Is the Do Not Call System Working?

BrentRJones writes "I signed up for the Do Not Call registry the first day I heard of it, and I have to say that I have gotten very few telemarketers calling over the past couple of years. However, there now seems to be more calls that start, 'This is a survey...' or some other such excuse. I do not mind getting a few charity appeals or calls from those I have done business with in the past, but I do wish that I could avoid the political phone calls. I am curious what other Slashdot folks are experiencing, and I am also wondering if I say, 'Please remove from any list that you have.' when I am called, will this do any good?"

Comments

"Your do not call list"

[Southpaw018]

I worked for the telemarketing department at MBNA for a while. They're a good company, and while it wasn't my favorite job ever, MBNA is a good business, and they follow the telemarketing rules. (If it's any testament, I carry an MBNA credit card.)

Anyhow, in answer to the second part of your question: If you say "take me off your list" or "don't call here again," if the telemarketers are following the rules - and they're subject to MASSIVE fines if they're not (like $1000+ per phone call in violation), your phone number will be removed from the marketing programs you mentioned for two years (or if you say "all" your lists, all their marketing programs).

The magic words are "do not call list" or "ever." The better choice is "do not call list." If you say "Don't call here," it's still two years. However, if you say "Do not call here ever again," or if you say the magic phrase "Add me to your do not call list," your phone number will be added to their federally mandated do not call list for a period of ten years. Also note that once you say one of those two phrases, they are required to give the three pieces of information they need for every call if they have not yet mentioned them, and then terminate the call immediately. (These include their full company name, a telephone number at which they can be reached, and....the third I don't remember. Oops. But! I do remember MBNA being so paranoid about it that we were even required to say the phone number to dead air if someone hung up on us - it was always the last thing you gave them, and we were recorded every second we were on the clock, even while not on a call.)
Again, this is if they're following the rules. No one likes a telemarketing call at dinnertime, but the bad guys do a hell of a lot worse than that.

Oh, and I can't comment on surveys or political calls. This is just commercial stuff - the guys who aren't out to make $ have looser rules.

Re:"Your do not call list"

[RobertLTux]

(4) Identification of sellers and telemarketers. A person or entity
making a call for telemarketing purposes must provide the called party
with the name of the individual caller, the name of the person or entity
on whose behalf the call is being made, and a telephone number or
address at which the person or entity may be contacted. The telephone
number provided may not be a 900 number or any other number for which
charges exceed local or long distance transmission charges.
direct C&P from
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cg i?TITLE=47&PART=64&SECTION=1200&TYPE=TEXT

Re:"Your do not call list"

[lucabrasi999]

I don't think I've received any calls of a political nature. My guess is that most campaigns realize that cold-calling people will generally a) not get them to vote for you anyhow, if they don't support your party, and b) possibly piss off people who DO support your party already.

In a previous (pre-IT) life, I was paid political consultant (the pay wasn't high, which is why I am now in IT). Anyway, when we called folks, it was usually folks who were very consistent voters. If it was a primary election, we only called voters that had voted in two of the last three primaries. If it was a general, we tended to open up the list a bit more, but, again, we didn't call anyone who hadn't voted last general election.

The primary reason for this was money. Why spend money calling someone that had a less than even chance of showing up at the polls?

Beyond that, our first phone call was usually a straight forward "poll". Would you vote for candidate A, candidate B, or are you undecided? Trust me, when you pick up the phone and someone asks for your opinion, you are more likely to stay on the line. Then, a month or so before the campaign, we would run a "slanted" poll. For those folks that either supported our opponent (candidate B in this example) or were undecided in the first round, we would call them back and ask "Would you vote for candidate B knowing he/she was a lying sack of shit (or some phrase that would echo our most recent negative campaign commercial)"? The goal here was to PUSH the undecideds and opposing voters into either voting for our candidate (candidate A) or not voting at all.

Then, a few days before election, we would go back to our loyal candidates (in general elections, those voters in our party) and encourage them ALL to vote. Get Out the Vote.

Since I never won and election, I am now a stinkin' IT consultant and James Carville/Karl Rove are all either making millions or are about to make millions. But, even though I never won, trust me, this is the usual way of running political phone banks.

Re:"Your do not call list"

[TheWanderingHermit]

Did you know, though, that your registration on the federal Do Not Call list expires after 5 years? I've posted about it in response to a post farther down, but it's worth mentioning again, where people can see it (no, I'm not doing it for karma whoring). It worked for me until this summer when I started getting some calls again, then I checked the website for the gov. list and found out you have to re-register after 5 years.

That's the one piece of information they never told anyone.

Re:"Your do not call list"

[kenf]

Having "call intercept" seems to help alot. Any call originating from a phone with a blocked caller id goes to a telco system that tells the caller the customer is not accepting caller id blocked calls and they can have their name phoned to the customer who can decide if they want the call. Many telemarketers block their caller id, and disconnect when they get the telco message. This plus the do not call list has eliminated most unwanted calls for me.

Re:"Your do not call list"

[70Bang]

I think it varies by state.

IIRC, Kentucky is one of the most stringent. Here in Indiana, the SAG has been pretty harsh. A couple of places have set up shop -- until they get caught and decide to make a go of it in court: 1st Ammendment. So far, no one has even come close to winning. There was a bloc (no, not block) of banks which were setting up a crusade to go against the state and the SAG had a half-page ad in the Indy newspaper with contact info for those banks.

I wrote to the SAG's office, pointing out what they should have done is to get everyone to make copies of the info, or if they are just not able to pay for it, use a page with simply says, [x] No! I do not want...!. Put a stamp on everything and ensure it looks like any other letter. This will force them to open every envelope, regardless of what they suspect what might be included because it might be legit.

The SAG's election two years ago focused upon, "during my first term, I promised I would work to stop telemarketing and I have penalized those who disregard for it. I intend to continue. What he should have said was, "now that the telemarketing is under control, we will keep it there. Now that the U-CAN-SPAM Act 2003 provides SAGs with the abiiity to go after spammers. And I'm going to dedidate this term doing so, either alone, or in conjunction with SAGs of other states".

Re:"Your do not call list"

[mattbadass]

Didn't the do not call list go into effect sometime in 2003? If so, how have you had to re-register already? It's only been 3 years at most for you (I registered immediately and I have until 6/2008).

Re:"Your do not call list"

[f1055man]

To add to this and reply to the OP, requesting political callers take you off the list is not going to do any good. For one, IIRC there's an exception to the DNC law for political and nonprofit purposes. Also, the people that are calling don't control the list. Not just the person on the phone but the organization they represent as well. Campaigns buy lists of registered frequent voters and donors. These lists cost thousands and there are companies that focus on just this. My mother used to be registered as republican (never voted that way but didn't change it after leaving her father's house). A couple Octobers ago she got a phone call; I overheard her end of it. "No, I hate education" (she's a teacher) "I don't need no social security" "Healthcare's for wimps" "I think we really should let the terrorists win" "I'm not going to vote for that raging bitch!" Turns out it was a push pull for Nancy "Pharma" Johnson. You can be sure she remembered to vote after that call. Good lists matter. Always remember to validate your data.

Re:"Your do not call list"

[shaneh0]

I've worked as a developer for the national DNC and recently Howard Dean for America.

It *amazed* me how big their database is. It was so big that developers (at least all the ones I worked with) weren't allowed to query against their (Oracle) tables. We only had read access to (the hundreds of) views. It was the largest database I've ever worked against and it really taught me a LOT about writing applications that have to work with very large data sets.

It had information about how you told a DNC staffer you would vote in every election for a decade. Every time someone called you, it held your answers. Every time you requested a ride to the polls, or every time your home was canvassed. Obviously, there were gaps. If you were canvassed by the local Mayoral campaign, it wasn't in the DB. But the next time you get material dropped off from a Presidential or Congressional campaign, or the next time you tell them "Undecided" or "strongly supportive" just think about the DB table with a billion records in it that just incremented to 1,000,000,001.

And this was the DNC. From the devs I talked to that worked for the darkside, the RNC had a much more sophisticated system. Luckily, this is one area that's been given a lot of attention by Dean since the 2004 election. I really believe that now, finally, the democrats have technology parity.

Re:"Your do not call list"

[Doug Lim]

Sure, having complaints fall on the non-profit *sounds* like a great idea... until the non-profit gets enough complaints to decide that working with the complaint-generating organization isn't worth working with anymore.

Not exactly the same situation, but one time I got called by a telemarketer trying to sell delivery service for a local dairy. When I started going through the TCPA routine for collecting information and asking to be put on the do-not-call list for them and the company on whose behalf they were calling (this was before the National Do Not Call List existed). The telemarketer ended up putting her supervisor on the line, who got really uppity about how they didn't need to give me their (the outcall agency) company name or their contact information and stated that they didn't need to maintain a do not call list (all required by TCPA). He then hung up on me.

The telemarketer DID get far enough into the sales pitch to tell me name of the company whose services they were trying to sell...

The next day, I called the dairy's corporate headquarters, asked for the marketing department and from there asked who was responsible for outcall telephone marketing operations. I calmly explained what happened on the call and added that of course the agency supervisor refused to provide information about the agency after being rude and failing to comply with telemarketing regulations; after all, the telemarketing supervisor wasn't screwing with his own company's reputation and good name, but rather that of the dairy's.

The person I spoke to at the dairy was very polite, provided me with the information I wanted about the telemarketing org, took my phone number and promised to add it to all of their do not call lists and added that she would be having a rather pointed discussion with the agency's account rep in the next week.

Answers

[daveschroeder]

Yes, the Do Not Call system works. I'm on the national and state registries, and haven't gotten any telemarketing calls.

I wouldn't say that any of these other calls are "excuses"; they're classes of calls that are exempt.

It's pretty clear what's exempt:

https://www.donotcall.gov/FAQ/FAQBusiness.aspx#Exe mptOrg

Surveys, among other things, are one of the things that's exempt. "Telemarketing" is "telemarketing". Not someone calling you that you don't want to.

Re:Answers

[znu]

Thing is, sometimes the line between 'survey' and 'marketing' is pretty slim. I was push-polled about net neutrality a couple of months ago. The call wasn't trying to sell me a specific product, but it was certainly aimed at advocating a specific corporate agenda, rather than at legitimately determining my opinion about an issue.

Sue Them

[KalvinB]

http://suntasiasucks.icarusindie.com/

I recently sued Suntasia for violating the TCPA and settled in my favor. The whole story is posted on the site. I got less than I requested but they hired a very expensive lawyer which they have to pay for so I got what I wanted: money out of their pockets.

The hard part is figuring out who they are since all you have, if you're lucky, is the phone number. After that you have to do your homework on the law and try not to be intimidated by their lawyer if they hire one. Suntasia is rather infamous around the states so information was pretty easy to find. A phone number was all we needed to get started.

If they're not doing anything illegal then all you can do is not answer your phone or request they stop calling you. They don't have to honor the national list but I'd be very surprised if any organization could get away will calling you after you specifically told them not to. And those requests go into effect immediately.

Naturally Political Groups have exceptions

[ctaylor]

I don't quite understand why your think the Do Not Call list will stop you from getting calls from political groups. They have an exception and do not abide by the Do Not Call registry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_call

Did anyone seriously think the writers of that law would harm their own cash flow?

Personally, it's been very successful for me. I can't remember the last telemarketer I had to hang up on. Unfortunately, my kids have aged and can actually speak now. It was much more fun when they were still babies and I passed the receiver off to them. "Goo-goo-ga-ga" pretty much ends any solicitation.

Re:Naturally Political Groups have exceptions

[Babbster]

I think the question originator understands that political calls are exempt. The question is why are there more polling calls than before? And, are they actually taking a legitimate poll or using the excuse of taking a poll in an effort to get you to listen to a sales pitch at the end?

My number is on the DNC ("Do Not Call" as opposed to "Democratic National Commitee") list and I too have noted a large number of calls claiming to either be taking a poll or a survey. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on one's perspective), I never find out if the survey or poll is legitimate because I say "Have a nice day!" and hang up on them. After all, even if it's a properly done, legitimate poll, someone else who feels like talking to a stranger on the phone will represent my opinion anyway, while to me answering the questions would be annoying. :)

All that said, the number of such calls I receive is so small compared to the days before the DNC list that they just don't bother me - especially since I'm really good at hanging up on people. It's a bit like spam filters in that even if they're not 100% effective they'll hopefully be enough to save major annoyance.

It works

[Mr. Freeman]

I saw a segment on the local news about telemarketer's thoughts on the do not call list. The head of one telemarketing company said that they have no reason to call anyone on the do not call list simply because no one on the do not call list will buy anything you are trying to sell.

The best case scenario is that someone hangs up on you, worst case is they report you to the authorities and you get fined for violating the list. In both cases you gain nothing and only loose time spent calling the person and quite possibly a lot of money too.

Re:Bastards

[ctaylor]

You can verify your registration on the DNC list:

https://www.donotcall.gov/confirm/Conf.aspx

They will send you a nice email that looks something like this:

"Your phone number with the last four digits XXXX was registered in the National Do Not Call Registry on 10/13/2003. Most telemarketers will be required to stop calling you 31 days from your registration date. Your registration will (or did) expire on 3/26/2010.

Visit www.donotcall.gov to do any of these things:
-- to renew your registration before it expires
-- to file a complaint

Print this email and keep it for your records."

I'm not exactly sure why the expiration date is more than 5 years in my case. Something to explore!

Re:Bastards

[simontek2]

2003+5 Does not equal 2006. It comes up to 2008. Gee whiz, Where did you goto school. I do not want to send my kids there if the math is that bad.

Re:Absolutely correct...

[johnsmith_12345]

Generaly if you wait untill the end of the recording there is an option like "please push 2 to remove me from this list".

Re:You should mind...

[adarn]

I used to work for a company that solicited donations for police organizations. We used the names of 3 charities in our script that that supposedly got $30,000/yr each. From 8am-8pm (the times which were legally allowed) We had 30 level 1 telemarketers pulling in an average of $80 in donations an hour, 15 level 2 telemarketers with an average of $150/hr and 10 level 3 telemarketers averaging $300 in donations an hour.

Assuming that only 50% of the people who said they'd contribute sent their money in (As far as I could tell you weren't legally bound to sending them money for your "membership package", which of course included the 10 cent "Gold Shield Seal" sticker that was implicitly supposed to save your ass from getting a ticket. As a consequence, you do get put on the list of people they can call to guilt into donating next year, though. Those are the people the junkies would mostly call.) that's $45,900 a day. $16,753,500 a year. In 2 days they'd recoup their yearly charitable donations. We had I think, 5 offices nationwide. My office usually came in 3rd for sales per month (Once we came in first and got a keg party for it.) Let's hope that $30,000 number I heard thrown around was per office, at least.

Adarn Fool

For people in Belgium

[houghi]

There is the Robinsonlist. Also look at the Anti-Telemarketing Script and then there is: The counterscript available in several languages and also in PDF.

The charitable calls are a legal scam

[silverdirk]

After getting fund raiser calls from various "State Troopers", "Widows of Firefighters", etc charities, I hunted around on google and found out that these are from companies who go around calling charities, and offering to donate somewhat large (on the scale of the organization, which can be small) constant sums of money in exchange for permission to use their name. The "charity" involved can be something as lame as the union for police officers of a particular county. In other words, they might not be in your area, or even be worth donating money to.

The companies then sell this permission to other companies who do the actual calling.

End result is that the charity gets some relatively small cash, and some company gets the ability to farm up mass sums of money in their name.

DO NOT GIVE TO THEM EVER!
... or give them fake donation information... I wonder if that would be legal or not...

give 'em a break

[Scoobinator]

Wow, you guys are SOOOO funny. I worked as a telemarketer when I was SIXTEEN years old. Believe me, we did not care if you were funny. You were the 5,000th person that day that asked me what I was wearing. It was such a mind-numbing job that even the most vile profanities did not even cause me pause. I don't understand why people think it's such an offensive and gross invasion of their "privacy" when someone makes a sales call. If you don't want to talk to someone don't answer the damn phone. Besides, who doesn't have caller ID nowadays? If it's a blocked call or strange number, DON'T ANSWER! It's also not funny to ask for my phone number so you can bother me at home, nor is it funny to talk like Beavis and or Butthead and or Cartman, nor are you actually going to speak to my supervisor if you ask, you are in fact going to speak to my buddy sitting next to me who's going to tell you you're a self-important jackass who needs to shut the hell up. But moreso, don't start being a jackass to some poor fifteen or sixteen year old kid working the best paying job he could find in his crappy hometown to save up for his own car. Oh yeah, and I don't know if the place I was working at operated illegally or not (this was about six years ago), but when people asked us to be put on our do not call list, we had to get out a do not call list form (physical piece of paper) and ask to confirm their name and address. Most people would just scream at us "NO FUCK YOU NEVER CALL HERE AGAIN BLEEEARRRGHHH!" so they never got put on the list. If someone was especially rude we'd hit the "call back in five minutes" button and it would get shunted to someone else on the floor. That was always good for a few laughs.