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Successful Do-Not-Call Complaints?
bcrowell writes "After some legal delays, today is supposed to be the first day that the Do Not Call registry will be enforced. Got my first illegal call just now, and strangely enough, when I said I was on the list and started asking for information, the telemarketer said my signal was breaking up (particularly strange since I wasn't on a cell phone.) Has anyone successfully gotten the necessary info from a telemarketer and then managed to file a complaint? You're supposed to be able to file a complaint at 888-382-1222, but their touch-tone system doesn't give you any way to do it. You're also supposed to be able to do it via
the web, but there doesn't seem to be any form, although they say "You can file your complaint on this Web site using the File a Complaint page, which will be available starting October 1, 2003." Remember, it may take up to 3 months after you register until they're required to stop calling you." Tales of success? Tales of failure?
Ask the telemarketer what company is calling and what company they are calling on behalf of BEFORE you tell them you're on the DNC list.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
The Do Not Call site does have a form that you can fill out to file a complaint the address is https://www.donotcall.gov/Complain/ComplainCheck.a spx
i got a call one time from a telemarketer and went along with it and said i was really interested. i told her that i was busy and asked if i could write down her information and call her back. she agreed. busted. i only did that once to see if it would work and it did. now i don't even answer the phone. caller ID is a wonderful thing.
You are going to need some very good social engineering skills to try and get that information. Most telemarketers only want YOUR information. When you start asking them for thiers they will get suspicious and hang up.
I forsee a large increase in caller ID being purchased.
I haven't received any calls in the last few days. I won't miss the calls in the middle of dinner, but what I will miss is the "game-playing" with the people who called. One of my favorites was the: "What color panties are you wearing?" and see how long you can keep them on line.
-C...
You can file a complaint here.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
We have a local do-not-call for our state. Whenever I've gotten calls of this nature, I'd just petend I am interested so they start telling me who they are and such, and then I kindly inform them that my number is on the list and they are about to get fined.
Its so much fun, too!
Tales of a government program.
I work at my county IS department and everything I do is proceeded by a phone book of paperwork. Expect the DNC list to not work for about a year, after which no one will want to file a complaint due to the 73-page form describing the callers information, company's information, their past credit history, and a ransom note for their 3-month old border collie.
This past week I've gotten three phone calls, all from Spanish speaking telemarketers. In the three years I've been here, I have never received any calls from any Spanish speakers, a few Jamaicans, but then with the GF being Jamaican, that's expected. I could hear the "boilerroom" in the background, so I'm sure it was telemarketers. I give them my stock reply, this is not a home telephone number, it is a business, and they hang up. I've always found telling telemarketers your number is a business number cuts down on the repeat calls.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Have you tried to complain at https://www.donotcall.gov/Complain/ComplainCheck.a spx ?
NOTE: Seems like only Mozilla will work when submitting a complaint. At least, that was my experience.
If you blog it...
I haven't heard from them about the federal list, so I doubt that they are compliant yet. They have voiced an interest in getting out of telemarketing altogether because of the growth/success of the Missouri no-call list; with any luck the federal list will be the last straw that makes them jump.
As an aside, I was surprised by how much money some companies are charging to subtract a list of numbers from a call list; I charged my regular hourly fee, which isn't too much for DELETE FROM call_list WHERE phone IN (SELECT phone FROM AGList)! I later found out that some companies were charging thousands for 'safe' call lists on CD!
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
Got my first illegal call just now, and strangely enough, when I said I was on the list and started asking for information, the telemarketer said my signal was breaking up ... Has anyone successfully gotten the necessary info from a telemarketer and then managed to file a complaint?
As far as I know you just need a few details like the company name and maybe a phone number or something. I've had two telemarkers call since the DNC list went into effect, and both times it was relatively siple to get a website out of them simply by role-playing a "naive but cautious" person, saying something like "Hmm, the offer sounds good, but I'm not sure. Do you have a website where I can find out more infomation, just so I can see that you folks are legitimate?" Telemarketers are usually happy to do whatever it takes to make you trust them. If they don't have a website, you should at least be able to get a phone number out of them by letting them give their pitch for a minute or two, then saying you're in the middle of something really important, but what they're selling sounds very interesting, so if you could just get a number where you can call them back... "And what was the name of the company again? Oh, ok. Where are you guys located?"
Of course, if you start off the conversation with "Hey buddy, I'm on the Do Not Call List", you can't expect to get very far...
But if you're polite and play your cards right, you can easily get all the information you need out of them. (If you really feel the need to dig at them, just save the "Hey buddy, guess what" bit until the end of the call, after you have played the nice and interested consumer and gotten all the necessary information out of them.)
That said, both times I've gotten all the information I could possibly want about the telemarketer, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to submit a complaint...
I work in the telemarketing industry... and let me tell you guys, it's been a bitch to try and get a copy of the DNC. It wasn't even available online until a few days ago and the cost is staggering.
I know... I know... not a lot of sympathy, but still, I work for a business who would like to do nothing more than play by the rules, but all kinds of barriers have been put up in our way.
Does the do-not-call law cover companies based overseas, like Bermuda?
Can the do-not-call law be enforced if, when you ask what company they represent, they suddenly don't speak-ee the Eeeenglish? (or "My supervisor is not here, sorry " is the other one I get a lot)
What are you supposed to do when the call is an automated recording?
What about when half the calls you DO get are from exempt organizations, like police fundraisers?
This law is a good start, but don't for a minute think that it's gonna make more than a small difference by itself. Neither does CallerID, at least in my case - between my Mom's number being unlisted, my wife working at a place which shows up as "Anonymous", and her family calling from overseas ("Unavailable"), I'm just lucky my number is new and I only get a couple bad calls a week, 'cos I have to answer them all...
Perfectly Normal Industries
I got another automated call today from "Jeffrey Caldwell at the National Consumer Council" today. You probably know the message. The FTC has heard of them. They're a "nonprofit" front for a couple of commercial companies.
I filed a complaint, though that "nonprofit" bit might shield the bastards. Other than those folks, I don't think I've received a telemarketing call in the past few days. Good riddance!
One of the most useful resources I have found is the Anti-Telemarketing Script from Junkbusters.com. Apart from this, they also have tons of information on how to stop snail-mail junk, etc. Check them out.
Luckily for me, I have privacy manager, and the only way that calls come through is if they're identified on caller ID in the first place. So I pulled the name and number and had exactly the same problems trying to find a place to file my complaint. Ultimately, linking from my state do-not-call page (which is really only a front for the federal stuff), I got to a generic FTC complaint page here. So that's where I filed my complaint. Good luck.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
What if the phone companies added a * number to dial after you hang up with the telemarketer? Kind of like a *69 to call back the last caller, after you hang up on them you just dial *xx to report a telemarketer.
For our html-challenged posters, that should be a link to the Do Not Call Registry complaint form.
By the way, what's wrong with their SSL certificate? It looks like it's supposed to be a Verisign-issued certificate, but it's coming up as "issued by an unknown entity".
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
Old news. It's active again. Telemarketers who aren't compliant have until Friday to get their act together.
This sig no verb.
They are supposed to fully identify themselfs at the begininng of the call.
Fight Spammers!
If the DNC list is so difficult to get, why not convert your telemarketing business into one that calls up other tlemarketers, preferably after 5 pm, and sells them the DNC list? Two birds with one stone: one less telemarketing company pestering me, and a valuable service to your fellow telemarketers. High fives!
If it's a guy I pull a Jim Florentine and start talking about how lonely and depressed I am, or I act retarded (just like in real life!) and confused just to waste their time. They bail olut, but I never had anyone call back angry because I'm a decent voice actor. I think they feel bad sometimes.
Fun, but I still signed up for the DNC list.
--- Ban humanity.
When I was growing up, I lived an a very friendly neighborhood in the Midwest. Everyone used to sit out on their front porches in the evenings both for the social contact and because air-conditioning was pretty rare at the time. (in our neighborhood at least)
The neighborhood kids and I had tons of fun each summer listening for a call "coming down the block". You could actually hear a sales call working its way from house to house, and amazingly they usually went by street address (accending).
So, when we heard a call we'd all take off "racing the call". The idea was to get to a each house right before the call got there. If you were successful (and the house was someone willing to play along) you picked up the phone and instead of saying "hello" or something, you'd say something along the lines of "we don't want any!" *click*. And then off to the next house we'd race.
It was great fun to listen to the telemarketer getting more and more confused as to what was going on. I have no idea if it cut down the calls, but it was great fun.
...because every time this question comes up, an answer is posted.
In short:
Telemarketers get the bulk of their sales from people they can pressure into a sale: elderly, mentally infirm, emotionally insecure, whatever reason, some people can't say "no" over the phone. If those people are on the Do Not Call list, then telemarketers will not get those high-pressure sales, and they will lose money.
Jay (=
Actually, I had a rather interesting experience with the caller ID and telemarketing.
.PDF document off their web site, print it out, fill it out and sign it, and mail it in.)
I live in Missouri, so I was already on our state-wide "no call list". A firm called, trying to sell me something. (I can't even recall what it was anymore, but one of the typical things like life insurance....) Anyway, they called with an automated recording (which I believe is illegal to begin with?), and I noticed my caller ID actually did pick up a phone number and company name. At that point, I heard enough of the recording droning on with their sales pitch, so I hung up on it and filled out a complaint form, mailed to the attorney general's department for handling the no-call list complaints. (In Missouri, you have to download a
I then discovered that the caller ID number displayed was a disconnected number. (I tried to call it back, when I realized the complaint form asked for a lot of additional information I didn't have, such as the company's mailing address.)
Doing a little more research, I found out the company name displayed was the name of a (now defunct) firm that built the auto-dialing machines that play pre-recorded telemarketing messages! The phone number was apparently their company's number too - although I'm just guessing at this, because the area code shown was for the same part of Texas where the firm used to be located.
So all I can guess is that these telemarketers were dialing out via ISDN circuits, and had the ability to tell the phone switch to modify the normal caller ID display info -- and their dialer machine had default info programmed in it showing the manufacturer name/number!
(A guy I knew who worked for Southwestern Bell once told me this was technically quite possible to do if you were on an ISDN line, because you're effectivedly jacked right into the central office computer.)
Yes ISDN and PRI's it's possible to send false called ID data. The telephone systems still has a lot of trust built into it even after the 80's phone phreaking. The reason ofr this is on a PRI you often have more DID's (thats phone numbers in laymens terms) assigned to you then virtual lines. This is what lets offices have a unique inbound number for every office phone. On the incomming the call is tagged with a destination DID so the PBX can route it to the correct extension(s). Outgoing it's supposed to tag the line with once of it's own DID's but thtere are generaly no measures in place to enforce that. Blocking caller ID is as simple as not sending a DID. The phone company's can override the DID they did it for the company I was at duing an area code change automaticaly changing the area code.
No sir I dont like it.
This has been done before. Aren't you old enough to remember Ma Bell? C'mon now, ask your parents if you're a kid. The AT&T company (motto: "We don't care. We're the phone company. We don't have to care.") forced you to lease your "terminal" (phone), didn't allow you to connect a modem on your phone line (remember the accoustic couplers?), took forever to start providing what's regarded today as basic amenities...
And it's not an exclusivity of AT&T either. As a European, I can tell you volumes about the wonders of the State-owned telephone monopolies in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc. Up to the late 80s, you enjoyed:
So instead of wishing for things, ask around and check if these things have been tried in other times or places. You might get surprising answers, as well as a richly desserved cluebat whack.
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