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429,000 Do-Not-Call Complaints
The Ghetto Imp writes "Is the do-not-call list working for you? According to CNN Money, there have been over 429,000 complaints filed with the FTC over do-not-call violations. The list is incredibly popular, with apparently some 62 million numbers registered. Apparently the worst offenders are the Credit Foundation of America, and our friends at AT&T. In an era where companies use computers to spam pre-recorded messages through our phone lines, does the FTC have the teeth to make unsolicited calls a thing of the past? At $11,000 per violation, let's hope so!"
I was one of the people that signed up for the Do Not Call list as soon as it went live on the Internet. To date, I rarely get an unsolicited calls. They happen so rarely that I get suprised when I get a call. All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with my results.
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I used to work for a telemarketing company doing calls for AT&T's universal card. That's right, if you got bugged during dinner by someone selling you one of their credit cards, I wrote the Informix-4GL app that guided the agent through the sale. Ah, those were the days.
Anyway, at that time at least, AT&T was very dilligent in requiring that we scrubbed the numbers they gave us against the do not call lists. They were also very focussed on staying within legal calling hours, etc.
Then again, AT&T has many, many divisions who may or may not talk to each other and could have very different standards. Also, depending on who they outsourced their outbound calling to, they may have gone with a low-cost less competent provider. Both of those would surprise me though - this was one area where they at least used to pride themselves in their quality. Or at least in our quality.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
"That is a huge number of complaints to be filed for anything," said Jean Ann Fox, Director of Consumer Protection of the Consumer Protection of Federation, told CNN/Money.
I wasn't aware the Federation had a Director for the Consumer Protection, or even that the Federation existed!
At $11k per violation, assuming all of those are legit, that's over $4 billion in fines. Hopefully they stick it to 'em.
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OK, assuming for a moment that each of those complaints in a violation (which I know is a grand overestimation, but stay with me for a second), that makes almost 5 Billion dollars in fines. Where is this money going? Surely the FTC doesn't need 5 billion dollars (or even 1/10th of that) to run the Do-Not-Call list!
I tell you where it should be going: To the people who filed the complaints. If your complaint was valid...you were illegally called even though you were on the DNC list...you shoulc get a percentage of the fine. Otherwise this money just gets tossed into the great financial landfill that is the U.S. Government, and gets used for some god-only-knows pork barrel project that has nothing to do with telemarketing and consumer privacy.
Is to just not have a landline phone.
I have had *only* a cell phone for me and one for my wife for the last year, and it's worked great. We always have a phone with us when we need it, and I haven't had any solicitation calls. Oh, and for internet we use cable.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Even if they move to India, they still are subject to the law if they are calling into the USA -- though it would be harder to enforce.
Generally, they would be doing the telemarking for a company in the USA which would then have liability.
One thing that I found, is that if you ask for their telephone number they will either hang-up on you or tell you they don't have one.
Fight Spammers!
I work for a company that does Telemarketing and just this morning loaded our latest version of the Federal "Do Not Call" list. I completely agree with the intent of the law and I am on the list myself, but the implementation thereof is atrocious.
In order to even access the list, we must go through several hours of online paperwork that is highly redundant and of no real use in the end.
We would love to automatically download the list on a daily basis and ensure that no one that doesn't want to receive calls is contacted. We can't: The site used to download the list doesn't give a list of URLs for different area codes and said URLs change daily with random strings appended to prevent automated downloads. The server is set to allow only 2 simultaneous HTTP connections from a given IP, so downloading the 48 area codes we subscribe to takes roughly an hour, rather than the two or three minutes it used to when we could do many simultaneous downloads. And beyond that, you have to contact the helpdesk for them to reauthorize your download in the event of a download failure. That's right, if something times out or gets corrupted, we have to email the help desk and wait 24-48 hours for a reply before we can come into compliance.
We work very hard to comply with every state and federal do not call law, but none of the state lists are as difficult to access or as intentionally difficult to automatically deploy as the Fed's. Its a great law - but it would benefit all of us if the Feds made it easier to comply.
A few years ago I got a call from one of their marketers trying to switch my long distance service and I interupted him by saying
..."
Me: "You know, I'm not interested
Him: "Well fuck you then"
Me: "What? fuck me?"
Him: *Loudly* "Yeah, fuck you!"
Me: "You got to be kidding me, you called me from AT&T"
Him: "Fuck you" *Hangs up*
At first I thought it was a prank call, but then I remembered that it had all the right initial sounds that a telemarketer call would have like the initial pause and sounds made while the computer connects me with the marketer.
After two weeks of answering every telemarketing call and saying "Take me off your call list", my phone-spam decreased dramatically. Now that I have just a cell-phone, I *never* get that junk.
Do what I do. When they call, speak very faintly until they turn their volume up. Then turn the speakerphone on at the base unit and touch the antennas together for some high pitched feedback. Works for me. And yes I'm happy with my long distance.
I recently received an unsolicited call from a creditcard company despite 1. being on the national DNC list, 2. having Radio Shack's telezapper, 3. paying Verizon for the extra funcationality of blocking certain type of calls. Turns out there's an effective, common loophole these bastards use: They partner with a business that you have a legitimate relationship with. Sequence of events: Phone rings, Caller ID says its AAA (I'm a member), I pick it up and I get the credit card schpiel. When I confronted the agent about being on the DNC list, he said that this call was a special offer to AAA members. I cancelled my AAA membership.
You can file a complaint, and they can be FINED $11,000. Or you can sue them and collect up to $1,500 per incident. It's a lot more work to sue them than it is to simply file a complaint, and they stand to lose more money from fines than individual lawsuits.
Shame? Hey, here's a newsflash - I was a developer. I was given a set of fairly challenging requirements (respose time, interfacing to a Rockwall predictive dialer, agent ease of use, updatability, etc) and some interesting hardware (Data General boxen running Informix Online v6 of all things).
You know what? I did my job. Which I was happy to have, and to be able to do. Which wasn't even the point of my post, which was pointing out that even back them ('92) you could get your number scrubbed from the lists of the ethical telemarketers). You want to crusade against people using the phone, be my guest. But no, I feel no shame for writing solid code for a legitimate business. Some of it was still being used years later, which I happen ti think was pretty cool. I guess that makes me that much worse, huh.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
It's getting so annoying I'm thinking of leaving tech support altogether.
The regulations don't apply to political and charitable solicitors, but all other telemarketers who call numbers on the list face fines up to $11,000 per violation.
The article doesn't divulge how many of the complaints are actually valid, but I think it's reasonable to assume that a large percentage of the "429,000 complaints" figure were solicitations from organizations claiming to represent charities or political bodies (all of the phone solitations I've gotten since registering fall into this category).
While such calls are exempt, I'd like to see additional regulation of the groups who hide behind this loophole; not because I oppose legitimate charities seeking donations, but because of the high probability that money donated over the phone will actually reach the charity.
Here's the way it often works: a legitimate charity contracts a telemarking firm to collect a predetermined amount of money. After the firm reaches the quota, they may continue to make solicitations ostensibly on the charity's behalf, but--according to the terms of the contract)--they get to keep all the money beyond the stipulated quota.
If you want to support a charitable organization or political entity, consider donating directly.
Once upon a time when I had a job, one of my duties was registering complaints regarding violations of Norway's version of the do-not-call list. A lot of organization names came up again and again and again. And of course when I contacted these organizations to give them a warning, all I got was arrogance - "we're doing good work blah blah blah, how can a charity afford to buy the updated it's-ok-to-call lists blah blah blah...."
Now over here, we have 2 different "consumer watchdog" shows on TV. Each show "outed" some of the worst violators. One of them was some kind of Bible charity that supposedly collected money for starving children in Eastern Europe, but from what the journalists managed to find out, the money was going towards luxury property for the organization leaders. This was an organization that was probably one of the top three when it came to complaints about violations of the do-not-call list. You can't imagine how happy it made me to see them outed for being fraudsters.
There are also a few other telemarketing companies are also being investigated for fraud; complaints about violations of the do-not-call list have been a motivating factor in this. Mowahaha....
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I'm on the Missouri no-call list (it preceeded the national list by several years) and I rarely get calls anymore. That is, except for AT&T, who has an exemption in the no-call law (the national one too - businesses that already have a relationship with you, as well as all telecom companies, are exempted in these laws). They call several times a week.
I still complain about them, even though they're exempt from prosecution, in the hopes that the laws will be strengthened to remove this loophole.
Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon has been diligent in pursuing violators (and they don't have to be calling from Missouri - the law covers calls into Missouri) and the calls fell off dramaticly when telemarketing companies learned that the law is enforced. On the rare occasion they do call, they are VERY apologetic when I inform them I'm on the no-call list, and they have been good about getting me off their call lists, where they definitely weren't before the law went into effect.
All in all, I'm all for it. It's very effective as long as it's enforced.
I'll try to keep this short, but it's complex.
...only to get a voice mail box that was full. The woman's voice slurred the name of the firm, so I couldn't quite tell who they were (sounded like Charity Organizations of America).
I have caller ID, and was on the DNC list the very day it was offered to the public.
About 2 months ago, I started seeing my caller ID log fill up with calls from someplace in Georgia.
But the calls were always during normal work hours (when I'm not home) so my answering machine was full of hang-ups.
Well one night, they called at 7 pm, while I was home. I answered the phone, waited for the pause (while a computer transferred me to a live human)....and was promptly hung up on!
That just plain pissed me off, so I immediately called back the number on my caller ID....
A helpful computer option said to press 1 to be connected to the main operator.
I did so, and was promptly told by yet another computer that the main line was no longer in service!
Some investigation on Google (and white pages, and reverse lookup anbd what not) gave zip. The number didn't exist.
A call to my local phone company the next day had no information, but if I wished to place a complaint, it would be looked into, *in 4 to 6 months* (no, not weeks...months).
Well I knew the area code, it belonged to Bell South. So I contacted the Georgia one, and they too, had no info for the number, no listing, nothing.
I have a police friend down there, and they have access to all kinds of cool toys we don't, and even *she* had no info for the number!
Ditto a call to the Non-Profit registry service of my state, nor of Georgia.
More than just a simple case of DNC abuse was going on here.
Long story short (too late!) after much time calling, and looking about on the internet, I called Bell South back and pretended I worked for that number and was having phone problems, and could they be so kind as to help out?
Turned out is was a telemarketing firm, who had registered one legit phone number, and a bunch of trunk lines, all with voice mail boxes attached, pointing to each other with the main line being disconnected. All very illegal. A few more questions and I had the main line to the firm, whom I was able to track down easily on the web and contact them, stating in no uncertain terms if they ever called back, under *any* guise, I'd nail their ass to the wall for fraud, DNC abuse, and whatever else I could think up at the moment.
They never called again, and I've not had any more telemarkter calls since.
Moral of the story? Don't piss off a geek with too much free time on his hands...
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I'm on the list, and I get just as many calls as ever. But they're not selling things now, they're just doing surveys, which are allowed by the damned law. Why they are exempted I have no idea - all they're doing is using people for free labor.
Sheesh, what do you have to lose? Who the fuck cares what happens to them?
[ring][ring]
Them: "Hi, I'm Tyrone, and I'm calling from the $Police_Fire_Charity. Did you know that $Police_Fire personnel are great guys and don't any benefits at all? How would you like to help?"
Me: "Well, Tyrone, I've already donated this year, three times so far and I plan to give again in the fall."
Them: "Mr. $Mispronounced_Lastname, you've been giving to one of those other charities. We represent the real $Policy_Fire_Charity -- how about helping us out with $20?"
Me: "No, no, I'm positive I've donated three times already. I even have the cancelled checks. Let's see here, this big one's made out to "Hennepin County", the other to "Minnesota Revenue Service" and the third and largest to "Internal Revenue Service." I'm sure that all of those donations cover all the money I'm giving to law enforcement."
The rest boils down to an amusing argument with the high school dropout on the other end of the line about whose benefits are better, his (none), mine, or the cops. I'm actually pretty sure mine are better than both, but the cops around here sure get to retire on a nice pension before I do.