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Dave Barry Strikes Back Against Telemarketers
ikkonoishi writes "The Miami humor columnist Dave Barry in his column
here encouraged his readers to exercise their constitutional rights to call a telemarketing firm which had declared the National Do Not Call List unconstitutional. Well it seems to have worked." Needless to say, the targets of the prank were none so keen on being called themselves.
I have oftened wished that I could do what Dave Barry has done. Particularly annoying are the recorded messages that I continue to get on m business line. On occasion I have called the 800 numbers to express my displeasure. Simply calling in ones and twos isn't going to work. What we really need is for someone to organize a web site where people can report these incidents. If we all band together and call these companies 800 numbers simply to express our viewpoint then maybe this activity will become too expensive for companies to exploit anymore. Anyone up for it?
Why are the telemarketing companies worried? This list of people who do not wish to be called, are probably people who wouldn't buy anything from them in the first place. This list should be welcomed as it prevent them from making 30 million calls on which they will not make any money on.
For those of you too lazy to read the articles, here's the phone number to call: /. their phone system!
1-877-779-3974
Let's
--Quentin
but in the end you're just sinking to the telemarketers' level.
;-)
Although I agree with you in principle, I think you missed the bigger issue...
The Telemarketers insist that they have a constitutionally protected right to harass us, even after we have added our names to a federally-maintained list saying that we would really rather not have them call us.
This mass calling, while superficially petulant, demonstrates that a right to call and harass people works both ways, if they want to play that game.
Think of this as no different than signing Ralsky up for every junkmail catalog in the world... While childish, it does get the message across - "We hate you and everything you do, so please shrivel up and die, preferably in some painful manner that involves your loathesome occupation". Well, perhaps not quite that verbose, but they get the idea.
Is this really something that needs to be worsened by giving ideas to the industrious - but idle-minded masses on slashdot? The damage can only be worsened here!
Oh, Pshaw! I expect we'll reach 70 or 80 comments before someone thinks to post the home phone numbers of various telemarketing company's CEOs (hint, hint, c'mon, someone out there has those suckers, post em!).
Do the ends justify the means? No.
Hey, the telemarketers already presented a number of points describing why we have a right to call and harass them. We all just want to congratulate them for their hard work. And hey, since the DNC registry would cost them two million jobs, if enough of us keep calling, perhaps they can re-hire those two million to field the inbound calls. So you see, we have simply found a way, by all pulling together, to save two million jobs in an otherwise bad economy.
Now, I assume you were trying to be funny, but clearly some tool on here took you seriously and modded your post interesting instead of funny, so I'll reply.
Good. Let people lose their jobs. Interfere with their attempt at making a living. If they inconvenience me one iota, I couldn't care less in the slightest if every last person there lost their job. Its a job. They can get other ones. If they can't, well our government has shown we'll bend over backwards to support people with no ability or desire to support themselves.
They choose to call me, they choose to inconvenience me and you or they claim their ability to make a living should matter? Thats funny beyond words. What if these were ignorant asshats sending 50 million spam messages a day? Would shutting them down be bad because its going to put some people out of work?
PRESS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION
Due to the outstandingly positive response to recent media events, the American Teleworking Association has taken steps to protect its constitutional right to protection from unsolicited calls by registering with the National Do Not Call List.
"We were shocked by the intrusiveness of these unsolicited calls", commented Tim Searcy, ATA Executive Director. "None of us could get any work done! Our heartfelt thanks to the Federal Government for their foresight in creating such a resource to protect people like us!"
Returning to work today, ATA employees are looking forward to a day of uninterrupted work now that they are protected from such intrusive unsolicated calls.
Don't think that the telemarketters don't know their own business.
Not to be left out should be the fact that you should call the telemarketers and talk like a pirate next Friday as Mr. Barry suggests!
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/
Sigh, okay if they spend their time answering the phone that can't spend it calling/making money. If they answer the phone for an outraged citizen they can't take a sales call. When there lines are getting inbound traffic they cannot do outbound traffic.
So this did hurt them. How much depends on what profit margins these companies have. I know there are plenty of business were one lost day of work can make the difference between a loss and a profit. So keep it up.
Oh and the claim about lost jobs doesn't work. These telephone sales people are taking the jobs of shop sales people.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why not do like I do ... when a telesales person calls you just put the phone on speaker with volume down and put the handset down ... they can talk as much as they like, to themselves. The call is costing them money, not you. Its actually more enjoyable to leave the volume up a little, and you can hear them as they realise that you aren't listening :-)
Since those guys have turneed off the 877 number here is updated contact info: Administrative Office: 3815 River Crossing Parkway, Suite 20 Indianapolis, IN 46240 Toll Free: (866)) 500-4272 info@ataconnect.org Legislative Office: 1666 K Street, NW, Suite 1200 Washington, DC 20006 Toll Free: (866) 500-4272 info@ataconnect.org give em a jingle.. i am
"It's difficult not to see some malice in Mr. Barry's intent," said Tim Searcy, executive director of the ATA, who said the added calls will be costly to his group because of toll charges and staffing issues.
Domain Name: ATACONNECT.ORG
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Fanger, Robert (DUMHRQNOBI) rfanger@fangercom.com
Fanger Communications
238 S. Meridian St.
Ste. 210
Indianapolis, IN 46225
US
317-636-7635
Searcy, Tim
8645 Admirals Woods Dr
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46236
317-823-8462
Call the Chairman of the ATA at home!!!!!!!
Chairman:
Thomas Rocca, (770) 429-1956, 3840 Jiles Rd NW, Kennesaw, GA 30144
(provided by Google)
Here's a telemarketing situation where I'm just waiting for the payoff. Our office has several blocks of 100 numbers each, most of which aren't in use and are forwarded to the front desk (because a client may have an old number). Some months ago a mortgage company started autodialing our blocks. Our receptionist went from calm to frothing at the mouth in 60 seconds flat, and eveyone else was getting either a hangup call or a voicemail left for them.
I called the 800 number in the voicemail I personally received, got a manager on the line in record time (it helps if you sound like you want to confirm your satellite recon for the imminent airstrike) and explained that we had a block of numbers, that they were calling ALL of them and to please stop right-fucking-now. I then did the usual bit about do not call lists and a copy of the policy (which I never got). The do not call list was tough, since numbnuts didn't grok the "I have several hundred consecutive numbers" part very well.
The next day they did it again. I got another manager on the line, who was significantly less than understanding about the whole affair. In point of fact, he seemed dismissive of the whole fact that I had complained the day before and tha the was perhaps a bit offended that I was trying to interfere with his attempt to rescue a failing mortgage business. I reminded him about the FCC's $500 per call regulation and he got offended. Go figure. Apaprently the fact that the Federal government might put him out of business wasn't a factor in his worldview. I rang off.
And called the local police department and reported a couple hundred harassing phone calls. I leaned heavily on the second manager's attitude toward my request of the previous day and on his utter disregard for Federal codes covering his business. I named both managers in the complaint. These guys are less than fifty miles from us and in the same state, so it could happen.
We have a case number. Some day they'll screw up, and then a telemarketing manager will do the Perp Walk. I'll be sure to put whatever details I can on a website so we can all share the joy.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
You're missing a few key points.
One, it wasn't the telemarketing companies that were getting the calls, it was the association that represents them. While industries are huge, the associations behind them often employ less than a dozen people, and rarely more than fifty. So if thousands of people start calling, it's a hell of a telecom slashdot effect.
Two, whether they normall make money answering the phones or not is immaterial. We don't make money answering the phone when at home, but we still find it disruptive and annoying to get calls from telemarketers; this is the same concept. The goal wasn't to keep them from getting profitable calls, but rather to turn the tables on them, using their proposed "First Amendement" model of justified harrassment.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I work for the IT department of a small, rural hospital near New Orleans. Which means people call me about problems with everything from their PC to their fax machine. It may not be part of my job description, but I'll try to help them with their problem if I can...
One day a couple of weeks ago, I had a very frustrated message on my voice mail from the director of our Radiology department. It seems that the phone in one of the diagnostic imaging rooms would ring, and when someone would pick it up it was a recorded message from a telemarketing company.
If it had happened once, she probably would have wrote it off to a mistake. Instead, it kept calling the number. Continuously. For a half hour, by the time she'd left me that message. Now, as you can imagine, having the telephone in a MEDICAL PROCEDURE AREA continuously ringing is a bad thing. Not to mention that line now being tied up so that in an emergency the techs can't call for help.
I ran (literally) down to the department, picked up the phone the next time it rang, and recorded the call. After about two minutes, a real human picked up the line.
Said human began reading her script when I asked her if she knew what phone number this was. I then told her that at that moment, I was standing in an x-ray room, in a hospital, with a patient who was supposed to be getting tested right now but because we kept having to pick up the EMERGENCY PHONE they were just kind of lying there moaning (at which point the director standing next to me made the most pitiful moaning noises, heh, heh) and we would like to GET HER OFF THE TABLE IF YOU PEOPLE HAD NO OBJECTIONS...
There was a moment of silence, then prolific appologies, a promise to stop the calls, more appologies...After leaving her flopping on the end of the hook for a moment, I accepted her appology, took her name and number, then hung up.
The phone never rang again.
You know, the first amendment doesn't guarantee you an audience...
ATA officials have said about 2 million of the 6.5 million people working at telemarketing call centers across the nation will lose their jobs because of the rules that established the nationwide "Do Not Call" list.
so 5% of the USA's 140 million labor force work as telemarketers? Why did the journalist let them get away with those numbers?