law was first created in England there were seperate judges of law and equity, but modern judges are arbiters of both. As an example, this is part of the reason why non-compete clauses in contracts are difficult to enforce, because it's easy to argue that such clauses are unfair (i.e., not equitable). Of course, when acting for equity a judge's powers are technically much more limited than when acting for law, which historically leads to the kinds of strange rulings people are used to from the legal system.
When a telemarketer calls... usually right around dinner time, just do what I do: answer the phone, say, "Yes", one time and then just lay the phone down. You don't have to listen to them, they take up their precious time which costs them money. Just stroll by 5 minutes later and hang up the phone. If everyone did this I bet their would be a whole lot less cold calls going out around dinner time!
Economics 101 -- Succesful companies are those that have seen a need and filled it by the efficient use of manpower to produce the product for which there is a demand. There is no profit in making a product that does nobody wants.
DMA 101 -- Successful companies are those that have made every effort to advertise their product, even to people do not want or need the product. People who do not need a product obviously dont know about it, and a product which is not making a profit is obviously not being advertised hard enough.
Companies across the country are having a hard enough time maintaining their current workforces and remaining profitable. People caught in the current economic crunch have my sympathy. But I have no sympathy for any employee of any company that is determined to profit by pushing a product that they KNOW is unwanted.
Playing the sobbing violin for the two million jobs that will be lost is hopefully the last dying gasp of this failed advertisement scheme. They have known this was coming for quite some time, its not like this is some major shock and werent prepared.
$50 billion in lost sales costs 2 million jobs. So each job earns $25,000 Take out the physical costs of the items sold, the taxes paid by the companies on operations and payroll, plus profits to the owners. Figure each job therefore is worth $15,000. A lot more than minimum wage, a lot less than a normal person needs.
When my audio Caller ID announces a call coming from "Out of Area" (aka no incoming caller id information), then I let the machine get it.
Then, if the business really wants to get a hold of me, they'll leave a message and, if I'm home, I can pick up.
This has worked pretty well until recently, when some of the more obnoxious telemarketers have played a pre-recorded spam message into my machine.
I could have sworn it was not legal for them to do this; certain state statutes prevent it.
Possibly my outgoing message must explicitly refuse such calls, or the loophole interpretation is that I am implicitly agreeing to opt-in, to receive such spam.
<philosophical>One of the more tragic developments in modern society is that more and more of our "public attention commons" is getting exploited because the cost of doing so is largely external to the people doing the exploiting. For millenia, we've paid attention to people wanting our attention. With few people, such interruptions are infrequent and of little cost to our emotional well-being.
Not anymore.
Unless laws are put in place to provide guarantees of private space, then it will be exploited.
But that won't happen. Instead, we'll all just turn into stressed out consumers that develop our ability to actively ignore our environment, other people and any attempt to grab our attention.
The newest sign of affluence is less intrusion into your personal attention.
</philosophical>"Provided by the management for your protection."
and us peanut producers are fed up with people with nut allergies not eating our peanuts.. imagine the job loss they people are causing!! ban peanut allergies
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
lives on that kind of job. Put them into the real workforce of something that actually benifits people.
Also, why doesn't our government fine the companies that use unsolicited telemarketing, not the telemarketers themselves. This would cut the demand part out of supply and demand very quickly.
http://www.ohlssonvox.com
Sorry JohnnyB, you've got it wrong.
When you call my phone or ring my doorbell you are interrupting my life. You are using my resources in an attempt to do yourself some good.
The fact that I have telephone service does not imply that I want you to call me. Likewise, the existence of a door is not an invitation for you to attempt entry.
One thing I agree on: we shouldn't have to make silly little laws against things that annoy us.
If there were no scumbags around, we wouldn't need these laws at all.
Unfortunately the system has been built so that the telemarketers now have an advantage over the average citizen. Since everything is opt-out on a case-by-case basis, you get one shot to interrupt my life before I can cut you off. The NCL removes that first-strike advantage.
We signed our household up for the Colorado NCL last fall. It's wonderful! Now if we could get the phoney scam-police-charity types to disappear then life would truly be improved.
that poloticians are going to do anything that harms their ability to ask for money?
Such a rich fantasy life!
Gee, the McDonalds down the street is hiring, as is two donut shops and a couple of other fastfood places I drive by each morning.
You'd think that the Telemarketers would notice that since millions of people signed up to be on the list that nobody wants to listen to their crappy sales pitches. But I guess when you think about it, they're just the spammers of their media.
If it costs them money, and puts them out of business then I'm all for it.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
So, where were all these women who can't say "No" when I was single???
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
If 28 million people on the do-not-call list means that 2 million people lose their job, that means that for every 14 of us there's a telemarketer.
If he or she makes on average 20 phone calls an hour for a 7.5 hour day, that's 150 calls, or more than ten calls to each of us, every day.
Ok, so not everybody in telemarketing are call droids -- let's say the organization is top heavy like most US businesses, and half the people work in administrative jobs. That still means 5 calls per day for each and every one of us.
I firmly believe that the proper response to a telemarketer is "what's your email address?", followed by a quick usenet post stating that is a valid email address...
Regards,
--
*Art
Devil's advocate would have me say that telemarketers are being denied their right to free speech.
To this I would have to say, free speech is for individuals. Let the telejockey file the lawsuit specific to the call he could not make against the person he/she could not talk to.
The bigger question is how did we make laws that allow companies to constitute entities that have the right to sue? Companies don't make decisions. Companies don't sue or hire lawyers. Let's cut the bullshit. People in companies hire lawyers. People in companies sue. What a load of complete crap that a lawyer can represent a company's interest. Companies have interests? They have hobbies too? How do you justify a corporation having rights the way people do? Did I hurt the corporations feeling? Was there emotional damages that the company can sue for? Where did we go so awefully wrong? Ever since we allowed corporations to embody the concepts that people do, we've had problems. Allowing people to hide behind the corporate veil to do that which the person would never do if there was accountability directly to that person's behavior and actions. Has it been this way ever since we climbed out of the trees?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
I sold vacuumes. no not Kirby, but another with the same basic premise.
Then We had a motivational meeting where we were advised to go to 'lower income' home and apartment because they where easier to sell to, and if they couldn't make a payment, that was not our problem and the parent company would handle it.
I never did hear the end of that meeting.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
> i agree there might be more productive work, but
> it's not the governments right or responsibility
> to kill off an entire industry because that
> industry "bothers" some people.
You could say the same about drug dealers, loan sharks, casinos, contract killers, etc. Who is the government to "kill off" their "entire industry because that industry bothers some people"? Who indeed...
"Not that I think the do-not-call list is a bad thing...I'm registered. I think this is the death of an industry, but a death that I want to happen. An industry's right to profit should end the moment it interfers with my rights."
Well there goes the charity industry. Damn "feed the homeless", interfering with my dinner time.
Yeah, two million jobs that are probably already headed for India anyway.
and cost as many as two million jobs
While they're at it, why don't they campaign against the child pornography laws too? All those jobs that could exist, eh?
.02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Not in USA. American goverment is for the corporations, by the corporations.
Speaking about constitutional rights, would it be constitutional to somehow get rid off real-life marketers, those guys who knock your door and try to sell TV channels that you have already subscribed for, or a cell phone that you have already got? It's really annoying and disturbing to answer them "no" EVERY WEEKEND!
Constitution, shmastitution... Can I just kill them one by one?
Less is more !
The default is "legal to call", which satisfies all my radical libertarian proclivities.
It's only illegal if the recipient has specifically chosen to refuse such calls.
My intent is that you not call my fucking phone line. I've told a government agency my intent, and they have told you. Before these things happen, fine, go ahead, you didn't know that I didn't want your call, you aren't trespassing on my attention. *After* you have such knowledge, you *are* trespassing on my attention.
"No" means "no".
This is how mine works..
telly: Hi - is Dan there?
me: Oh, I'm sorry, He can't come to the phone now because he was killed by a serial killer. The poor dope was cannibalized and was a victim of a necrophiliac.
Telly: (usually speechless and scared. Hangs up.)
me: resumes eating his Cheerios.
They claim that they will lose money by not calling people who have indicated that they do not wish to be called?
So they are really saying that people who signed up do not know what is good for them, and they really would like to buy what the telemarketers are selling? What an insult. The overwhelming response to the do-not-call list makes it difficult for these people to continue to pretend that they are not leeches.
Used that one a few times. Immediately I got "Oh I am so sorry..." ...which made me rather angry, since I knew damn well they didn't care and were being even MORE dishonest. ;-)
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
F*ck em! Flip burgers. Enough said!
So, did you get a special type of phone line to do this, or is there some sort of off-the-shelf black box I can get to do that?
As it is, I just scream and verbally abuse them like the sub-human slime that they are. I can only hope that people like me have inspired a few up them to move on up the food chain to welfare recepients or crack whores. Might make them feel bad, and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.....
Early reports indicate that every cruise missile hit its intended targets except for one that leveled a Stuckey's in deepest, darkest New Jersey.
"It was something else," said Garden State resident Bibby O'Leary. "There were nutty cheese balls everywhere. May the gracious Lord grant me my wish to never look upon such a sight again."
"We gave the stinking pig-dogs a chance with the National Do Not Fucking Bother Me Resolution," said al-Sahaf. "We gave them every chance, but their black little souls were full of evil, and they had to be taught a lesson.
"Gurgle! Argh!" shouted American Teleservices Association executive director Tim Searcy from his hospital bed where he was being treated for extensive limb loss. "Millions of grandmothers will die for lack of employment, and rats will devour the children of the land! Telemarketing is the only thing keeping the cloven hooved man-goat at bay in his underworld!"
"There is ample legal precedent for governmental interest in protecting residential privacy," said FCC spokesbabe Bubbles McConnifer. "If those cock-gobbling leeches at the ATA don't like it, we can add them to the list of known terrorist organizations, and tip off the MPAA that the ATA is involved in heavy file sharing. Let's see how those weasels like that."
Related link:
Amateur photo of ATA headquarters.
--- Ban humanity.
Valid businesses will most likely leave me a message if I am not home. Telemarketers don't leave me messages. Two exceptions: the idiots who don't realize it is a machine, and sit there saying "hello? HELLO?" and those who still leave me a message about some fantastic prize I won by entering their sweepstakes (which I never enter).
I do ignore valid businesses to avoid telemarketers. Sometimes valid business are unsolicited, such as window salesmen, lawn care places, etc etc. I have valid businesses cold call me all the time. Many of them do show up on the caller ID.
I don't get the status UNAVAILABLE on my caller id, it usually shows up as "Out Of Area" or "Private". Those are telemarketers. Everyone else shows up with a name/number. If they are calling me for a valid reason, they'll leave a message. If not, then I don't care if I miss their call.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Try dialing *82 first. That usually toggles the "display number to called ID" flag.
The OCAA (Organized Crime Association of America) is suing the government over their "Anti-Theft" laws.
Their representative, known only as "The Don", says that the legislation cost their business 9.4 trillion US dollars last year.
"This is a staggering sum" said The Don
"That's the equivilant of the entire US GDP for that year. Do you know how many citizens can be employed with that kind of money?"
The White House refused to comment.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Now there is a telemarketing call I'd love to receive. If only they could get me to stay on the line after the "Hello, I am..." That's where I usually hang up. If I don't know you, I don't talk to you. Period.
Hi, I'm calling you to tell you about...
Can I get your phone number?
Sure. 1-800-55...
No, your home phone number?
Wha... why do you want my...
So I can call you at home. It's only fair, no?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
I find the most effective list I have put myself on was the do not receive list. you simply disconnect your telephone and receive no more pesky telemarketers.
same works with netaccess and spam (slightly more effective than procmail)
Meh
There's one reason that telemarketers hate this, and that reason is the 'weak-nos.'
Consider the people who will probably sign up for the list, because they have a hard time saying 'no' to people on the phone. This is where telemarketers make their money--by wearing down people who don't really want to buy their junk, but feel bad about saying no.
Telemarketers know that if they were limited to people who actually _wanted_ their services, there wouldn't be enough of a market to survive.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Did I mention Drexel's mascot is "the Shaft?"
One night I did cold calling of Alumni. I called 100 names on the list, I had 1 donation. Most of the alumni I called were downright hostile. Many were unemployed. A good chunk were bitter that they hadn't even paid off their loans and they were already hit up for donations. (Ten years later, but who's counting?)
I felt so dirty that I swore I'd never do it again.
That said, I did help out our local PBS station during a call drive. At least there, people were calling US, with credit card in hand, after having already recieved the "product" so to speak.
The first rule of marketing is to have a product that will sell itself. Ideally you are only introducing the buyer to the seller.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
" Jobs that don't require training are actually a lot more easy to find if you're looking for the type of jobs that involve heavy physical activity (construction, warehouse work, et cetera .. the common denominator being jobs requiring above-average physical fitness but only sufficient intelligence to follow orders) .. but I guess the kind of guy/gal who thinks sitting in a cheap-o office chair for six hours harrassing random strangers via phone is a nice way to earn money would be less interested in a job that actually required them to .. *gasp* .. _sweat_ for their money."
Your compassion for the handicapped is duely noted.
Have a nice day.
Caller ID does NOT stop the assholes who want to call me at 9AM on a Sunday morning after I've been rebooting server crashes until 6AM from the night before. This sort of early AM call happens more than I ever wanted.
Caller ID was a stopgap measure, and yes, it allows you to choose whether or not to pick up the phone. So does screening calls behind an answering machine. However, these methods only treat the symptom, not the cause. That's what this is all about.
Yes, I'm fully capable of taking the phone off the hook, but what's the point of that - should I be forced to prevent legitimate calls from arriving?
Sorry, donotcall.gov is LONG OVERDUE.
So, when can I sign up for the email equivalent of this list? Granted I get enough Taiwanese junk, but that's the easiest to block. I'd love to be able to serve the people with the broken "Unsubscribe" URLs in their emails with a nice fine.
Kind regards, Devon H. O'Dell
And I thought SPAM was annoying, good thing I live in Belgium, if someone calls me like that, I'd yell his friggin brains out!
First, they claim that this will devestate the industry. Personally, I couldn't wish for more. In fact, I think that telemarketers are worse than spammers -- telemarketers annoy you at THEIR convenience, including at the dinner table. People don't just want to unplug their phone -- it's still the most important communication medium. However, YOU chose when spammers annoy you as you chose when you check your email.
In addition, when I was flying back home, I called my dad from an airport on the other side of the country. It showed up on the caller ID as unavailable, and, due to telemarketers, he no longer answers unavailable callers, so my call didn't go through.
All things considered, though, I think that telemarketers should be happy for this. I mean, think about it. It's actually going to help the industry. They're wasting their time making a long distance call to my house, for nothing. So, the people who add their numbers to the do not call lists are probably going to be the ones like my family who NEVER buy anything from them. Thus, the only ones they'll reach are those who will ACTUALLY BUY something. Thus, it's going to increase effeciancy (god, I hate spelling).
You have a strange count of 90%. I would say that 95% of "UNAVAILABLE" calls are telemarketers. Any buiness that has "UNAVAILABLE" on caller ID, should call their phone company and get it fixed.
Just in case you weren't sure, but that look was him trying to figure out what the word "morals" meant.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
I can't afford a sig!
Who it does affect are the somewhat more socially acceptable telemarketers, and the ones that are least likely to be trying to screw you for a profit -- pollsters, charities, etc. It makes their job more difficult and thus more expensive, which is rather silly since they're generally less objectionable than telemarketers trying to sell you crap.
You sir, are an asshat.
Some of the worst telemarketers are the "charities." Particularly odious are the so called "Policemen's Fund" or "Firemen's Fund", where they intimidate people (because you don't want to say "no" to people who carry guns & billy clubs for a living, do you?) into giving to their fund, which probrably offers very little benefit to actual cops.
Vice President Cheney ... Is that you??
hilarious
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
"In the end, a bunch of these telemarketing companies will go broke, and we'll just have fewer telemarketing companies out there. We'll still have them, though. Ultimately the idea that you can use the "do not call list" to determine who is likely to listen to a telemarketer will win out, but there will be fewer telemarketing companies to use it."
I'm betting that the more likely outcome will be these companies moving to more friendly countries. A phone call from India is little different that a local call.
The US will be batting 0 and 0. What jobs we can't give away, we force out.
The Auto industry is going down because of yen devalued. U.s. cant compete with that. And the Japanese bigtime SUBSIDIES to their industries.
We fight wars while they take market share and don't want to buy anything from the U.s. except real estate. Nice free trade.
The Government has no clue that FREE TRADE does not equal wealth. It creates dirt cheap products and no jobs ! The Asian nations don't want American products except to steal technology and copy it.
We will all be in Telemarketing in the future.
You should have every right to call me if you want to. Just as I have every right to put up a fence to prevent you.
Companies don't have rights. The constitution and the amendments, and for that matter most laws that govern human behavior don't apply to corporations. When did we get such a silly notion?
A telemarketer wants to sue me or the person who administrates the DNC for blocking his free speech? Go ahead. Just make sure you make your lawsuit personal.
Mr.Iwannabeabitch vs Mr.Bitchslapper.
Not
Telenagger Inc. vs MrBitchslapper.
Nor
Telenagger Inc. vs DNC.org
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
All the states that instituted this previously were sued ( and the state always won, at least here )
No big deal, welcome to america.
2003, the year of the suits..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"There are a lot of people out there, I know a few, who just can't say no to telemarketers, get drawn in and buy stuff they know they don't want. These people know they have a problem, but still get caught out everytime the telemarketer calls. So going on the do not call list is the easy way out for them."
Maybe we need to institute a "Do not let me gamble" list then?
I was looking a the do not call sign up sight and have not found any thing that prevents writing a script to register all telephone numbers. all that would be needed is a easy to write perl script and a mail server. One thing to note, is that while it is possable to sight up to the list online, it is not possable to have a number deleted online. to have a number delete a person would need to call the 800 number form the number to be removed.
Where can I buy one of these?
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
28 Million (people) can't be wrong
Just because something is popular doesn't make it right. Slavery was very popular in it's time.
...that the industry says will devastate business and cost as many as two million jobs.
If someone puts themself on the do-not-call list, then what are the chances that they will buy anything from a telemarketer?
So basically, the do-not-call list makes their job easier by limiting wasted time on non-responsive customers, letting them call the people that they actually might have a chance to sell something to, increasing the ratio of sucessful calls per hour... and they think that's hurting them?
If the do-not-call list decreases the number of possible people that can be called by telemarkerters it could have the very interesting effect of concentrating the telemarketers attempts on a much smaller populace. The end result could be the constant ringing of telemarketers for people who aren't on the list. If the list ever gets close to 80 or 90% of the available phone numbers I'd hate to not be on the list.
Disclaimer: No punctuation, grammar, or spelling intentionally used.
CALLER: Hello, I'm calling you on behalf of President George W. Bush. He has a very important message for you. For just 3 easy payments of 19.99 you can own your very own George Foreman grill. For an extra $2000.00, you can be the proud owner of the Texas sized George W. Bush premium edition.
I want the telemarketers to answer one question before their suit is allowed to proceed:
When exactly was it that your right to speak mutated into your right to use my property to speak?
Since telemarketers will have to check the Do Not Call list constantly to make sure people aren't on it, won't this increase jobs? Or at the very least, they can re-assign all those people who make calls to data checking, they'll probably make more money that way anyway, seeing as they could call themselves "data integrity specialists" instead of telemarketers. Or maybe that's what the telemarketers are afraid of, having to actually pay people decent wages!
"I'm sorry, what country did you think you were in? Our country, a constitutional republic, is setup in such a way that if an entire industry bothers some people, those people can get their legislators restrain that industry in certain ways."
And yet Microsoft runs free.
"Sorry, he's dead."
I tried something similar to this, it went like:
Marketer: Hi this is Ann with a special deal on blah blah.. Could I speak with Joe?
Me: Sorry he died.
Marketer: Oh, sorry to hear that. Could I speak with whoever the current owner of the household is then?
I should have replied, "No, he just died at the audacity of your response.".
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
...a group of technophiles who largely know nothing about sales techniques citing privacy rights that don't exist...
Me: "Hmm...okay, I will cut you a deal. YOu give me a job, and I will buy your...product...deal?"
Are those 2 million US jobs? Or 2M jobs that are already or soon to be moved overseas?
It's too bad we had to come to this point. They brought it on themselves by not targetting customers more carefully when it became a widespread complaint. E.g. if I bought tires from Sears 2-3 years ago, I probably wouldn't mind if they called to ask if I'm interested in a big tire sale they're having.
" There is no "right to profit", profit has to be earned and if you can't earn it you're screwed. If your business model is shit then too damn bad.
just my $0.02"
Well if that's all you're making, then I guess you better get a new model then. Sorry.
The TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991) (47 USC 227 and subsequent FCC regulations of CFR 64.1200) have outlawed several practices and create certain requirements for others.
Two things completely outlawed:
1) Junk faxes - unsolicited commercial faxes may NOT be sent without WRITTEN authorization of the fax machine/line owner. Period. There is NO EBR (established business relationship) that would exempt that. If you are sent an advertisement and did not specifically give your (express) permission, then it is illegal. Period. Do not allow yourself to be taken in by the BS of 'removal' numbers that are on the faxes. It is merely an attempt to legitimize the industry as much as spammers try to suggest remove address make them ethical.
2) Prerecorded commercial solicitations to your home may NOt be initiated without the EXPRESS permission of the owner. An exemption (unlike junk faxes) would be an EBR. Calls made for survey, political speech, or non commercial are exempt.
If you receive either of the above offenses, then you are immediately owed $500 per VIOLATION by the person initiating the call and on who's behalf the call is made.
That law provides a private right of action. Meaning you are specifically given the authority to sue them in court. While you cannot sue someone that litters on the highway, Congress provided this right. this pretty much makes you a private attorney general of your domain in regards to telemarketing.
Live calls are regulated. They must identify themselves by the caller's name, entity placing the call, and an address or phone number by which they may be contacted. This MUST be provided without your even asking. The company MUST have a DNC (do not call) policy in place before making such calls. They MUST provide you with a written copy of that DNC policy upon request. NEVER, ever allow the telemarketer say they will take your name off 'the list'. Specifically DEMAND that they ADD your name to their company's Do-Not-Call list (emphasis added).
The telemarketing is claiming the loss of millions of jobs. Yet they have not specified in what country. Do many of you not realize how many outbound call centers are in countries like India? The law by not affect that out-of-country company directly in terms of jurisdiction, but it does put liability on companies on who's behalf the call is placed. The only way a company can get by completely is if they are based and operate outside the country and have no business presence in any area under the jurisdiction of the US.
I have gone to court several times against telemarketers. If people knew their rights and enforced them by bringing suit in court as Congress intended, then a national list would not be necessary. the companies would simply not be able to operate.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
I *don't* need Viagra ( I just forwarded a bunch to the FTC), and i sure as HELL don't need some @$$hole WAKING me at 7:40 in the morning, for the SECOND time (after i dumped his first attempt), to sell me stuff i don't need. Call me unsolicited, and be prepared to get your head ripped off.What a shame if the entire marketing industry took a downturn. Wake me up, YOU'RE buying breakfast.
Yeah, and if you think a lot of jobs will be lost by restricting telemarketing, just think how many would be lost if we outlawed drugs and prostitution! Telemarketers will be the sacrificial lamb that will wake us up to the devastation caused by government interference in the markets before we go too far.
On the flip side, my psychic foresaw that this law will raise the GNP by $57 billion after people sitting at home unmolested by telemarketers get bored and start up home business to kill time.
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Nice. We're supporting idiots for an economy of idiots.
Single white female seeking Darwin to share mass wide extinction of idiots. Must be indescriminate and compassionless. Love of better gene pools a plus. Reply SASE.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
They can take the do nothing PHONE COMPANIES with them.
"If there are jobs that we don't want done, then they should be lost!"
That's why your job is going overseas.
So they're making $100 billion a year in sales? That means that on _average_ each phone number is paying between $300 and $600 a _year_ to telemarketers, depending on how many of the cellphone numbers we want to include. (Techncially it's illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones, but does that stop them?)
So who's buying this stuff, what are they buying, and how much are they paying for it? Clearly there have to be some people spending totally atrocious amounts of money given how many people there are who have never bought anything from a telemarketer in their life.
Do the idle rich sit around waiting for telemarketers to call so they can spend thousands of dollars a year on them or what? Or are a lot of low and middle income people blowing their savings on this crap?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Yo yo.. mod my grandaddy message. Hey it's a grandmammy you say.. well, theres a penis hanging from it, so, go figure.
I hope these guys don't win anything in court. I really hate getting calls to equip my apartment with vinyl siding. One of the downsides to having an apartment with an actual street adress. The home-stuff telemarketers never leave you alone. On that note, I think of the people who sell things over the phone as being a member of the same pecking order sequence as alcoholic bums downtown.
I'm SO glad you brought that up. If you have an answering machine, just get a recording of the three information tones that are played when you dial a wrong number and record them onto the beginning of your answering machine message. That's essentially what the TeleZapper does - and you can do it FREE. We get a LOT fewer (virtually none) telemarketing calls since we did this.
Exactly. They're never hawking anything I want anyway -- in fact, the interest level is about as high as for the average spam.
But "2 million jobs"?? Are they counting not only the boilerroom flunkies and their managers, but also everyone in every industry that ever used telemarketing? Even it that's so, I suspect this number was pulled out of their ass.
And most of said flunkies aren't making a living wage anyway. Back about 1985, I attended a "job fair" that proved to be a boilerroom recruiter. Now, they claimed that it was possible to make serious bucks. Well, I happened to be sitting where I could see onto the manager's desk, and the previous week's wage sheet just happened to be laying open where I could read it. ONE person had made the promised several hundred bucks. ONE other person had made about $100. But everyone else had made only $40 -- for the entire week.
Now, do we really WANT to preserve an industry that pays that poorly, even compared to India??
Come to think of it, if cheap internet-based long distance becomes an everyday reality, the next step is to outsource boilerroom telemarketing to India. And then how do you go about enforcing a Do Not Call list??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
6) Play Beethoven on the keypad.
7) Try to order a pizza.
8) Lower the volume of your voice over a few sentences so they have to listen very closely. Open up a modem with manual dial on and have it screech at them for a bit.
9) If its one of those machines that plays a message then records, play music into the phone. Hours of it. Also try the modem trick.
10) Hold one of the phone keys down the entire time.
11) Act like you're having sex. If the order taker sees that you're busy and will call back insist you're not busy.
12) 'Forget' everything they said more than 10 seconds ago. Ask questions to refresh your memory.
13) Ask when they last time masturbated. If they don't hang up, sheepishly ask them if they would mind helping you.
Or we could just load them into a space ship along with all the phone sanitizers and launch them into space, never to return.
If you go this route and they don't hang up and keep talking, do your rates automatically switch over to $1.99 / minute?
Charities, politicians and poll takers are exempt from the do-not-call list.
The national do-not-call list, however, will destroy the industry -- everyone in the telemarketing business seems to agree with that assessment. Experts provide various theories about why this will occur, but the fundamental reason seems to be this: Americans think they don't like telemarketing calls, but they're wrong. Americans believe they want to be on a do-not-call list, but their past actions -- namely their purchases -- betray their true feelings. The FTC says that the do-not-call list is justified because it merely gives people a choice over whether they'd like to receive sales calls; according to that theory, the people who actually do buy things from telemarketers won't add their numbers to the registry, and the industry will not suffer at all. But that analysis is faulty, the industry says. In the abstract, everyone hates to be sold to -- you hate it when commercials interrupt your favorite TV show, you hate the "intrusive" ads displayed on your favorite Web site, you hate being handed pamphlets on the street, and you hate being called by a telemarketer who promises "a fantastic deal."o t_call/index.html
Farhad Manjoo, 7/15/2003, http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/07/15/do_n
It's an interesting point, but no reason to prop up an industry that most of the public wants to see die. Manjoo also misses the point that businesses with whom you have had prior dealings are allowed to call up to a certain time period after those dealings.
Telemarketing is an industry based on intruding upon other people's privacy and time. I will not weep for their loss.
And, as my boss once said regarding an angry client: "Maintaining their livelihood is none of my concern."
Oh, BTW, pound sand, telemarketroids.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
Oregon created a state-level no-call list a couple years back. I put my number on it on the first day it was available. Since that time, we have received exactly one phone call from a random telemarketer. When they called, I simply said "Please let me speak to your manager; you're obviously not familiar with the Oregon No Call list" and they promptly hung up (never to be heard from again).
Before the days of the No Call list, we'd get two or three calls a week.
My boss used to interrupt the telemarketers and say something like, "Look, this Foobar Wizbang sounds really really cool, but this just isn't a good time to talk with me about it; I'm quite busy right now. What time do you get off work? 11pm? Great, if you'll just give me your home number, I'll give you a ring sometime after 1am and we can discuss it further..." He has more patience than I; I just hung up!
-rob.
Just to be safe, maybe we should add the number for the WOPR to the Do Not Call list.
Anyone have the number handy? Bueller? Bueller?
I would expect telemarketers outside the US to use the DNCL as their phone number lists.
I'm not sure exempting charities is a good idea, either, they are often worse. I had a friend who gave to one charity, and she had to change her number. She was deluged with calls by charities who thought they had a sucker.
Charities tend to hire telemarketers to make the calls (at least the dumb ones who don't mind losing 30-80% of money donated) anyway.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
"but it's not the governments right or responsibility to kill off an entire industry because that industry "bothers" some people." It is IF we, the people, Demand it! Pull you head out of where ever it has been. It is JUST like SPAM! Exactly! My equipment, my service Not theirs. They trespass every single time they call using MY property or services.
A "Do Not Call" list should mean JUST that, with NO execptions. Piss on the charities, pollsters AND politicians. DO not call me, I'll call you, if I ever want to. Othewise, stop calling. Your "industry" is a useless one, all you scum do is gyp old folks out of their retirement money. You all need to DIE, alsong with your supporters. My motto: Kill a SPAMMER and TELEMARKETER each day , until they all go away.
For those telemarketers who are upset let me put this spin on the whole thing.
You are not going to lose 50% of your business. You are going to lose 50% of the numbers you can call. The 50% that don't want to be called and wouldn't buy anything if you did.
The remaining 50% will probably be more productive.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
My wife gave $20 to the humane society,
Now we get atleast 3 or 4 charity mailings a week. That's not a lot by some standards, but still annoying.
We get mail about dogs with their eyes gouged out, "Please help Scruff!"...hell shoot the damn thing to put it out of it's misery. How much does a bullet cost?
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
anyone care to mod this up? At least it's accurate, unlike the previous post.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
I have ads on TV because the advertisements help pay for the programs.
Telemarketers seems to think they have a fundamental right to use my telephone to sell stuff... You want to sell stuff using my phone, you help pay for it.
Same goes with email massmarketing.
So does that mean that 2 million telemarkets are responsible for calling 60 million numbers, or does each telemarketer call just 30 numbers repetitively? Ok, maybe 50% of telemarketing jobs are overhead (seems high), giving each telemarketer who's job is in jeopardy an average target of 60 numbers?
That would explain the high volume of calls... but if a call lasts 30 seconds on average, and each employee works 8 hours (960 calls/shift), that means each of those 60 million numbers would receive an average of 16 calls each day (960 calls/day 60 calls/employee).
Hmm, 16 calls is a bit high... but many households do receive a good number of calls each day (likely 'cause they're saying "take me off your list" rather than "put me on your do not call list").
Ok, maybe it does add up and a couple million people will be looking for new jobs....
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Allow me to prepare a defense of another industry in the same spirit as this one given by the telemaketers federation of evil:
Not smoking is a harmful socially irresponsible thing to do because it would cost the medical profession Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs every year if nobody smoked, therefore everybody should smoke whether they want to or not
Remind me again why I am supposed to care about these idiots?
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
According to This page There are between 12 and 40 million drug dealers in the US. They should get together and sue the Government - think of all those poor dealers who will be out of work when those "Do Not Sell Drugs" laws take effect. Think of what it will do to the economy.
-------
Hmmm, lets rate this 62% Funny, 28% Insightful, 29% Sarcastic, 1% interesting with a +1 bonus for putting in a link.
(For the people who think moderators need help)
>cost as many as two million jobs Pah. Marketing managers will turn away from telemarketing, and spend their money on other acquisition and retention tools (other adverising, direct mail, online etc.), thus growing those sectors. Ths is just creative destruction, not a wholesale loss of jobs. The estimates are overstated.
Hello sir, do you wish to look as happy as I do? If so, send one dollar to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace
So, the telemarking industry says they'll lose 50% of their business, which means the loss of 2 million jobs.
:-/
So they're saying there are 4 million telemarkers out there?
No wonder I can never get through a bowl of Ramen without getting the hard sell for a timeshare
Who cares! I sure as hell don't! It will be 2 million under paid, depressing, high pressured, demeaning, unsatisfying, false hope, no education needed, scam pushing, annoying jobs that will be removed off the face of this earth.
What a relief! I have no pity at all.
An old friend of mine once taught me a neat trick with the phone, it goes something like this:
If the phone rings and you *don't* feel like answering it, then *don't*.
It's that simple.
I don't care about DNC lists, and gov't DNC lists, etc etc etc etc. If I feel like picking up the phone and dealing with whoever is on the other line, be they friend or foe, then I will, otherwise I'll let the answering machine catch it and I'll decide later what to do.
It's not so hard and frees up my time so I'm no longer a slave to the phone.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I just don't get why it seems so hard to for some to understand that the right to free speech doesn't entitle one to an audience.
Hardly afraid and my post isn't exactly offensive...
there...I logged in, I'm not at home currently, that's why i was not logged in.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
Damn straight.
Let's keep the government out of service contracts negotiated by willing participants.
Telemarketers buy their phone service and pay their employees fair and square, just like the rest of us.
The government will make no laws inhibiting a corporations right to profit.
hehe
Actually I'm making 3.5M times (wow that sounds like more than it is) but 0.02 is all the effort I'll put into a discussion on telemarketer's so called "rights".
I got a nice cordless phone/answering machine with the TeleZapper feature. It plays the Doo-Dah-Dee "number disconnected" tones whenever anyone calls. The phone cost $40, which is about what you would pay without the TeleZapper, so it's essentially free, except for the 30 seconds it takes to explain to friends why my phone made that weird noise. I used to get 7-8 calls a week, now I get 1-2, and they are all political calls and surveys that would get through the no-call list anyway.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That's all I use. Friends and family know I will pick up if they start talking AND I'm available (and want the call). Anyone else doesn't matter. If the caller's voice is annoying, I can knock the volume down or just terminate the call without ever picking up. (Haven't had anyone stupid enough to call right back after that.)
The hardest part about DNC lists having been localized in the past - each business mainttaining their own - is that it is a hassle to remember if you have added your name to that particular company's list and even more of a hassle to go after them (prove you've asked to be on their DNC list? WTF). OTOH, a federal DNC list means ONE CALL; you know you are on the list and the telemarketer knows you are on the list. There is no "oops, someone must have lost your request" or "sorry, I grabbed the wrong list" BS. They call you, you call the federal agency, and they get fined. Period. They call again, you call the agency, they get fined again AND the agency can easily see the pattern.
Rather than complaining about the business they'll be losing, they need to be grateful that their time won't be wasted calling people who don't want to talk to them.
Ah, I begin to see the telemarketer's problem. Very quickly every telemarketer will be down to a few thousand numbers that aren't prohibited. Those few thousand people will be receiving hundreds of thousands of calls in a week, since the telemarketers have no one else to call. Soon there won't be any numbers for them to call. Poor babies.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
I predict that outcome of all this DNCL stuff will be a reduction of about 0 in the medium to long term. All it will take is for the marketers to all be re-named as pollsters, that is an excluded class of callers in the law. THe DMA and other industry groups will quicly figure this out and spread the work to their members.
Instead of getting calls like "I'm calling today to offer you a spectacular deal on vinyl siding!", you'll get calls like "I'd like to ask your opinion on vinyl siding and what you think it could do to the asthetics of your home." May I ask you a few quesions?" I can think of nary a pitch that couldn't be converted in to some sort of "poll quesion".
I'm not at all familiar with what the FTC or FCC require of a "pollster" firm as opposed to a "direct marketing" firm, but my rough guess is little to nothing.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
I wrote up a humorous little piece about how the telemarketers could recoup their losses by forming a 501(c)(3). Read it here: http://bryce.jasmer.com/blog/archives/000014.html
I remember once my family just bought a new phone that had a speakerphone. We received a call and my Mom answered on the speakerphone so I heard everything, even though I was in the next room. The guy went into his spiel and my mom just kept saying no thanks, but the guy kept going on and on. Finally, I just walked into the kitchen and hung up on the guy. Why is it hard? If I get a telemarketer now, I say I'm not interested and hang up immediately.
Exactly. Although the type of people who run the worst scams on the elderly ("hi, it's your grandson Joey... no, I didn't die in a car wreck, no, anyway, I need money, can I come over? Please, I thought you loved us? I guess what mom said about you being a mean old bag is true... is grandpa there? Oh, he's dead? Well, how much money do you have in the house right now? Well, I'm coming over, I need it") really won't care, because they already call from pay phones or otherwise use subterfuge to make quick money and skip town.
Still, putting my grandma (and my parents!) on the list means that the less-severe attempts are thwarted.
Get off my launchpad!
In the book "The cat who walks through walls" by Heimlin (sp) there is a point when the main charcter has to disturb someone in the middle of the night. The electric door requests for say $50 dollars for disturbing the individual. If the awoken individual agrees that it was a good reason to be woken up they give the money back. Otherwise they keep it.
That would be a great system for the telemarketers. Set up a charge of say $1 for the disturbing call and refund it to anyone who had a reasonable reason to call.
I think I would go out and post my number all over for them to call just to make the $1 each time they wanted to call.
You sunk my business model!
Just another area of the Gov trying to control. Get lost. Stay out of the private sector! Geez If you kill biz where you gonna work? Dorks. ALL BIZ has to do sometype of advertising! GET REAL THEY HAVE TO!
so this lawsuit is probably gonna take a good while to go through the courts and all....it definitely won't be over before the october date when this list is distributed and publicly accessible......so let's say a pig flys in to the courtroom to deliver a snowball from hell and a note attatched that the telemarketers must win their lawsuit or all the judges get a wedgie from hitler (and the telemarketers win). now they have probably one of the largest compiled lists of valid contact information in history, and its their own fault for letting themselves get duped into giving out their contact info so easily. hopefully, "Funny" is the appropriate modreation.
Please keep in my that my ADHD keeps me a little scatter brained and I sometimes can't focus long enough to
I was an Annoying Mall Survey person for a day. Not the ones who annoy you in the mall, but the ones in the back room that do the survey.
My first day I had to show a shampoo ad to a high-school dropout on minimum wage (which I knew from the demographic info) who would never be more than plain-looking. Asked her if she thought the shampoo, which cost twice her hourly wage, would "make her beautiful" - she said yes. Boggle.
Next day I started job-hunting again.
99 telemarketers on the phones.
99 telemarketers on the phones.
Take one down
Feed him to a rusty woodchipper
98 telemarketers on the phones...
It was sarcasm, right?
Yeah. It's the Ninth Amendment, which basically grants to the people any rights not specifically enumerated to the federal government. In other words, just because the Constitution doesn't say you have a right to privacy, doesn't mean you don't.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
If you don't care about DNC, don't care about telemarketers, and have no problem with letting the answering machine pickup all the calls, then...
I guess you have no problem.
My apologies for missing the point but, exactly what was the point of your post then? And why are you even reading this thread? Much less posting anything here?
Can someone mod the previous poster flamebait or troll please.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
I didn't see those later links, but they help demonstrate a couple of points:
1: This isn't a black and white issue. The DNC list is not all good, and not all bad. Both bad people and good people are going to be hurt, but a lot of people are going to be spared from what some consider a major annoyance, if not an invasion of privacy and waste of their time.
2: This issue is pretty symptomatic of a whole lot of the complex issues of privacy, government regulation, and capitalism, and the increasing way that American government is failing the poor and uneducated.
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
I don't know exactly what the law is about this, but I've never got phone spam on my cell. Lately it's cheaper than the local telco and I get long distance, and the obvious handiness of being mobile. Plus now friends & fam only have to remember one number for me. If I ever do get an unsolicited call, my planned response is "f**k you, this is a cell phone, *snap*". Can anyone enlighten me as to the laws on unsolicited calls to cell numbers? Are they just filtered by service providers?
Cheers,
Mike
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
I recieve all calls on the answering machine, and then figure out which ones to reply! Most definitely I never answer to 'Florida holidays' for my yet unborn kids, and 'Credit card debt relief' without any present debt - what the heck I don't even have a cc - I use debit cards. So if they have an intelligent system which can distinguish that I'm not a viable customer, then they can stop calling me and save some money on phone bills. On the other hand the 'no call list' with surely make them save all the money they would otherwise spend foolishly on my answering machine (trying to teach it English). So infact the list is good for everyone - no calls -> more savings for companies -> less distraction and deleting messages for me. Three cheers to the no call list... for i=1 to 3
bear in mind that there is a precedent set, in texas anyway, that says that you are in fact legally entitled to shoot someone who knocks at your door for tresspassing.
maybe someone can track down the story from about 4 or so years ago, but there was a student of asian extraction, who knocked on a door asking for directions, and was shot by the homeowner. the shooter got off as the student was considered to have been tresspassing.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
they claim that adding 25Million people (really phones) to a do not call list it will cost 2 Million people will be out of a job. That's roughly one telemarketer for every 10 phones - if that were really true I'd be getting a call every hour at the moment
Anybody immoral enough to work in direct marketing should be put to a quick, clean death. Yes, 10 years of spam have radicalized me. Why do we put murderers on death row, but not the people who steal an hour of my life every day? Fuck spammers, kill them all - it makes no difference whether they call or send email. Kill them all and pee on their dead bodies.
Come to think of it, if cheap internet-based long distance becomes an everyday reality, the next step is to outsource boilerroom telemarketing to India. And then how do you go about enforcing a Do Not Call list?
You don't. Unless the telco's are going to shut down the offenders on their own (and do you think they will?) we'll basically start to get our calls from other countries.
Methinks in the end it's just going to be another industry that's going to move to an underdeveloped country. And I'd imagine that the decrease in labor costs will be enough to offset the increased long distance charges.
CNN cut the one part of the AP story that discussed the legal theory: First Amendment.
Why does CNN feel the need to dumb-down everything?
Heck... I love it when they call. I keep them on the line for as long as I can. 30 minutes, no problem, I'm very interested. I've even had some paint salesmen drive out to my home in the middle of nowhere.
But, I've never bought one damm thing from them. Nothing. I just love to waste their time and money. I bet if just 10% would do the same thing I do, then telemarketing would cost way too much to do.
The above is not worth reading.
There is no doubt that the do-no-call lists will cost telemarketing jobs. Most people work these jobs for a very short time - only one out of a 100 or so can be successful in this field. And those people scare me. They are scum. Like them eat dirt.
"Do you know I were rubber underwear?"
They usually hang up right after that.
..........FULL STOP.
I think the jobs they were referring to might have been prison jobs. In my state, they get $.75 per hour; which I think is generous by the way. Why are we paying prisoners? OOPS...different topic. Anyway, if 2 million prison jobs are at stake, this is just FUD; if not, who cares? Is anyone besides the telemarketer's family going to care? Either way, I agree.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
...Yeah, jobs of useless marketers who aren't producing anything of value, just promoting products that aren't good enough to promote themselves. They're economic leeches.
Repeal the DMCA!
Exactly. They're never hawking anything I want anyway -- in fact, the interest level is about as high as for the average spam.
I'd go one step beyond, and say that i wouldn't buy anything from someone calling me because i don't trust that it might not be fraudlent. Just like buying something from a spam email is more likely to ruin your credit then anything else.
Why are we paying prisoners? OOPS...different topic.
Indeed, but the answer to your question is that if we didn't, it'd be slavery, which is unconstitutional.
Got some great responses.
Playing with telemarketers is fun; it's why I haven't put myself on the list.
You're a suburbanite.
Find your own sig. :P
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
With over two hundred million people in the U.S., two million jobs is approaching 1% of the entire population.
1% of people are sitting around making spam phone calls to my house, and will be out of work because people sign up with http://www.donotcall.gov/ ???
I think not!
hmmm, why should they want to call someone who has no interest in their product. Because, if you've ever been in a meeting or had training from a talented sales person or telemarketter, you will know that there are a plethora of techniques to make you buy. These are seriously researched, psychological methods to move you towards a sale, and even the most skilled and smartest of consumers can be manouvered into a position where they will buy. Everyone thinks they are too smart to be swayed...and guess what, after you've purchased from a good sales person, you'll still believe you're too smart to be swayed, and you'll probably even believe that you've pulled one over on him. How many times have you gone into a store with no intentioned of buying something, but walked out with a product you didn't want, didn't need, but still feel great about purchasing it, and that you got a great deal. That's salesmanship for you
"The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men--the right to be let alone."
-JUSTICE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
Governments at various levels pass laws against nuisances all the time. They are correct to do so. Most communities have a means to compell a resident to deal with dogs that bark constantly.
I don't share the hostility that most posters here feel towards the actual telemarketing employees.
I know people who have at various times held telemarketing jobs, and they all described thier jobs in similar terms to what is in some of the more hostile posts here. They took those jobs because it was what was available where they were. They took those jobs to get the last bit of cash needed to move on to the "greener pastures" we all dream about. The telemarketing employee is just a fleshy version of the email client being used to send spam. Thier employers, the clients who hire these firms, the DMA, the people who buy the crap that these poor sods are forced to sling over the phone for a couple of bucks are to blame for the plague of interrupted dinners. Not the employees who take these jobs.
Two Million jobs is a sh*tload of unemployment. The economy is not gonna "perk up" like that republican bastard promised us with two million people added to the unemployment ranks.
In other words I'm split on this one.
I'm on the do not call list.
I think the DMA and ATA need to shut up and go home instead of suing for the right to sell crap that very few people want over the phone. Maybe they will realize that a "no cold calls" policy is good for thier business AND their employees.
But I don't think that two million jobs lost in one fell swoop is good for anybody, and I don't for a second think that I'd be above taking a crappy telemarketing job if I had no other option to keep the rent paid and some food in the fridge.
Read, L
" So, where were all these women who can't say "No" when I was single???"
I believe they were all under 18 at the time.
I can confirm this. How do I know? I called the FCC last year and I asked. I believe the complaint form is Form 475, which can be found here.
The Internet is full. Go away.
Very few of them know about the requirement for a WRITTEN do-not-call policy and/or the need to provide it to the consumer on request. Even if they do, just not knowing about it violates the law.
Here's just one active consumer's results: smallclaim.info
My results have been very similar (although I have a little bit better collection record, for whatever reason). Do your checking account, and more importantly, your fellow consumers a favor, and enforce the law congress enacted, as only you can.
Usage: fortune -P [-f] -a [xsz] Q: file [rKe9] -v6[+] file1
I PAY for telephone and email/internet service to communicate with family, friends, etc. NOT for telemarketers and spammers. These companies should not be allowed to use my services to advertise their products. It should be illegal or they should pay for my telephone and email/internet service. Similar to broadcast TV, the service is free but there is advertising.
If the gov't legalized drugs the bottom would drop out of the market and the kid slinging rock on the corner could no more affored a 'benz than jim working the register at the liquer store
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Then selling legal drugs would pay as well as a:
Pharmisist or more likely a pharmisists assistant or maybe a liquir store clerk.
Prostitutes however would make out much better
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Actually, my dad did #5 to Visa, when they were trying to sell him more insurance/features/useless crap. Kinda backfired the next day when he tried to swipe his card and it got rejected. Calling back and proving that you're not dead is all kinds of crazy fun.
Enforcing the Do Not Call list from other than US telemarketers is covered in the Do Not Call legislation. A call from outside the US will not necessarily be blocked, but the parent company selling the product as well as any vendor involved in delivering that phone call is responsible for that call.
That is, a US company involved in any way, shape or form with the delivery of that phone call may be fined as defined by the legislation. Just because the phone call originates outside of the US does not let any US corporation get around the Law.
Also, realize that many states have their own Do Not Call lists and the legislation behind the state list may be different than the Fed. list.
If you haven't seen what all the specifics are, I encourage you to look at
donotcall.gov to get the facts. There is a grace period from the time you register your phone # and there are exceptions which is all explained at
donotcall.gov . Additionally, you may want to look at your state governments homepage to see if it has its own list.
I would concider being a telemarketer to not be a job or the worst excuse of a job. Anyone can dial a damn number and ask someone to buy something... Can we say bone head?
"If I was smarter I could rule the world!"
Listen up, motherfucker, if you or one of your fucking customers calls any of my clients, I WILL SUE YOUR ASS. You personally will pay damages. You personally will have a judgment on your credit report. You peronally will be on the hook for violations of the TCPA.
Your bullshit constitutional arguments have been rejected by every federal appellate court to have considered them.
I sued four bullshit mortgage companies today. Each of them will pay. You will pay, too.
I'm watching, motherfucker.
Or as someone else mentioned, VOIP (which, being from a previous era and therefore senile, I'd completely forgotten about) is already doing the trick of cheap LD :(
Can incoming calls be blocked on a basis of their originating country code?
As the person who mentioned getting a telemarketer calling from India said, about all you can do at that point is flame the company they represent, until they get the message -- assuming it's a U.S. company in the first place, of course.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Could be, but (having read the link about prison jobs that someone provided) I find it hard to believe that there are *that* many willing and (more important) able prisoners. Now, I can see such a prison job having value as "learn to interact like a human being, not like a gorilla" training, and rewarding better behaviour has some value too, but I suspect the numbers affected are in the thousands, not millions.
So yeah, it's about equal parts FUD and baloney, and guess what -- I don't care! Your job, or lack thereof (in prison or not), gives you NO right to intrude on MY life, especially not in a persistently aggravating and often borderline fraudulent manner.
Maybe if telemarketing were used responsibly (solely for legit products, reasonably timed and targeted, and willing to take "No" or "Get lost" for an answer) we wouldn't be so interested in kicking it out of our lives!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Right -- just as with spam, telemarketing is too often a redflag that the product is somewhere between questionable and outright fraudulent.
Yeah, some are legit, but my next question is -- how reliable *are* telemarketers? Do you really feel safe giving one your credit card number, even for a legit product that you want? How do you know they hire honest people?
I'd venture a guess that some of the lower-class outfits have employees who do a little, um, "side business" involving credit cards...
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You inform us, "the parent company selling the product as well as any vendor involved in delivering that phone call is responsible for that call."
Ah, that makes it easier -- and may ultimately do more good, once the "you morons had some guy in India call me" fines and court cases start piling up.
I rooted around donotcall.gov a couple days ago, but didn't read *all* the stuff up there, so I'd missed that bit. I did sign up, tho to some degree it's redundant since I've been on a master DNC list for years, so get almost no junk calls.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
- Wastes telephone bandwidth.
- Wastes people's time.
- Wastes people's money.
- Pisses me off durring dinner.
Wouldn't it be nice if the terrorists thought that telemarketing was really important to our economy and targeted the call centers instead?CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The idea of something "costing" or "creating" jobs is a silly and misguided one; if it were that easy, we could all be rich by just paying some people to build pyramids, and other people to tear them down.
The question is what effect the telemarketers have; and the answer is tha they destroy and harm productivity, and that their loss is everyone's gain. In the long run, this is not two million people "losing their jobs". This is two million people getting jobs *doing something useful*.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
This is the one project that a) can be run on a shoe string budget (ooooh, a searchable list of phone numbers, I bet that took a REEEEAL big RAID array and Berkley DB) b) is desirable by a vast majority of tax payers.
To me, this doesn't seem to conflict with the purpose of government in even a mildly libertarian society. It's protecting a public good: the utility of the phone infrastructure, and our sanity.
(If you think the phone infrastructure isn't a public good, then you're deluding yourself as to why you have local phone monopolies)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I don't care if telemarketers lose their jobs. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to do that, they can find some mindless other type of way to make money. Telemarketing is a bitch to me because I'm 22 and companies always target me for hiring. Not only that, but when I go into staffing agencies I always dread that they will offer me a telemarketing job just because I'm young. Telemarketing can go to hell.
This is the real reason for anyone who wonders why the BIG BAD GUBERMENT had to ruin all those "innovative" marketer's fun.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Microsoft wins, severely.
Go figure. (And don't ask about MS vs. Constitutional Republic...)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Frankly, I'm really turned on! ::snicker:: Who cares if it's true- it was imaginative (moreso than your post, AC)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
so does the mafia. Not that I'm trying to make any comparisons... ;-P
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
...we Americans are lazy and ineffective workers. Asians are a lot more productive than we are.
Either we get on the stick, or we won't be able to float our economic advantage over other countries for long; they'll just trade "around" us, leaving nothing but a convienent place to house executive offices with friendly laws.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Telemarketers decamp en-masse to Mexico or Cuba.
Legislation? We don't need your Yanqui Legistlation.
You don't. Unless the telco's are going to shut down the offenders on their own (and do you think they will?) we'll basically start to get our calls from other countries.
I already do get most of my telemarketer calls from other countries.
The correct answer for annoying telemarketing, as well as annoying spam is not to go after the "Direct Marketing" firms. Instead go after those who hire them.
Don't go after the guy spamming you. He can hide, he can move around, he can spoof addresses, and make it difficult. Instead, nail the company that hired him. If they want to sell to you, they have to have a way to exchange mone for goods or services. There has to be a way to contact them, and therefore they by necessity can not hide.
Going after the spammer, or telemarketer makes you feel better, and is more immeadate, but making it financially risky for a company to use either will be a far more permanant solution, and will prevent at least U.S. companies from using either technique. Then it would be simply foreign companies that might telemarket or spam, but since international purchases are always a bit more complicated, it should permanantly knock spam and telemarketing back.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
This also shows how stupid it is to evaluate the development level of a country based on its sole GNP. Do they also count the amount of money wasted on cleaning up beaches after an oil spill ? Does that reflect the development level of a country ? I thought that a developed country was one where industrial accidents rarely happened. Are telemarketers actively taking part in the development of a country when only 10% of the people they call will actually buy something? Are parasites of the economic system also considered to be contributors to the GNP? Lawyers? Drug dealers, anyone? Do we count in the same GNP both the amount of money made by the tobacco industry and the amount of money spent on curing lung cancers?
I think it is time to drop this "Gross" National Product criterion for judging the development level of a country. It's a buzz word in the media, but it obfuscates the overal view we can have on the development of a nation.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
two millions jobs? Now,
1. who are those 2 millions assholes?
2. if spam is really so "cheap" to send, what are those two millions jobs used for? counter-fighting lawsuits?
3. hope they will stard spamming each other because of that.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
The American made cars were crap. They aren't so crappy now, having just won kudos for having longer laster higher quality components that have cut down on repair shop time.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Their Headquaters is in the United States, their profits come to the United States, even though most parts and final assemblies are peformed outside of the United States.
Toyota is headquartered in Japan. Their profits go to Japan, hence it isn't an American Company, even though most parts and most final assembly is performed in the United States.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
However, Ford is still headquartered in the United States. Their profits come back into the United States. If Ford didn't have quite so much in legacy costs, unlike Nissan which has little in legacy costs, they could have more parts made in the United States.
These legacy costs are nearly crushing the Big Two, (Ford and GM) both of which spend more on insurance and pensions then they do on steel every year...
(Legacy costs being retirement pensions, health insurance and such...)
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Many of the debt-relief/counseling corporations in the U.S. are registered as not-for-profit corporations to take advantage of certain laws. Perhaps the do-not-call list will simply lead to an explosion of ostensibly not-for-profit telemarketing "charities." The current telemarketers will register as not-for-profit corporations with some statement about how all profits after taxes go to charity. Then, the telemarketers are back to business as usual, representing commercial clients, but calling as a charities (allowed by the do-not-call list). Perhaps, existing charities with their own telemarketing departments will be take initial advantage of this loophole.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
The calls may originate in India, but the companies still have some level of US presence. It may be little more then a distribution center, but it can still be shut down and siezed in lieu of payment. Plus federal arrest warrents could be issued and probably would be if offshoring became a big enough problem and it happend to be an election cycle.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
We already know the true side of telemarketters.
So if I made a business hiring kids to allow others to deficate/urinate on them (I wouldn't be surprised if there's a market for this), and when a special interest groups tries to shut me down, I can cry fowl?
What I don't understand is how a person goes to a telemarketing company and agrees to do this. There are, if not far more profitable, then just as profitable, jobs that are just as shitty.
Isn't there a law against offering jobs that are demoralizing and demeaning?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
those two million jobs are grossly underpaid Indians and Russians, from the sound of it.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Fortunately, freedom of speech grants the right to say something; not the right to force others to listen.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Now I can throw away all those "Dixie Chicks" CDs.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!