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.

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.

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.

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.

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...