Slashdot Mirror
No Call List Bypassed Using Call Centers in India?
lollipop17 asks: "My husband and I recently bought a house, and so our three months on the do not call list before we can file complaints is not quite over. We only have one business thus far that has called soliciting anything, but here's the catch: it's always a recording, and when I finally got through on the number they provided, 800-513-4524, the reps that answer are in India and have no idea what's going on other than they have a contract with an American company to take sales orders. The girl on the recording mumbles the business name, which seems to be 'All Digital Satellite,' which I could not locate via Google as it's so generic. Given the recent story about spam faxes, and solicitations overseas, do you think this is the future of telemarketing (the offshore location anyway)? Has anyone successfully filed a complaint with the FTC for violation of the do not call registry (for I am sure they will call again after our three months is over, they call at least twice a week)? Does anyone have ideas for tracking them down (i.e. local phone number or stateside address)? The message even seems fraudulent, but I cannot file a complaint with the better business bureau without local phone or address. Any ideas?"
Reminds of the few times I have received spam advertising products that took the "cover up" aspect too far: the return address was fake, the name of the product was not in the e-mail, and there was no link or phone # or any way for me to contact them if hell had frozen over and I actually did want to buy their product.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I found this PDF press release that mentions a Robert Kirkpatrick at All Digital Satellite. Perhaps you can contact those responsible for this site to clue you in as to how you can get in touch with Mr. Kirkpatrick. Here's a link to the actual PDF file at the Winegard company's website.
THIS ACCOUNT IS OFFICIALLY RETIRED/RETARDED.
Couldn't you consider this an attack on America and use it as an excuse to invade India :)?
I'd imagine if you kept them on the line long enough the overseas phone bill would add up on their end.
I thought of this too, but these scammers could probably use some sort of VOIP thing to get their voices from India into the US phone system without long distance charges.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I've been on my state's do-not-call list for 2 years now, and I'm on the federal one as well now, but I've had 3 recordings left on my answering machine. They're all offers for satellite TV hookups, go on for quite some time, and only leave a number.
"Again, I can hook up all the TVs in your house with satellite for $XX a month."
I agree with another poster that ultimatelly these guys want to sell you something, and it is that company that should (also!) get busted big-time. These guys are in the same sewer as Email spammers - too bad we can't just have the Hulk drop on 'em! ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
but in my state(PA) you have to put down a somewhat sizable deposit in order to call anyone(in addition they cannot be on the DNC list) if you do call someone on the DNC list, the state seizes their deposit, and they cannot call anyone in the state ever again.
However, things like "satellite" services are probably scams to hook up illegal services and the like, so I doubt that they registered with anyone(very few scammers like having the government have info on them, wonder why). Thus being scams they probably leave very little evidence, even the places you would pay them are probably a front. Your best option would be to call the police, but honestly I doubt that for something like this the police would even bother with the case, probably just cover you with red tape till you give up.
Recorded sales pitches are illegal in most states, and this constitutes harassment. Contact your phone company about tracing the calls. They have the capability to do this.
Also, the BBB will be completely useless here. You need to contact the Federal Trade Commission and the FCC. The former regulates various consumer-related things, and the latter enforces many phone regulations.
And since this is over IP, they might be incurring bandwidth and transmission charges. So, when you put the phone down, turn on a nearby tape player playing some J.S. Bach tocatta with some ridicolously high note resolution (32nd notes, etc) into the phone. Just to maximize the data going over their lines. You'll be on your way in no-time to actually succeeding in slashdotting a telemarketer.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
My husband and I recently bought a house, and so our three months on the do not call list before we can file complaints is not quite over. We only have one business thus far that has called soliciting anything, but here's the catch: it's always a recording...
You don't need to wait 3 months. Using automated recordings for commercial phone calls was illegal, to any phone number, long before the do-not-call registry was in place. For what it's worth, every time I've gotten one of these it's from a local small business--some schmuck who doesn't know better and gets sold on the neat idea by an unethical firm who knows that use of its software will leave the user liable for bankruptcy-inducing fines...
Ask the next caller for their address. Tell them you're a telemarketing consultant, and you'll be glad to listen to their pitch and rate it at your normal consultancy rate. If they give you an address, listen to their pitch, hang up, write them a letter telling them what you think of their pitch, and send it to them along with an invoice. If they don't pay, submit it to a collection agency. The resulting credit rating problems will make them notice.
I've never gotten past explaining what I needed the address for, and I've never gotten a return call from the same place. If I ever do get an address, they'll get my best effort to rate their pitch, and a bill for US$200.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Hoovers.com allows you to search for businesses, including the assumed name a company may be operating under. If the company pays taxes you can get informatin on them, although if you haven't paid money for the service they will ask you either to buy a subscription or a report. Still, the Information you'll find if you search their site should give you enough leads to track down the business and let the FTC know who to go after.
That sounds like the same calls that I keep getting! Recorded message, wanting to sell satellite service, same voice every time, same sales pitch, saying things like "I was given your name by a friend as someone who might be interested in this." Yeah, right. We already have Dish Network and have no desire to change to any other service. I finally called the stupid 800 number and the first option on the menu was the one to remove your phone number from their list. That just shows how many people they are ticking off. In two or three months they called around ten times. It's like e-mail spam: they figure if they spam you enough you'll eventually buy something. Argh!
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
for "All Digital Satellite, Inc." comes up with somebody in O'Fallon.
but they seem to have stopped. my problem now is all sorts of companies calling for whoever previoisly had our phone number. as I understand it this is legal because the previous person had given them written permission to call but our number is on the donotcall list and has been for over 3 months.
per donotcall.gov this may be legal since they're not calling for us, but even after being told it's a wrong number they proceed to try and solicit us.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
I received a phone call a few days ago in the middle of the day that when I picked the phone up it just said "we're sorry, this phone message was intended only for your answering machine" and then it hung up.
Very strange.
...is that the legal system is regional with the concept of jurisdiction, whereas communication technology is global.
It is simply a logical progression for phone / fax spamming companies to use this method of bypassing the law.
Now what I REALLY want to see, is a filtering system for telephone calls. For example, I want to have the ability to be able to block ALL calls using a white/blacklist, or perhaps automatically reject all calls from a certain area / country. I also want to be able to filter SMS text messages.
Here's the loophole:
1.Non-profits are exempt from the DNC.
2.Non-profit needs funds.
3.Company pays NPO to make calls on their behalf.
Mine began,
Caller: "Hello, may I speak to (me)?"
Me: "Uh, speaking."
Caller: "Hi, I am calling from the (city) (religious organization) Community Center. Could you take a moment to answer a few questions?"
Me: (not wanting to go to Hell this week) "Uh, sure"
Caller: "Great! Are you (religion)?"
Me: "No."
Caller: "Is anyone in your house (of the XYZ religion)?"
Me: "No."
Caller: "Okay, that's all for that part of the questions, just a few more."
Me: "Great."
Caller: "How many telephones do you have at this number?"
Me: "What?"
Caller: "How many telephones do you have at the address for this phone?"
Me: "Why do you want to know how many phones I have?"
Caller: "Oh, we just want to ask about your long distance carriers"
Me: "What does this have to do with (religious organization)?"
Caller: (click)
This is who owns 800-513-4524
UniPoint Services / 512 735 1200
Been on DNC since before it's introduction. I still get calls. One tele-droid actually claimed that since my number was chosen at random, it was somehow OK to for them to call and try to sell me something even though I was on DNC! LOL
Buy whatever they're selling, put it on your Visa (not MC or Amex... well ok, maybe Amex). Buy as many of them as you can fit on your credit, wait a few days then file a fraud complaint about the transaction.
No, better, buy them all in seperate orders, then have them all charged back. When the spammer has racked up a good chunk of chargebacks and complaints, they will either quit (unlikely) or eventually their merchant account will be revoked and they will be SOL.
As a bonus it causes the evil Visa to spend their ass-dollars on support clerks and fraud investigations, rather than investing in the total monopolisation of online billing.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Every month or so I get a voicemail (on my cell even, no landline) with a message that starts with "This is not a business call. Please call back at 800-814-xxxx between ." I googled for the number, hit verizon's phone listings and yahoo's number lookup, but I couldn't find it. It's rather annoying that they don't even bother to leave a business name.
Telemarketers need to die.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
Believe we will give it back to them when it actually happens, not before. All I've seen is a lot of mumbling and foot shuffling whenever the subject of what will actually happen June 30 comes up... which makes me think a cute little puppet government is more likely than anything with actual autonomy/sovereignty. What, you think we went to war with Iraq just to let them do what they wanted? That defeats the whole point of going to war, lol.
Yeah, I refused to sign up for these, since this gives people access to a database of phone numbers to dial if they are not bounc by it. I considered the politicians, "charities," etc. but didn't even consider overseas locations that could get the list easily and legally violate it (More cheaply than telemarketers in the states, as well).
I hate grammar Nazi's.
... it's Equifax Collections, a bill collector. Admittedly, it's not via reverse-lookup but instead from somebody's web page.
So, call the number, tell them "Yes, I'm interested in your service", etc. Pretend to be interested. They want to sell you something, so if you pretend to be a potential customer, they *will* contact you, tell you who they are, etc.
And at that point, you can file on them.
And a decentralized model in which people are forced to work in order to support someone else is some sort of significant improvement?
That would be no improvement at all over the current centralized systems. After all, under capitalism, the majority of your work is to support your boss's salary, and his boss, up to the stockholders, who do nothing to earn their way.
At least the "centralized" models of socialism don't use a a veneer of public relations to hide what they do to people.
You mean like Enron and Worldcom did?
Socialism in any form is oppression
Except in the form where WORK and SURVIVAL are completely unrelated (see Robotic Freedom for details of a form of socialism that would actually turbocharge capitalism- and allow for maximum human potential while shedding mindless jobs better done by non-humans).
Socialism failed in the 1920s (and it did actually fail in the 1920s- it just took another 50-75 years before governments figured out that it DID fail) because human labor back then was scarce. Heck, there were only 2 billion human beings on the planet back then- as compared to 6 billion now. NOTHING was automated to any great extent- and the majority of people working in factories back then were little more than cogs in the great machine that is an industrial age factory.
As the current "Jobless Recovery" is proving, we can do that work for less; cheap labor overseas (read slavery) or robotic automation here (productivity) or cheap skilled labor brought in from overseas (exploitation) can all do the job FAR cheaper than paying an American $40,000/year can. Thus, we shouldn't be paying Americans that much money to do work better done by others. Instead, we should tax the excessive profits (who needs more than $1.3 million a year to do ANYTHING THEY WANT?!?!? And that's only 1000x minimum wage) and provide an "American Fund" just like the "Alaska Residents Fund" to give poor people more money to spend- thus creating a consumer class that can be used by the rich to earn money from, which allows more people to hit that magical maximum wage, which allows us to put more people into the consumer class, and reduce the number of people working to survive to begin with!
That's the kind of socialism I'm for- freeing up the creative to be creative instead of chaining them down to a job just to put food on the table.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It is probably this Arlington Texas guy . Complain to your state Attorney General. www.naag.org