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Do Not Call List Under Attack
smooth wombat writes "Do Not Call. Those words are music to millions of Americans who have signed up for the list so they're not bothered by telemarketers. Not content to let things as they are telemarketers are now lobbying the FCC to have state laws which regulate the practice overturned. In April an ad-hoc group of firms ranging from the Direct Marketing Association to the National Children's Cancer Society filed a joint petition asking the FCC to declare that it has 'exclusive jurisdiction over interstate telemarketing calls.' The issue revolves around some states whose Do Not Call laws are more strict than Federal law and which prohibit telemarketers from calling anyone on a Do Not Call, regardless of an existing business relationship." Update: 07/21 18:42 GMT by Z : Official EPIC page, with contact info and background.
The issue revolves around some states whose Do Not Call laws are more strict than Federal law and which prohibit telemarketers from calling anyone on a Do Not Call, regardless of an existing business relationship.
Wah! I can't bother people and piss them off during dinner, quiet evenings, and fill up their answering machines with partial recordings not knowing how long the machine's message was.
Businesses are busy scrambling to create new and interesting ways to get your phone number so that they, and their subsidiaries and sister companies, can contact you with their telemarketers. Companies telling me that they cannot process an order without my telephone number, companies telling their employees that they must take a telephone number down for pickup orders placed over the phone, and requiring a phone number to ship a package. Most employees are doing their job and refuse you service (which is a company's right to do at any time) but I find it increasingly annoying. I'll do anything to not give out my phone number including asking for a supervisor, giving out a phone number with the area code and all zeroes, or just giving the switch board number out at work.
I really have no sympathy for companies that are crying to the FCC about this. The public had been whining to the FCC for how many years to get telemarketers to stop? They finally did, creating a list that the telemarketers can reference to narrow their endless search of a customer to people that might be interested in their products, and they still complain?
Give me a break and stay off my phone.
I don't CARE if they never call me again, regardless if I have dealt with them in the past. Thats what the DO NOT CALL list is for! I'm sick of getting up in the early early morning to hear a recording about home loans. My aunt and her kids are all in the hospital after getting hit by a drunk driver this week, and I can't just 'unplug the phone'. I bolt out of bed, thinking she's out of surgery or something and it's someone trying to sell me ticket's to the Policemen's Ball.
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The law we need even more than "DO Not Call" is a law which says "You can not sell data about people unless that person gives you consent". There must be a way to opt out of having your information added to a sales list. For example, how can anyone opt out of the bank sales lists? Banks are well known for taking their clients data, and selling that information to credit card companies. Credit card companies use this information to mail solicitations for their services.
Likewise, when I go buy a DVD from a store, why do they need my phone number? They want to sell that information to someone, here is a good lead for a guy who buys DVD's?
The Do Not Call list is a great start, but consumers need more protection from harrasment. We need our information kept confidential. When we do buisness with a company, the company should not be allowed to sneak some fine print in the contract which allows data to be sold. God knows what rights I signed away when I applied for my grocery store shoppers card.
And did anyone here about the lawsuit against the company that made the small gadget you connect to your phone line. When you get a call, the device lets out some small noises. These are noises the phone companies use to signify a line is disconnected. Marketing companies that use computerized auto-dialers recognize these noises and immediatly hang up. The marketing associations sued the company of this product saying it violated the marketing companies first amendment rights.
And while we are making laws protecting consumers, lets do away with the mail in rebate.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I'm with you on that, with one caveat:
Get the landline, for 911 only. It is federally mandated to be free. I have the landline with that alone on it. I recently got a phone number on it for DSL, and I'm in the process of working out what I need to do to keep the DSL, but go back to 911-only service. Then I can use my local 911 with asterisk, have a plain old "red phone" for 911-only calls in case asterisk goes down, and I get my DSL service.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
The best part of the the whole Do Not Call registry- Not only are non-profits exempt.... But so are Political candidates! Those self serving a##holes. This may not be a problem for those of you in a state like NY or Maryland where everyone knows exactly which candidate is going to win, but in swing states like Ohio (where I am) it means we get tons of calls every four years....
Perhaps my logic is wrong- but wouldn't telemarketers like the DNC because it would save them wasted calls? I mean, if people sign up for the DNC, doesn't it mean that they hate getting these calls and would never buy anything from them?
It is like spam- if no one bought anything from these "tele-spammers," maybe they would go away....
My solution- one of those air horns people have at sporting events. My grandmother had one for obscene callers (Those over 25 remember obscene callers, in the days before caller ID when tracing a call meant "pulling the Logs"), she would toot the horn into the reciever- this really would hurt someone's ear drums....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Could you state to one of the harrassing business' callers that you have "terminated the business relationship" and have that be enough? How can you create a "do not cross this line", after online purschase for example?
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
"Quite simply, it'd almost undoubtably be a huge violation of the first amendment in the US to pass a law which says "you can't phone people and promote your political views","
How so? While they certainly have every right to stand on a street corner and state their views (provided they don't violate any noise ordinances) they have *NO* right to interrupt me, use my phone's electricity, etc...
Just because they have a right to talk, doesn't mean I *have* to listen. And by calling me, they are forcing me to do that. Even if it's just long enough for me to realize who they are and hang up on them.
We were told to keep the customer on the line, interacting for as long as possible. If they were not interested, we were supposed to weasel more 'leads' out of them; meaning we asked them for the names/phone numbers of their friends that might be interested. This constitutes a business-relationship which we could exploit.
Another business-relationship was when we'd call everyone within 20-25 miles of our recent customer. The sales pitch went like:
Hello, this is X calling from Y. Your neighbor, Z, living at Z has recently purchased our product and since we're in the area, we're offering special discounts....
We'd use their address and names to get their neighbors to start listening to us.
When we got somebody that was obnoxious, or just didnt like that we disturbed them, we'd often set them up to be called back in the next few hours. Asking for a supervisor most often yields a hang-up as well. What we were supposed to do is fill out a form stating that the customer didnt want to be called back but since it takes a second to press the 'next' button and a lot longer to fill out a form, virtually nobody was taken off.
Actually, even then I dont think it was possible to permanently remove yourself from our list - even with the form you'd get maybe a few months of respite but after a while, all these forms were just added back to our database. Although this was before the DNR, I cant imagine anything's changed.
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