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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.
What part of DO NOT CALL dont they understand? I do not want people calling me trying to sell me stuff.. so DO NOT CALL me! hard to get much simpler.
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
I used to care about this, but now not so much. I just got rid of the landline phone. Actually I moved and did not get a landline phone in my new abode. It's illegal for marketing types to call my cellular phone. I win. If you really don't want anyone calling you throw out your busted old landline.
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I doubt it. This doesn't mean that DNC would be abolished, just that it would fall under the less-strict regulations of the federal government. Not that a change like that is a good thing, but it wouldn't put listees at risk in the manner you're suggesting.
Exactly. Which is why I think there could soon be a market for the Do-Not-Call-Air-Horn ! Get your now, before supplies run out!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
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.
"There is no evidence that (a favorable FCC ruling) will lead to large increases in telemarketing calls," he said. He, obviously, does not consider the fact that the large amount of telemarketing calls before the DNC list took effect is evidence that, without a list, that they would once again reach their old levels.
Just what the USA needs. More Federal involvment instead of state by state.
/sarcasm.
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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Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
My name is Duke, and I'm calling from the Great American Do-Not-Call-List Giveaway to let you know that you're a winner in our one million dollar sweepstakes entry sweepstakes, and are already automatically entered to win! Isn't that great?
On top of that, as one of our lucky winners, you're eligible to recieve outrageous discounts on subscriptions to all your favorite magazines! Exciting, huh? Which magazines do you like to read? Entertainment Weekly? Sports Digest? TV Guide?
Art Schools Dietzilla
This law makes perfect sense being a federal law. Why? Because almost all telemarketing calls are crossing state or possibly national borders. Thus there's a natural complication when you have different laws in different states with different abilities to enforce those laws on others.
Better to have one federal law to simplify things.
And I still wonder, why do those telemarketers want to call me if I'm on this list. Seems like they are being done a service here. I'm not going to buy their crap so no sense wasting time on a call.
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The worst thing about an action like this it is CLEARLY against the will of the people. The Do Not Call list is opt-in, it only applies to those who go out of their way to sign up. The only "victims" of something like this are the CORPORATIONS who are being denied the right to directly attack those who don't want to have their houses invaded by direct advertising. The people gain nothing from this sort of action, they only lose out.
How is it possible that a democratic governing body, which is supposed to be looking out for the people, is taking a direct stance against them? Which American citizens are rallying against the DNC list?
Yet more sad evidence that the government is more concerned with corporate interests than those of the people.
Yeah, these jackasses think people that don't want to recieve calls selling stuff are potential customers.. they're like the girl that loves the 'bad guy' and figures they'll be the one to change him. Don't want to buy a subscription to Gerbil Enthusiast? You just need the love of a good telemarketer!
wow, that's a really weird analogy. Time for my morning coffee.
Starsucks
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."
The FCC is NOT a law-making entity.
The FCC has no power to overturn state laws or find them unconstitutional, this is the Supreme Court's job.
The FCC is not the way to go. Lobby Congress.
And watch how they laugh in your face as they think "I don't want these whiny bastards calling me everyday trying to get my money that I just weaseled from the taxpayers."
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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).
At least my telemarker calls don't read like my inbox. I'd blush every time I picked up the phone if the person on the other end was trying to sell me dick pills.
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Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
I remember a movie with Jim Carrey (he wasn't the main character, tho) about a guy who loved accepting cold calls.
He would receive a call from an insurance salesman, and begin saying yes to most things until they arranged an appointment.
Then, after making him waste 2 or more hours, when the insurance salesman was leaving, he'd say:
"There's one little... problem.
I'D RATHER... BE... DEAD!!!" (Then he shut the door on the poor salesman)
Oh joy. How I loved that moment. I know it's cruel, but it vented my frustration towards spammers and the like.
Can someone start lobbying to make lobbying illegal?
[alk]
I have blown off PBS because of this!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
I have to work with these lists, because part of my job is to support a telemarketing system. Nobody told me squat about that on the interview, nevertheless here I am. I've been here long enough to see the lists come into being. It's making telemarketing harder, and all that good stuff.
I also have the misfortune to need to telemarket in two states, one of which has it's own state list. As it happens, we only call five small towns in this state. In order to get access to the State's DNC list we have to purchase it for the entire state. To make matters worse, this state has a very different set of rules.
On a federal level, you are allowed to call customers you formerly did business with for 18 months after the termination of the business relationship. Not so in this other state. Apparently you aren't allowed to call even the day after the relationship ends. The federal system actually allows the people who get called some recourse. The state system I have to deal with makes it very clear in their fine print that you are allowed a certain amount of accidental calls. Because you are a paying list subscriber, they actually have a department to handle these situations. If you get caught calling people on the state DNC list, you had better have paid the man or else it's game on for lawsuits. What it ends up being is simply extortion. You want to call people of that state, you buy the list, which costs more annually than the entire federal list, for what that's worth.
I really feel sorry for the people who live in that nameless state, because they are payin a ton of taxes to manage a list system that offers them no protection whatsoever. The federal list is a big pain for telemarketers, but at least it has and element of fairness, and really attempts to protect the people who want not to be called.
I'm not interested in arguing the notion of whether the freedom not to be bothered should trump the freedom to call any phone number you want without fear of prosecution, but for the nerds out there, here's some technical details:
The federal list can be downloaded in it's entirety or in updates by date selected once a day by any business who pays the fee. The list is numbers only, no names at all. The state list I have to work with is available by e-mail or on CD-ROM. I picked e-mail, and the updates are entirely at the discretion of the state. So every month or so, my office e-mail gets choked with the list in several parts, so I had to work a special deal with the MIS guys to get extra space on the server. When I first signed up for it, the state didn't send a file until the next scheduled update, but made it clear that we'd be covered in the event of accidentally calling somebody on the list we didn't have access to! Of course almost everybody in the state list is also on the federal list, so we never got a complaint.
I imagine the only people on that state list that are not on the federal list are people looking to sue somebody. They are out there; we've encountered them before. I'm not a fan of telemarketing and would support it if I didn't have to. The federal list makes sense, and really does eliminate any reason for states to keep their own lists, except that grand-daddy of all reasons for government programs - the pork. It's all about the pork, folks. Always has been; always will be.
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.
I used to like the female callers. I'd immediately say they sound really cute, and ask them what they are wearing. Before joining the DNC list, I almost coaxed one into phone sex as she was incredibly bored and the last one in her office for the day. She bailed, though. :-\ Chicken.
Info to try and get out of them
1. Age
2. Name
3. Sex [usually obvious]
4. Location [ask them tough questions about the locale]
Those are the easy ones, here are more fun ones
5. How long and many breaks do they get
6. Salary
7. Benefits
8. When their last holiday was
9. What school they went/go to
10. Whether they think this is a worthwhile job
11. The name of the last person they called
12. The name of the person next to them
13. The first 4 digits of their phone number [home]
and so on...
keep a scorecard handy and see how much you can get.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
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.
Yes, tis true. We are the future!
I have a better idea. The bloodsucking parasites who want to take away the do not call list, and get back to robbing old people and the mentally challenged blind, and bothering the rest of us, should simply be killed. They are a menace to society that should be removed from society. I favor bringing back primitive execution methods like drawing and quartering, breaking on the wheel, and crucifiction. That'll show 'em!
How ya like dat?