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41 Million Sign Up for National Do-Not-Call List
ejbst25 writes "The first wave of the do not call registry sign up ends 8/31. There is plenty of news coverage but they say there is already over 41 million numbers registered."
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Just what I need, someone annoying me with a sales pitch and poor grammar during dinner!
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Hey, I don't want that guy down the road using his phone to call me either. I demand that the government do something to stop him. And people whose names begin with the letter 'J', none of them should be allowed to ring my phone. And bald guys on Fridays. Nope, keep them from ringing my phone, Mr. Federal Government.
Telemarketers have just as much right to use the phone system as anyone else--that is, if the phone company agrees to it they can use it.
It's a sad, sad day when the federal government steps in to interfere with the agreements willingly forged between telemarketing companies and phone companies.
Don't like the way the phone system works? Don't buy phone service. Don't like that your phone rings when strangers call? Get a smarter phone.
Don't go whining to the government to "fix" it though; you could just as easily be the next one to be told that you can't call others.
and don't forget it. The DMA is up there with al Queda. It boggles my mind that the DMA is allowed to exist in this country. Child pornography causes less damage and is less offensive than direct marketing (euphamism for directly bothering people incessantly to buy crap that nobody wants, needs, or even desires). If kiddie porn is not protected by free speech (which it is not) then direct marketing should not be, either. I'm not even talking about spam, which of course is not protected by free speech. I mean using telemarketers, door-to-door sales, snail-mail, and sticking fliers on my front door. Buy a billboard, buy a TV commercial (and don't complain when i skip it with Tivo), or buy a newspaper/magazine ad. If you're not willing to do those things, hope your product sells by word of mouth. If it is good and useful, it most likely will. If it's a piece of shit, it doesn't deserve to sell a single unit. In the meantime, the direct marketing association terrorists continue to flock to our mailboxes and front doors, and continue to terrorize us via the phone while we're eating dinner. They should all be nuked.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I work for AT&T _Wireless_ (to be pedantic, AT&T doesn't provide cellular service). Your implication that we sell or disseminate your mobile phone numbers to telemarketers sullies ATT Wireless' good name based on groundless, rash supposition.
Here are some plausible alternative explanations for how your mom could get telemarketing calls on her cellphone:
1. _She_ (not ATT Wireless) gave it to someone who gave it to someone...
2. Someone who had her number before her did #1. Numbers are recycled (thrown back into the pool) so this is entirely possible. The likelihood of this depends on how long she's had the number.
3. A telmarketing organization just guessed at the number, perhaps at random, and found that it works. Number prefixes are not a secret and autodialers could most certainly try numbers within an NPA-NXX range until they hit pay dirt. I don't know if this is used in practice but there's nothing stopping them from doing so if they decide to disobey the law prohibiting them from doing so.
You should probably start by sending e-mail to privacy@attws.com for someone to investigate the merits of your claim rather than air this dirty laundry in public. You could also have her call Customer Care at 611. This has never happened to me in about 7 years of having ATT Wireless service but I have heard of other cases, so Customer Care is probably well equipped to assist you.