Slashdot Mirror
FTC Announces Crackdown on Do Not Call Violators
Tech.Luver writes "The Federal Trade Commission today announced a law enforcement crackdown on companies and individuals accused of violating the requirements of the National Do Not Call Registry, resulting in six settlements collectively imposing nearly $7.7 million in civil penalties, along with an additional complaint that will be filed in federal district court.
The actions, brought by the Department of Justice on the FTC's behalf, are against companies ranging from adjustable bed seller Craftmatic Industries, to alarm-monitoring provider ADT Security Services and lender Ameriquest Mortgage Company. To date, consumers have put more than 145 million numbers on the Registry, indicating they do not want to receive calls from telemarketers at home."
Maybe the took that complaint I lodged 3 years ago seriously... It's about time this type of thing started happening.
While I would rather not get unsolicited calls, I do actually approve of the allowances for charities to call. I get about one charitable call per week, they've never happened after 5pm or on weekends, and they are almost always for material donations rather than money (ie clothes, food, etc). It's turned out on a few occasions that I've actually had a very good personal benefit from such calls, ending up with a good way to eliminate a lot of old clothes, especially the kids' old stuff.
However, with that said, my tolerance for charitable calls would evaporate quickly if they became more frequent, began to intrude on family time (please no calls evenings or weekends), or became pushy or demanding.
Yesterday, I got my first call in years that wasn't from a wrong number or someone I knew.
They started off asking for me by name, and I asked why. They said they wanted to do a survey. I said, 'Do you not know I'm on the Do Not Call list?' 'We're not trying to sell anything.' After about 2 minutes of nastily telling him that he was profiting from me, and therefore WAS selling something, he said 'We'll call back tomorrow.' and hung up before I could reply. That was at 5pm... Yeah, dinner time. Another 'Unknown' number called at 8pm, but I hung up before they could talk.
I'm hoping they do call back again today so I can yell at another one of them and waste their time. I'm asking for a manager straight off this time.
It's kind of nice to have someone to yell at again... It's almost a shame the DNC list works so well.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
You clearly don't get the 4x year call from the Fraternal Order Troopers Society calling "on behalf" of the local police organization asking for cash for policemen retirement benefits, or some such. You know, I have established business relationships with all the charities I donate to. Being on the DNC list doesn't prevent them from calling me (that whole prior relationship thing). If necessary, get a 2 bit identifier attached to the DNC list; set bit zero as charities and bit one as political action. With 145M people on the DNC list, that ads up to a whopping 20MB of additional space. If it means getting it added, I'll send them a nickel to cover the cost of the extra storage.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
And you know how they get you with that loophole? Every go into a Wallmart, Best Buy, or shop online at any number of random sites (Apple iTunes or Amazon for instance)? Now you have a good idea of why they ask you for your phone number when you pay by credit card or otherwise ask you for your phone number as part of account registry or the final sale information.
Convenient way to not only harvest your purchasing history, but it also gives them implicit permission to call your home and to allow their "partners" to do the same. Some of these companies may not have actually violated the list directly. Not their fault people don't pay attention to such details ya know.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Yesterday, I got called by "Asia," saying she was from a local Chiropractor's office and wanted me to come in for a "Free" Spinal Analysis.
I reported the call to the State licensing board, saying that if he is hiring "fly-by-night" telemarketing companies, it was possible that he is doing questionable practice. I also reported the call to the FTC and called my Chiropractor (who went to the same, very respected, College) to complain.
Usually, whenever I inform the caller that my phone is on a "Do Not Call" registry, they hang up and try not to give me any information about their company or whereabouts.
I used to live in an illegal sublet in NYC and all calls were for a "Mr. or Mrs SomeotherLastname." I would very calmly inform the caller that I was "Mr. SomeotherLastname's" brother from the midwest and that they had just passed away. I would very politely enquire if they had an open account with them or some other business with them. This was before the Do Not Call Registry was set up and it was very amusing to hear the reactions.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Yes, but I am not willing to pay money for a service to stop people from calling me. This is like giving the bully your lunch money so he won't pester you on the schoolyard. Instead, I would want the telcos to let me quote a price for how many dollars per minute I will charge to talk to an incoming caller. The telco can keep a small percentage of this amount, and by pushing a button on the phone on incoming calls, I can waive the fee. If they falsify their incoming caller ID, I can push a button to bump the per minute fee up by a magnitude of three, and blocked caller ID automatically results in a multiple of three per minute fee.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I try to engage in conversations with these people, when they are people, and try to convince them to let the missionaries from my church come and visit them. You would be surprised with how receptive these people are. I guess that is the risk for calling Utah.
When answering a call from one of these systems, you typically hear a pause while the system alerts the telemarketers that it has found a live human for them to speak to.
Upon hearing that characteristic pause, I now simply dial 25 to instruct my Canon ImageClass multifunction laser printer to accept an incoming fax and hang up, leaving the caller to be bombarded with shrill fax tones.
In the two months I've been doing this, the number of spam calls I get has dropped by 2/3.