"Do Not Call" Violators Fined $1.2M

coondoggie writes "A federal court today spanked two telemarketers with some $1.2 million in civil penalties for violating the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call Rule. According to the FTC, the companies called consumers whose phone numbers were on the Do Not Call Registry without having obtained their express written agreement or having an 'established business relationship' with them. One group's telemarketers also allegedly abandoned many calls, by failing to connect the calls to a sales representative within two seconds after consumers answered, as required by law, the FTC stated. The cases were filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC."

Comments

cost of doing business...

[gandhi_2]

...don't think the telemarketers didn't factor fines like this in the price they charged clients.

This is $300 billion/year industry.

Re:cost of doing business...

[BradHAWK]

They didn't fine the industry $1.2 million. They fined two companies $1.2 million.

Re:cost of doing business...

[ProppaT]

Yup, this fine is just a speed bump. The fact that the Do Not Call registry made the law abiding companies change their business tactics or drop out of the race gives these companies that would rather take the hit less compitition. Less compitition = more money for them.

Of course I don't have numbers to back this up...I'm not sure that numbers exist for such things...but I'd wager to say that the major offending companies are probably making more now, even taking into account the spanking they're getting by the FCC, than they were before.

Here's something else to think about. Provided these are American owned companies, employing Americans, would it be better to just look the other way unless we're out of financial dire straights? As shady as telemarketing is, it's supporting and employing thousands of Americans every year. Granted, I've been telemarketed by my fair share from across the globe, but as far as domestic telemarking goes, it's not THE worst thing that could be going on with the strength of the dollar and the unemployment rate like it is.

Re:cost of doing business...

[mysidia]

They didn't fine the industry $1.2 million. They fined two companies $1.2 million.

Even so, $1.2 million doesn't seem like very much money to fine a large corporation for.

Having $1 billion in revenue instead of $300 billion doesn't suddenly make $1.2 million a big sum.

Oh, I see it makes the fine 0.012% instead of 0.00004%

If the FTC wants to be noticed, they should set a minimum of 1% of revenue for first time/minor offense of calling a few people on the do-not-call-list

The fine should be minimum 20% of annual revenue for a pattern of violations.

And the penalties should be much more severe for repeat violators.

That would actually encourage companies to obey the rules. A $1 million fine is like a fly buzzing around, that companies can ignore and still go about their dastardly business.

Re:cost of doing business...

[furby076]

If you don't think 1.2 mil isn't big dollars to a SINGLE business, as opposed to an INDUSTRY, then you are mistaken. If it was a multi-billion dollar company sure - but someone is gonna feel some heat on this.

Besides - there needs to be reasonable penalties. Just because a company has 100 million in assests/revenue does not mean they need to be fined 100 million for any infraction of any law. That would be prejudicial and wrong. It would be along the lines of how drug laws are racist (cheaper drugs, which tend to be used mroe by low socio-economic people aka minorities, get stiffer penalties then those who use more expensive drugs.)

So 1.2 million for calling is pretty fair. If they don't stop doing it the next judge can make it 10 million (cumulative penalties), and the judge after that can make it 50, and so forth until they get the message.

In the top portion of your message you said this was a "speed bump" but in the bottom portion you said we should look the other way because of our economy. These two statements clash. If it is a slap on the wrist the only people to be fired are those responsible for the screw-up...usually a few management. It won't cause massive lay-offs. Also - no we should not look the other way. We should not allow people to break the law because the economy sucks right now. Plenty of people work and make a profit without breaking the law.

Re:cost of doing business...

[mysidia]

p.s. The FTC also needs the right to decide revenue on their own, bypass any tricks by the company's accounting department.

And also include the revenues of associated companies.

And levy fines against "holding companies" or other related companies artificially constructed to try to insulate profits or related orgs from liability arising from illegal business practices.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If you accept the premise that most telemarketing, especially most shady telemarketing, is for rip-offs and other kinds of crap, then "looking the other way" as you suggest, is just a variation on the broken-window fallacy.

Re:cost of doing business...

[pjt33]

There should also be other remedies available, such as prohibiting the CEOs of these companies from holding any company office for five years. That's the kind of penalty which sets an example to make other companies think twice about what they're doing, and I don't think it's disproportionate.

Re:cost of doing business...

[digitig]

Yup, this fine is just a speed bump. The fact that the Do Not Call registry made the law abiding companies change their business tactics or drop out of the race gives these companies that would rather take the hit less compitition.

Which is useful information in itself. I'm on the UK DNC list, and if I get a call it means that the company calling me is either incompetent or is employing shady, if not crooked, business practices. I always ask them which it is, and they tend to find it hard to return to script.

Here's something else to think about. Provided these are American owned companies, employing Americans, would it be better to just look the other way unless we're out of financial dire straights? As shady as telemarketing is, it's supporting and employing thousands of Americans every year.

Hey, so does organised crime, maybe you want to cut that some slack, too? Anyway, most marketing calls I get here in the UK seem to originate outside the UK (judging by the accents, which I realise isn't 100% reliable) because that avoids the UK law so there is no redress. Don't be surprised if the calls you get are from outside the USA, for just the same reason.

Re:cost of doing business...

[mpe]

There should also be other remedies available, such as prohibiting the CEOs of these companies from holding any company office for five years.

Or maybe have to publish their own phone number(s) for 5 years.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Main Gauche]

Granted, I've been telemarketed by my fair share from across the globe, but as far as domestic telemarking goes, it's not THE worst thing that could be going on with the strength of the dollar and the unemployment rate like it is.

I really hope that's not what got you modded up.

When the harm you cause others is greater than the benefit you create for yourself, that is textbook economic inefficiency. It should be illegal. That's why we have laws against pollution. That's why we have laws against speeding. That's why we have countless laws against many things that a selfish individual would want to do, but which would harm others.

Yes, telemarketing falls in that class: a failed marketing call has inconvenienced the person who answered the phone. The marketer does not bear this cost.

And the state of the economy does not mean we should throw this principle out the window.

Re:cost of doing business...

[daniorerio]

Besides - there needs to be reasonable penalties. Just because a company has 100 million in assests/revenue does not mean they need to be fined 100 million for any infraction of any law. That would be prejudicial and wrong. It would be along the lines of how drug laws are racist (cheaper drugs, which tend to be used mroe by low socio-economic people aka minorities, get stiffer penalties then those who use more expensive drugs.)

Or, those drugs are cheaper because of the more heavy penalty involved when caught? I'm sure it will affect the price/demand somehow

Re:cost of doing business...

[fafaforza]

And you expect the government to know all that? They can't even see red flags when someone claims to trade 1 million stock options on an exchange that at most does 200,000 trades in a day. (numbers approximated)

Re:cost of doing business...

[furby076]

Or, those drugs are cheaper because of the more heavy penalty involved when caught? I'm sure it will affect the price/demand somehow

No, not really. Crack heads don't really think about the penalties of getting caught. Also, most crack-heads don't know the difference between cocaine penalties and crack penalties....and relating to my first sentence, even if they did know - a drug addict wants/needs those drugs. If they can't afford cocaine they will go for the crack even if they know the penalties.

The reason cocaine is more expensive then crack is because it is a better quality drug and less adictive. You are paying more because you will less likely become strung out.

Re:cost of doing business...

[gandhi_2]

So...a heard of wildebeest looses two members, that's not really much of a deterrent to the thousands.

And the two wildebeest didn't even die...they just got injured.

On the bright side...the $1.2 mil in fines will help the government pay for a telemarketer industry bailout.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is $300 billion/year industry.

The US population is roughly 300 million. So, telemarketing revenues are about $1,000 for every person in the US? That doesn't pass the sniff test.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Tom]

As shady as telemarketing is, it's supporting and employing thousands of Americans every year.

I call strawman on that.

With the same argument, you'd have to make drugs legal, all of them. Or child porn. Or concentration camps. They all do or could do the same - employ people.

The fact is: The "it offers jobs" argument is entirely hollow. If we made computers illegal today, sure there would be a couple million unemployed people tomorrow. They'd have different jobs by next week, when we find out that we still need work to be done, and people to do it.

The "jobs" argument is a pseudo-argument that pretends to look at things from a higher perspective. What it really does, however, is cover up the proper higher perspective, which is: What is the value for the local/national/global economy?

Telemarketing sells stuff. It does not create any additional value. It does have a negative economic impact through the damage it does to people who don't want to be called (time is an economic commodity, even if it's nominally spare time). I've not run the numbers, but I dare to say it at least equals out, given how many people's evening the telemarketers have to ruin in order to make one sale.

On the whole, telemarketing almost certainly provides a negative contribution to the local/national/global economy. Just like drugs or concentration camps, so it needs to go the same way - outlawed.

Footnotes:
a) I'm aware "drugs" is a very high summary here and not all drugs fit equally
b) I've not made nor do I intend to make an economic "analysis", however rough, on the topic of child porn, that's why it's missing in the second enumeration

Re:cost of doing business...

[tompaulco]

When the harm you cause others is greater than the benefit you create for yourself, that is textbook economic inefficiency.
I was just thinking along these lines today regarding school snow days. We had a little ice storm here in Oklahoma, as we tend to do about once a year. The schools are closed. The roads are not really that bad, but the schools don't want to get sued by someone getting in an accident taking their kid to school. So instead of kids having a chance of getting in an accident on the way to school, now parents have to either stay home or take the kids probably 10 to 20 times the difference and take them in to work with them. The odds are significantly higher of a kid getting hurt by the school being out session, however the school doesn't care because at least the legal burden is not on their shoulders.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

When a person violates motor vehicle laws badly enough, they lose their license to use a motor vehicle for some duration.

When a lawyer violates the Bar rules badly enough, they lose their license to practice law in that state for some duration (or forever, if you do the types of things Jack Thompson did.)

When a company violates telemarketing laws badly enough, they should lose the ability to telemarket for some duration. Prevent them from calling any customers (without the customer's explicit request -- if someone leaves your company voicemail asking you to contact them, that's okay) for a week for the first offense, doubling with each subsequent offense. Make it so that the punishment sticks even if they try to do some sort of corporate shell game ("No we're not HyperGlobalMegaCompuTech, we're GlobalCompuHyperMegaTech. See our freshly painted sign?") Eventually they'll learn (or be barred from calling customers for long enough that they'll go out of business before regaining the ability to telemarket.)

Re:cost of doing business...

[Anonymous Coward]

For someone who claims to know about business and numbers, your math sucks. It's 0.12%(hint, a billion is only 1,000 times bigger than a million), and that's IF they make a billion dollars. There are a lot of small telemarketing companies(far more than 300) so your numbers lack there as well.

Re:cost of doing business...

[bdenton42]

If you don't think 1.2 mil isn't big dollars to a SINGLE business, as opposed to an INDUSTRY, then you are mistaken. If it was a multi-billion dollar company sure - but someone is gonna feel some heat on this.

Westgate Resorts http://www.westgateresorts.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=about_us.show_about_us was fined $900,000. They claim that they have "Over 10,000" employees, which means that the fine is less than $90 per employee (about a day and a half's pay at minimum wage). Just a small slap on the wrist for a company that size IMO.

Re:cost of doing business...

[mr_shifty]

Exactly... to the really big-money offenders, a $1 million fine is just worked into their future budgets as a 'cost of doing business'.

It needs to be something that either puts them out of business, or scares them into more legitimate business models.

Re:cost of doing business...

[PalmKiller]

They should be automatically tax audited and that used to determine the amount, and charge them extra for the untimely audit. Plus that will add to their pain, if we break the rules, we get audited.

Re:cost of doing business...

[sjames]

The fine for serious violations should be the greater of 20% of annual revenue for each year the violations occurred or 150% of the revenue that came from the violations.

For added fun, charge the phone equipment with assisting in the violation of the do-not-call list and take it in a forfeiture. Yes, even if it's rented.

Penalties that don't even add up to the value of the crime are better defined as taxes. Imagine if stealing a new car off the lot was a $1000 fine (and you get to keep the car). Suddenly stealing a new car would be the new national sport.

If civil fines for individuals were scaled to the corporate fines, a speeding ticket would cost $2 or so and wouldn't affect your insurance rate. No need to waste time paying in cash at the courthouse, just mail a check.

Re:cost of doing business...

[SydShamino]

Remember, companies have all the rights as people in the US.*

* except when it could inconvenience the company.

Re:cost of doing business...

[ITJC68]

If only this could be implemented. It is a well thought out and reasoned answer. The best one I have read here in awhile. Let's take it one step farther. If a person would like to be on a "list" that will allow telemarketing they should sign up for it. As long as that customer is on that list it should be acceptable. If not then the penalties should be as you stated. If we have a do not call registry why not an "ok to call registry"?

Re:cost of doing business...

[furby076]

http://www.westgateresorts.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=about_us.show_about_us [westgateresorts.com] was fined $900,000. They claim that they have "Over 10,000" employees, which means that the fine is less than $90 per employee (about a day and a half's pay at minimum wage). Just a small slap on the wrist for a company that size IMO.

Sure break it down by that level and $900,000 seems paltry. There was a commercial I recently heard, someone saying "I can afford to buy this boat, it's ONLY $100,000"...the other guy responded "Or an additional $700 per month". 1.2 million is not chump change - thats a lot of money. Considering how their business model works (pennies on the call, less then that for web-ads) it is going to take them a lot more then 1.5 days to recoup that money. Also...90 for 1.5 days comes to 60/day or just under $50,000/year. How many phone operators make 50k/year?

Gotta love statistics. And again, you neglected to take into account ALL of my statement - try and avoid that. But here it is again to remind you

So 1.2 million for calling is pretty fair. If they don't stop doing it the next judge can make it 10 million (cumulative penalties), and the judge after that can make it 50, and so forth until they get the message.

Re:cost of doing business...

[bdenton42]

Also...90 for 1.5 days comes to 60/day or just under $50,000/year. How many phone operators make 50k/year?

Your math is off somewhere. $60/day x 260 work days = $15,600 per year.

So 1.2 million for calling is pretty fair. If they don't stop doing it the next judge can make it 10 million (cumulative penalties), and the judge after that can make it 50, and so forth until they get the message.

Do the penalties actually increase on further offenses in reality? Looks to me like it's $11,000 per complaint so they may just decide to take their chances and continue to eat that cost.

Re:cost of doing business...

[quarterbuck]

The government does not see the flags when Madoff claims to his clients that he is trading so much. On the other hand, when somebody files a complain and the guy is in jail, even the stupidest of investigators can find out where the money went.
Similarly, after the charges have been bought to court, it is easy to trace the shell companies that these firms transfer the money to. Accounting in USA is not so bad that cash can be falsified - only the Mafia has done that before and they have mostly been shut down.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that the drug war employs about as many people as a drug industry (given legalization) would. Consider all the law enforcement types, the lawyers (on both sides), the rehab people, the prison guards and the current (however non-law-abiding) set of dealers, growers and the like.

Re:cost of doing business...

[gad_zuki!]

Why doesnt the government just mandate a salesman come into my home every night for an hour to pitch products at me? If its "for the jobs" then why not?

In reality, we draw the line on various types of marketing and advertising. People dont like it and it turns them off. The marketers then just become more aggressive and dishonest. They target seniors and english-second language people. They get them to sign contracts and repeat billings on credit cards, because people who understand english better or business better would never sign for this.

They are predators preying on the weak because their business method has failed. Let them die out. Especially now where many people dont even have land-lines anymore and one minute with a telemarketer costs them out of out pocket because of how cell phone pricing is done. Push advertising like a phone call is silly when you can find anything on the web, including reviews, competitive pricing, and Better Business Bureau complaints.

Now we have to go after the "text blah-blah to 5893" only to find out youve automatically been signed up for a 12 month contract of 40 dollars a month for a "joke of the day" service.

At the end of the day we either believe in consumer rights or we dont. I say we do.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Mr_eX9]

That's still a pittance though. If the court actually cared about upholding the law, they would fine these companies more than they could possibly pay, ultimately forcing them out of existence.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Runaway1956]

Companies ALSO have RESPONSIBILITIES that people do not have. Trucking companies are responsible for $1million liability (usually through insurance policies), far in excess of any liability the average citizen is required to carry. Companies working with petro- and/or hazardous chemicals have responsibilities the average citizen doesn't imagine - UNTIL an accident happens. Nuclear plants have TREMENDOUS responsibility. And, no, companies do NOT enjoy all the same rights as individuals. They don't have the right to vote, for instance. Instead, they just buy proxy votes by giving away free jets to politicians.

Re:cost of doing business...

[SpacePunk]

They are acting illegally to begin with, what makes you think they would adhere to any other rule?

Re:cost of doing business...

[Tolkien]

Meh, personally I would fine 1% of average annual revenue for the first offense, 10% on the second, 100% on the third.. etc. This would guarantee that the company goes belly-up sooner than later if they keep up their shady practices.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Vegeta99]

No, they're cheaper because they just plain ol' have less of the active ingredient.

What he's talking about is cocaine - two forms, one powder, one freebased (crack). Generally, crack has less active ingredient (its made from powder cocaine)

You get a 5-year minimum for trafficking cocaine when you have up to half a kilo. Five hundred grams.

For crack? Five grams. Who uses cocaine? People with money. Crack? People with low SES.

Citation Given: http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2007/10/01/crack-vs-powder-cocaine-a-gulf-in-penalties.html

Re:cost of doing business...

[EvilBudMan]

--With the same argument, you'd have to make drugs legal, all of them. Or child porn. Or concentration camps. They all do or could do the same - employ people.--

They already do. It's called prison guards.

Re:cost of doing business...

[DinDaddy]

"I call strawman on that."

We are going to have to ask you for proof of a pre-existing business relationship with strawman, as his number is on the DNC list.

Re:cost of doing business...

[BradHAWK]

According to Westgate Resorts' website, their annual revenue is "more than $400 million". They were fined $900,000, so that's about .2%. So in just three posts we've gone from .00004% to .012% to .2% - if we keep this thread going we can run them right out of business.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Arterion]

Basically, it consumes resources, but does not create any. It does not provide either a good or a service. Imagine if all the folks employed as telemarketers had jobs that DID produce resources (goods or services). I guess you could call it wealth, too. They don't produce any wealth, they just consume it. Basically making the value of money less.

Re:cost of doing business...

[CodeBuster]

they should set a minimum of 1% of revenue for first time/minor offense

1% of revenue according to whom? Corporations (and the government too, but in different ways and for different reasons) play these sorts of accounting games all of the time, reporting one figure for tax purposes and another during the shareholder conference call. It all depends upon which is more beneficial for the corporation, understating or overstating revenues, and which accounting framework they use to do it.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I don't get a rats ass if my income producing activity hurts someone else? -- That attitude is gonna get me locked up isn't it? I hate being forced by society to not be selfish, LOL!! Posting anon, because this is a pretty abrasive statement.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Anonymous Coward]

A "heard" of wildebeest "looses" two members?

Re:cost of doing business...

[mysidia]

The IRS are expert at finding money that tax dodgers try to hide.

Make the penalties a tax liability, and the money WILL be found, eventually.

The IRS also has access to reported revenue information, so they can cross-check and verify the fines paid are based on the right income numbers.

Re:cost of doing business...

[mysidia]

The greater of three different amounts:

(i) The amount they report to their shareholders as EBITA, numbers according to GAAP practices only; if they don't normally report such numbers, they must incur the extra expense and do so, so long as the penalty is imposed.

(ii) The amount they report to the IRS on their tax return.

(iii) An amount that will be determined by a government accounting professional/department, according to their own procedures, as an estimate of the company's real money coming in. The department responsible for making this estimate having full auditing authority, and legal ability to compel compliance with whatever auditing procedures they may envision.

Also, as part of the penalty, the bill for all auditing expenses shall be part of the penalty, and due immediately. (If it costs more to audit them than the amount due from them in penalty, because of poor or inadequate records, for example, then they pay the higher amount, plus a minimum additional amount)

Re:cost of doing business...

[Anonymous Coward]

your drug comment is ignorant.

drug laws are not racist. perhaps its some of those cheaper drugs like crack and pcp that make people more prone to stealing, killing, and other violent crimes.

there are still lots of expensive drugs like cocaine and such used in both low and high socioeconomic places.

the rest of your post is insightful, you you're really reaching on that one

Re:cost of doing business...

[Meski]

Cut their telecom access for repeat offences. Permanently.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Meski]

What, you've never herd of that? Looser.

Re:cost of doing business...

[rabiddeity]

If civil fines for individuals were scaled to the corporate fines, a speeding ticket would cost $2 or so and wouldn't affect your insurance rate. No need to waste time paying in cash at the courthouse, just mail a check.

Interestingly enough, that's exactly what local governments are already doing via speed cameras. Lower the fines enough, remove the insurance penalties, and it turns into a road tax. In that case, it's a cash grab. And then they claim it's intended to slow people down?

Similarly in the case of the FTC, I do agree with you that they should grab a little bit harder if they want to make it an actual deterrent. As it stands, it's too low a penalty to even make money, let alone deter these companies.

Re:cost of doing business...

[Tom]

What if I don't get a rats ass if my income producing activity hurts someone else?

Society has decided to not want to tolerate that, some 20,000 years ago.

Two exceptions:
a) if you hurt someone society doesn't care about, or it wants to hurt, then you're fine (e.g. soldiers, official executioners or torturers until the middle ages, teachers - ok, just kidding :-) )
b) for the past few centuries, a workaround/hack has been found, it's called "the corporation". If you don't personally hurt others, but hide behind a company that does, and the hurting of people is just a side-effect of what the company does, you're also fine (pollution, chemical industry, child labour, etc.)

Re:cost of doing business...

[mjwx]

Provided these are American owned companies

Big provision there.

it's supporting and employing thousands of Americans every year.

If by American you mean, Indians, Singaporean, Malay and filippino the yes you have a point. Telemarketing is so profitable because they can outsource (read: offshore) work to places where they pay pennies on the dollar to what they would with a local operation. No telemarketing company in their right mind would hire Americans at US wages to do a job that Indians will do at Indian wages for the same cost of operation. Doubly so seeing as you can make a filippina girl sound like an American girl if you are willing to spend a bit of money which will still be an order of magnitude cheaper then hiring real Americans.

So tell me, why would these companies hire Americans rather then care about their bottom line?

Re:cost of doing business...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to a friend of mine who worked on Inbound calls at a call center, the law fines the guy who is routed the call by their system (you know - the poor schmuk getting min. wage) NOT the "Poor Telemarketing Co." who operates the call robot. Only after "numerous" fines is the company liable.

You can thank 'The Shrub', Darth Chaney, and Karl Rove's "Permanent Republican Majority" for yet another 'looks like we're helping the public, except...

Re:cost of doing business...

[furby076]

Your math is off somewhere. $60/day x 260 work days = $15,600 per year.

You are right my math is totally off, though I was basing on a 365 year (salaried works better for companies so they don't have to give overtime). But still grossly off.

Do the penalties actually increase on further offenses in reality? Looks to me like it's $11,000 per complaint so they may just decide to take their chances and continue to eat that cost.

Even if the law does not stipulate cumulative penalties (many laws do not) judges are allowed, and they exercise that power, to increase penalties.

Thats good to hear.

[jellomizer]

Many judges are not sympathetic towards people who report the "Do Not Call" violators. They see the people who do report them as whiny people who are abusing the judicial system for money.

Telemarketing, Spamming, and even Billboards, are what I call bad advertising. They advertise without giving any advantage to the community or benefit to the end user, or costs them in some ways.

Advertising that helps offer free services, or reduced cost services are good advertising, wither or not this happens is at the ethics of the person giving the service, but not the advertiser.

Re:Thats good to hear.

[ImOnlySleeping]

I've never heard any evidence of your statement regarding judges. Care to elaborate? I would have suspected that with more straight forward laws, such as this one, that judges could make more cut and dry opinions and not have any personal opinion injected to decisions. The way they're supposed to.

Re:Thats good to hear.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree about the judge thing. It's too bad really, as I don't want any money from these idiots calling me: I just want the calls to stop. I don't want to take them to court either as I don't want to spend time or money on it. There are probably many people who are in the same boat I am - we still get calls from telemarketers but don't want to spend precious time or money on stopping them. I imagine these companies know that most people aren't going to put much effort into a complaint so they figure they can just keep calling and only have to pay out once in a great while.

Re:Thats good to hear.

[Anonymous Coward]

If a judge is unsympathetic, just add his number to every telemarkers list. Wait for him to file a lawsuit, then show up on the side of the telemarketers against him and use his own official words against him in court.

Judges are not supposed uphold the law, and if the LAW says I get $500 if you call me after I am on teh DNC list, then the judge should order the telemarketer to pay the penalty of calling me.

Judges that selectivly enforce the laws on the books are not judges, but corrupt officials -- even if they do not take bribes.

Re:Thats good to hear.

[Rogerborg]

Many judges are not sympathetic towards people who report the "Do Not Call" violators. They see the people who do report them as whiny people who are abusing the judicial system for money.

Many Slashdot posters are inclined to make vague, sweeping populist statements without a shred of evidence to back them up. [Citation needed]

Re:Thats good to hear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bennett Haselton has documented several examples. The incident based upon which he filed a formal complaint against Judge Jorgensen is the most egregious example.

/CF

Re:Thats good to hear.

[mysidia]

If Judges are actually not supposed to uphold the law, then it sounds reasonable he lets telemarketers go.

Making a telemarketer pay could be considered upholding the law...

Re:Thats good to hear.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They may be "vague sweeping populist statements" to you, but if you had been paying attention here over the years, you would see that just about every report of such cases that has made its way to slashdot has played out pretty much exactly as claimed. Try reading up on Bennett Haselton and his efforts to use the law to punish do-not-call violators.

Re:Thats good to hear.

[ccguy]

I've never understood why it was decided to have a do not call list, instead of a telemarketing list where *all numbers* used for this were listed.

If they did that, calls would be trivial to screen, and there wouldn't be a list of people who don't want to be annoyed to start with.

Re:Thats good to hear.

[ImOnlySleeping]

I do appreciate the links, except that they have nothing to do with the DNCL

Re:Thats good to hear.

[Anonymous Coward]

The grandparent post said:

Many judges are not sympathetic towards people who report the "Do Not Call" violators.

and the parent expressed doubt about that statement. While Bennett's experiences specifically document email spam as opposed to telemarketing calls, I have seen similar anecdotes about people seeking remedies afforded them by the national DNC registry or the TCPA. I linked to his posted documents because they seemed germane to the discussion, and were easy to find.

/CF

Re:Thats good to hear.

[Rogerborg]

Uh huh. And when Slashdot runs an article titled "Judge applies law exactly the way that we'd like" (readers: 0, ad revenue: $0), then we can use Slashdot as a statistical reference source to back up "most" claims. And by the way: if you're going to post a "citation" that doesn't lead anywhere useful, in the expectation that nobody will bother to follow it anyway, then you might as well link to Wikipedia rather than Google.

Re:Thats good to hear.

[jellomizer]

Ok I heard it on NPR Between the times of 4:00PM-5:30PM between January 2007- May 2008. That is about it, sorry, I am unaware to post something on slashdot I needed a Photographic memory, and I need to index every tidbit of trivia I pick up during the day. Just in case it comes up so I can reference it for you.

Re:Thats good to hear.

[Geminii]

Telemarketing, Spamming, and even Billboards, are what I call bad advertising.

How about 'push' advertising in general?

Spanking's too good

[biscuitlover]

If anyone deserves a repeat spanking it's these people. I have to deal with enough marketing crap coming via my inbox & letterbox without having people call my phone all the time too. It's especially galling when people have explicitly indicated that they don't want to be called in the first place, as they have here.

I wish the whole concept of telemarketing would just die a horrible death. Who really wants to deal with persistent salespeople when they're trying to chill out at home and enjoy the precious little time that isn't spent staring at their work PC?

More spanking please.

Re:Spanking's too good

[Asic Eng]

I didn't know that the US had brought back corporal punishment. I applaud it's use in this case, and wonder whether it will be televised?

Re:Spanking's too good

[digitalhermit]

DirecTV was BY FAR the most persistent and annoying telemarketers. They would call, when I said "hello" they'd pretend to be a friend..
"Hey man, how's it going? What have you been doing with yourself?"

Or

"Yo, wazzup! Thought I'd lost your number."

The funny thing was that they sometimes transposed my first and last names, or screwed up the pronunciation badly... Even after the initial, "No thank you, not interested," they'd continue their spiel...

Sometimes I'd just hang up... sometimes, being polite, I'd continue with "no thank yous"..

They'd ask for sympathy: "Look, I really need to get four subscriptions or else I lose my job. You can cancel after a month."

They'd call me dumb: "What do you mean? You don't want to save money on your cable bill? You must be rich."

Or they'd just keep on reading no matter what I said... You needed to be careful here because they would do things like:
"OK, so I'm just going to go ahead and send this offer out to you. I'll need to verify your home address." Then eventually, "And now I need a major credit card for identification."

Re:Spanking's too good

[RicktheBrick]

I have caller id and will not answer the phone when a telemarketer calls. I have an answer machine and most of them will not even leave a message. My phone company will not allow my phone to ring if the name or phone number is unknown. They get around this by having the name toll free number so I do not answer them and again they leave no message. I wish they would pass a law that they can not call from a unknown name and number. Last year even the political parties would call from a unknown name but at least they would leave a message. There are still rare times when they call early in morning when I do not have my glasses on and can not read the caller id and I am not near the answer machine. The same goes for the mail I receive. Most of it goes from the mail box to the recycle box without being opened. They too have no return address so I can identify the sender before opening it. They will offer you anything for a very small price until you get to the store to find out they do not have any of them and probably never did have any of them. They get around that by printing in fine print no rain checks. I once received a flier that stated that I won $400. No purchase necessary. All I had to do was to show up at the car dealership and claim the prize. I showed up and there were several other people there to claim there prizes. We all gave our scratch off claims to a salesman who promptly threw them in the trash. It is getting so bad that I sometime throw away by mistake important papers like tax information.

Re:Spanking's too good

[graphicsguy]

As a general rule of thumb, if an envelope says "Important" on it, it can go right in the trash. One exception is tax documents from a known source.

I think they got off lightly

[cosam]

> A federal court today spanked two telemarketers...

I'd have sentenced them to a term of no less than four years in a federal spank-me-on-the-ass prison.

Re:I think they got off lightly

[stabiesoft]

Agreed. I'd also add the drug law methods. Seize ALL assets of the firm and its sexecutives.

Blow to "Fine print" contracts?

[Muad'Dave]

From what I can tell, this decision is actually a blow to so-called "fine print" "privacy policies" and "terms and conditions" so prevalent on websites these days. In the article, it says that they were convicted even though their "fine print" said the consumers would receive marketing calls. It sounds like to me that those types of one-sided "fine print" contracts are not being upheld in court.

The Westgate defendants purchased the telephone numbers of consumers who answered travel-related survey questions, such as "Select your favorite travel destination," on Brandarama.com's online form, the FTC stated. Many of these telephone numbers were on the DNC Registry. The Brandarama.com Web site did not refer to Westgate or notify consumers that they would receive telemarketing calls, except in language buried in its "terms and conditions" or "privacy policy" pages, the FTC stated.

Re:Blow to "Fine print" contracts?

[yachius]

"Privacy Policies" and "Terms and Conditions" have no legal clout on their own. You can't violate a law because you state that you're going to in your privacy policy, which is exactly what has happened here.

Re:Blow to "Fine print" contracts?

[Muad'Dave]

Of course you can't blatantly declare that you're going to break a law, but I don't think that's what they were doing. I bet their T&C's said something to the effect of "By filling out this form, you are creating a 'business relationship', and agree to accept marketing calls" or "By providing your opinion you agree that this serves as 'written approval' for marketing calls as specified in the DNC law."

The DNC list has specific loopholes for companies with which you have an existing relationship, and for ones that you specifically given express written permission. From the DNC FAQ: "...calls [are permitted] from companies with which you have an existing business relationship, or those to whom you've provided express agreement in writing to receive their calls."

Phone Spam

[bornagainpenguin]

I have a Virgin Mobile that I've been using now for nearly a year and I still get calls from all sorts of telemarketers who refuse to stop calling me, claiming I owe money or that my car warranty is about to expire. I recently made a report on one of these companies whose robo calls filled up my voice mail, only to recieve a letter back saying the report was 'unfounded' and wishing me a nice day. So while I'm happy to see there has been some action taken here against some of these companies I wish they'd be more consistent in enforcement.

The other thing that bothers me is the increasing frequency of these types of calls coming over VOIP and their increasing similarity to spam. My fear is that unless we get consistent in enforcement we're going to end up with today's situation with email repeated on cellphones, just as it was on faxes and landlines.

--happy one

Re:Phone Spam

[commodore64_love]

It's illegal for telemarketers to call cellphones (or fax machines), because those types of calls waste consumer dollars. In the case of my Virgin Mobile account, 20 cents per minute/voicemail, and you can be damned sure I would press charges if I were in your shoes.

Re:Phone Spam

[Culture20]

I have a Virgin Mobile that I've been using now for nearly a year and I still get calls from all sorts of telemarketers who refuse to stop calling me, claiming I owe money or that my car warranty is about to expire. I recently made a report on one of these companies whose robo calls filled up my voice mail, only to recieve a letter back saying the report was 'unfounded' and wishing me a nice day.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm guessing that the law focuses on phone number and not on phone owner. So, since a business relationship was established with your phone number from the previous owner of the number, you might be screwed until some possible time-out period.

Re:Phone Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Virgin Mobile that I've been using now for nearly a year and I still get calls from all sorts of telemarketers who refuse to stop calling me, claiming I owe money or that my car warranty is about to expire.

You know, when I had Sprint I never got telemarketing calls (from 2000-2008). Ever since I switched* to Virgin I've been getting telemarketing calls daily. I put it on the Do Not Call List back in August, but still every day I get at least one call for things like car warranty.

Seeing that you're having a similar problem, I wonder if Virgin is somehow in on it. These calls started about a day after I activated the phone (I didn't transfer my Sprint number).

* I got tired of paying Sprint $30+ a month when I barely used it. When my phone broke I decided to give Virgin a try since I didn't feel like paying for a new phone and getting stuck in term agreement again. Virgin's been great other than the calls. I now pay less than $5/mo.

Re:Phone Spam

[ThrowAwaySociety]

I had a Virgin Mobile phone for a while, and I was constantly getting collections calls on it.

I'm pretty sure that Virgin gets its phone number pool from people whose phone service got cut off for nonpayment (and probably also have dozens of other unpaid bills.)

The only way I got out of that was to port in a number from another carrier.

Re:Phone Spam

[rogeroger]

That must be why some get calls and others don't. I've been using Virgin Mobile for over 3 years and I have yet to get an unsolicited call. I was curious as to why I was so lucky.

Re:Phone Spam

[Rich0]

I think the issue is that collections agencies try any and every possible way of reaching whoever they're after. We still get calls from collection agencies for people who sold our house to the people who sold it to us. They could care less if you tell them that you have no idea who they're after or where they can be found - they just assume you're lying. You can't even tell them to put all correspondence in writing because you actually need to be the person they're after to do that legally.

Virgin Mobile customers are probably more vulnerable than most because I suspect that these prepaid phones tend to get used for nefarious purposes more often than most, and so when the numbers get recycled into the pool they're more likely to have been used by somebody who bought something with a stolen credit card, or somebody who had bad credit and couldn't get a monthly plan.

Collection agencies really need to be more tightly regulated. They should not be legally allowed to harass the living daylights out of anybody who has even the most tenuous association with somebody they're after. When informed that their information is out of date they should be required to cease all contact. Ideally there should be a do-not-call central registry as well to record incorrect collections information.

Re:Phone Spam

[elrous0]

Who exactly is he going to press charges with? The departments that oversee these laws rarely take any action (like he said, he tried to file a complaint, only for them to tell him they weren't going to do anything about it). So what is he going to do, dial 911 and tell the cops?

Re:Phone Spam

[RulerOf]

It's illegal for telemarketers to call cellphones

No it's not.

My company runs at least two dialing campaigns that go to cell phones. In order for the call to be legal, you probably need a prior business relationship (though I'm not certain) and you do need to do what's called "preview dialing," where someone is actually on the line the entire time, from the moment the line starts ringing and until the customer hangs up.

You may not like it, but should you ever get solicited on your cell phone, chances are good it was legal.

Re:Phone Spam

[tompaulco]

I agree with you. Collection agencies are at best only one step better than the deadbeats they try to collect from. If you do not legitimately owe a debt, but it has somehow been assigned to a collection agency, then they will harrass you even if you explain to them clearly how you do not owe the debt. On initial contact, they send you something telling you to notify them in writing or by phone if the debt is not valid. I have notified them in writing AND by phone, and still the next month I got a note saying "since you made no effort to contact us, we are considering this a valid debt."
I have had collection agencies call me regarding a late payment by my sister, who does not live with me, asking for her contact information. They also called my mother, my father and my grandmother.
More recently, the Colorado Department of Employment security sold my account to a collection agency. It seems that they had been sending me notices to an invalid address for years, and I somehow owed them about $500 in back taxes. The collection agency was harassing my employee in Colorado about this "debt". I attempted to reach the collection agent but was unsuccessful and left a message with my contact information and explicit instructions to not harass my employee. They continued to harass my employee. I spoke to the Colorado Department of Employment Security, they corrected my mailing address, we determined that the delinquent reports were for quarters preceding the assumption of my business in Colorado, however to humor them, I went ahead and filed zero dollar reports anyway, and the debt with them was settled for $0 dollars. The collection agency was notified of this. however, they continued to harass my employee.
Come to think of it, maybe they are a couple of steps below the people they try to collect from. Even the ones that legitimately owe money.

Re:Phone Spam

[n6kuy]

I thought there were already laws against bill collector harassment.
It requires, probably, sending a registered "drop dead" letter.

Re:Phone Spam

[commodore64_love]

If the $6/hour minimum wage idiot doesn't help you then:

- Ask for supervisor
- Call state representative or his office & report rules violation & unhelpful supervisor
- Call Verizon and explain that your money is being wasted by telemarketers (they don't like them anymore than we do)
- Keep calling until they get sick of you.

And finally, if I still can't get any help, hire a lawyer and sue the fuck out of them for wasting ~$20 of my money *illegally* calling my cellphone. Yes I am truly that stubborn; there's nothing I hate more than corporations that don't follow the rules and waste taxpayer dollars. Who knows? I might get a big settlement but even if I did not, it would be fun dragging the corporation into court.

Re:Phone Spam

[commodore64_love]

I can see that Sears might be able to call me cellphone, due to previous business, but there's no reason for XYZ Marketing to be calling my cellphone and wasting 20 cents every time. That IS illegal.

Re:Phone Spam

[tompaulco]

There are laws against calling people on the DNC list, too. But yet here we are discussing infractions.
Basically, shady businesses will ignore the laws, particularly if they think the people they are dealing with are unaware of the laws. If you catch them on it, they will say "oh, you are right. We'll never do that again (to you)."

Re:Phone Spam

[commodore64_love]

Fix:

- Call [Virgin Mobile] and explain...

Re:Phone Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

You should take a look at this article on consumerist.com and its link to the Wikipedia article covering the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Often, when dealing with a debt collector who refuses to leave you alone even though you have no relationship with the person they actually want to contact, if you mention the Act and suggest that any further contact may lead you to file a report with the FTC, the situation clears up pretty quickly. Of course, you have to do this for each debt collector that calls. But, on the plus side, you'll actually be able to answer your phone again, after a while.

Re:Phone Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Collection agencies ARE strenuously regulated.

Look up the FDCPA sometime. Even if you are the person who owes the debt, if you advise the collector that it is an 'inconvenient time' he/she cannot call you anymore at that time. If it is found to be a wrong number, the collection agency is required to cease efforts to call at that #.

If collectors are still calling you, sue them under the FDCPA. Give them a fair chance to stop, of course, but then..

Re:Phone Spam

[RulerOf]

there's no reason for XYZ Marketing to be calling my cellphone

Alas, if Sears hired XYZ Marketing to call on their behalf, then yes, they would.

Re:Phone Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-258164A1.pdf (warning pdf - it was either this or a word .doc)

"Telemarketing to cell phone numbers has always been illegal in most cases and will
continue to be so."

"FCC regulations prohibit telemarketers from using automated dialers to call cell phone
numbers. Automated dialers are standard in the industry, so most telemarketers are
barred from calling consumers on their cell phones without their consent."

Re:Phone Spam

[FrozenFOXX]

That's fantastic, but who's he going to press charges on? And for how much? And then how much time, energy, and money is it going to take to actually bring said party to court (which it most likely isn't going to pan out since these scumbags are harder to find than a bathroom in DC).

It may be illegal, but I, this guy, and a hell of a lot of other people are getting spam called on our cell phones.

On the constructive side, I recommend reporting the number to callercomplaints.com. I don't know for certain if it'll *do* something but apparently they've been mentioned quite a few places and it's better than trying to track down non-existent numbers.

Re:Phone Spam

[mjwx]

I recently made a report on one of these companies whose robo calls filled up my voice mail, only to recieve a letter back saying the report was 'unfounded' and wishing me a nice day.

To which organisation did you make this report to?

In many nations there are regulatory bodies which investigate such matters, in Australia they are called the Communications Industry Ombudsmen and can inflict a great deal of damage for minor infractions on the Communications Act and code of conduct to which this would not be a minor infraction. If you have the amount of evidence you claim to then the investigation will be little more then a formality.

If your nation does not have a regulatory body they you're SOL, sorry.

Finally, never sign up to a service with your mobile number, especially if its free. This is how they your collect number, they get your silent obedient consent to sell you phone number to telemarketers with the Terms and Conditions that are advertised as being on some website that you didn't read before sending your number and any other marketing details (Age, Sex, Post Code, number of puppies you killed this morning and so on) via SMS.

Re:Phone Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you and your ilk.

Re:Phone Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you are circumcised.

Your comment and your company suggest a lack of sensitivity, I can't think of a tree high enough to string you and your ilk from.

enlightening

[commodore64_love]

>>> failing to connect the calls to a sales representative within two seconds after consumers answered, as required by law,

This happens to me a LOT, but I didn't realize it was required by law to answer. That's good. There's nothing more annoying than running to get the phone, and only hearing a bunch of clicks and nobody answering. Stupid corporations should be forced out of business, not just fined. With workers being fired left-and-right, maybe a few of these law-breaking corporations should be "fired" too.

Re:enlightening

[wooferhound]

I try to answer the phone as quickly as possible, attempting to lift the receiver before the first ring has finished. This freaks out the autodialer systems because they expect a person to answer the phone on the second ring after the Caller ID information has been sent. I get disconnected frequently doing this. It often results in much more than 2 seconds if the Telepestering person actually decides I am a real person and wants to talk/pester me as they are payed to do.

Re:enlightening

[MikeBabcock]

I refuse to run to answer a phone anymore. I have voicemail and I have caller ID. If someone wants to leave me a message, they're free to do that and if they didn't, I can see whose call I missed and call them back.

When I pick up the call and its silent after a second, I put the phone down on top of one of my floor standing speakers without hanging up for a few minutes.

You waste my time and I waste yours.

Re:enlightening

[Anonymous Coward]

thats not true at all.. we use a predictive dialer here and it would be happy to connect you before you realize whats going on.

Re:enlightening

[e4g4]

Maybe he meant payed. From what i've heard of working conditions in telemarketing firms, it would not strike me as unreasonable to expect that the employees are tied by ropes to their desks, which are only payed out for the purpose of making phone calls.

Re:enlightening

[n6kuy]

Or even worse, when you answer and a computer asks you to wait on hold until the bill collector is done dealing with someone else...

Re:enlightening

[Anonymous Coward]

You were wrong.

In English you put Nappies round the bottoms of babies, in the mother tongue in the US you put Diapers.

In English you have a Colourful Neigbour; in the mother tongue in the US you have a Colorful Neighbor.

Re:enlightening

[commodore64_love]

I like to do the same thing.

"We would like to tell you about this great opportunity in vacation homes..."

"Yea htat really does sound like a good deal. But hold on a second - my food is on the stove and burning. I'll be right back."

"Okay."

Then walk away and watch television, leaving the telemarketer dangling.

Re:enlightening

[piltdownman84]

There's nothing more annoying than running to get the phone, and only hearing a bunch of clicks and nobody answering

Try getting woken up by the phone at 6 am, sleepily picking it up from your nightstand only to hear a recorded message starting with a fogforn.

I think everyone on the Canadian on the DNC list knows what I'm talking about. The number comes in as a 000-000-0000 number and calls a few times a week. Neither of my phone providers will block the number or help. What I have done is added the number to my addrese book, and given it a custom ringer of MUTE.

Re:enlightening

[Zibben]

There's only one problem when it comes to a debt collector and voice-mail. I've been getting calls on a bogus debt for roughly 6 months, if I don't answer the call and it goes to my voice mail I get a recording that goes a little something like this: "Hello, we are calling in attmpt to collect a debt if you are please stay on the line, if not please hang up." after 3 seconds of silence it continues "by staying on the line you have verified that you are and understand that you have an outstanding debt, please call us at to settle this debt as soon as possible." My problem with this is such, what happens if I don't own that number anymore? On the caller ID the number always comes up Unknown, so I never know who it is calling, and while at work I rarely ever answer my phone.

Re:enlightening

[MikeBabcock]

Report them as criminally harassing you. They have no right to effectively collect on a false debt.

Cut their goolies off

[Anonymous Coward]

I say: cut their goolies off

Why Telemarketers?

[Nautical Insanity]

I'm all for enforcing do-not-call registries, but there are plenty of culpable white-collars who've caused a lot more damage than bugging people at dinner time and yet have not seen any court-issued penalty.

Granted, with regards to the recent turn in the economy, the robber barons had plenty of help from Ordinary People(TM) and Congress Inc.

Re:Why Telemarketers?

[Canazza]

If bugging people on the phone at dinner time is a crime then my gran owes me ALOT of money then :)

Re:Why Telemarketers?

[Jedi Alec]

While we're at it, how about during "wow, that was a lot of food, time for a nap on the couch" just after dinner time?

Notice who is missing from the action...

[damn_registrars]

The cases were filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC

There is no mention of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).

Just use spam filters

[Krneki]

All we need is a spam filter for telephone numbers.

And some phone who can use the list.

Re:Just use spam filters

[wooferhound]

I have Call Blocking enabled on my phone line, but it won't block the most offending numbers for some reason.

Re:Just use spam filters

[Yetihehe]

Or telephone captcha, like "Press 3 if you are robot, press 2 if you are a real person". Only pressing 2 will actually make telephone ring.

Re:Just use spam filters

[cduffy]

I do that on my home phone line (actually even simpler than that -- "Press 1 to continue in English"), and it works quite well.

Re:Just use spam filters

[pentalive]

Caller ID FTW

I never answer if I don't regcognise the number.

On my cell phone if they are not in my phone's dial list (so the name shows when they ring). No answer.

Re:Just use spam filters

[Basildane]

I DO have this.

My house communications run on an Asterisk server. All incoming calls are screened by doing a lookup to WhoCalled.us. If they are listed as a telemarketer or are on my own blacklist, then the call gets processed by a program that talks to them and sounds like a senile old man who mumbles.

It keeps them on the phone as long as possible. After they finally give up and disconnect, the call is transcoded into MP3 and automatically emailed to me and my friends to enjoy.

It ROCKS and I can't wait for telemarketers to call my house. My phones don't even ring. It's all handled in the background for me. In the past year, not ONE SINGLE TELEMARKETER has broken through my defenses.

Its a war. And its a war I intend to win.

Re:Just use spam filters

[ragethehotey]

I do that on my home phone line (actually even simpler than that -- "Press 1 to continue in English"), and it works quite well.

Could you please provide a link that could explain how one would go about doing this themselves?

Re:Just use spam filters

[cduffy]

I do that on my home phone line (actually even simpler than that -- "Press 1 to continue in English"), and it works quite well.

Could you please provide a link that could explain how one would go about doing this themselves?

I'm using a Gumstix box running Asterisk with a SPA-3102 for the connectivity to the actual phone line proper, and a compact flash adapter (on the Gumstix) for storing voicemail. It also routes outgoing international calls to my SIP account with the Gizmo Project folks (much cheaper than AT&T, the local landline provider), and feeds incoming SIP calls into the house phone.

This was set up as a hobby project, so I wasn't going for a lowest-cost solution. If I were doing it again, I'd probably see about using my home router in place of the Gumstix box (I'm waiting for stable OpenWRT support for the WRT610N, with its USB host interface and 64MB of RAM -- more than powerful enough to run Asterisk in addition to its normal workload, with the voicemail storage and software that won't fit in 8MB flash kept on an attached external drive), or at least get one of the newer Gumstix motherboards with an FPU onboard to be able to receive and send faxes with iaxmodem (as the SpanDSP library it uses hasn't yet been ported to fixed-point, and so doesn't run acceptably on FPUless embedded hardware).

Once the hardware is set up, the actual Asterisk configuration is embarrassingly trivial, at least until I get around to implementing all the wishlist features I've been putting off. Should you decide to go the same route, drop me an email and I'd be glad to lend some assistance.

And that's what fraction of the profit?

[Opportunist]

Unless those 1.2m are a sizable portion of the revenue (read: enough to make it unprofitable), it is just a cost factor, not a fine. A fine has to discourage. Unless the fine is actually high enough to make the illegal business unprofitable, it will not stop people doing this kind of business.

Example: You run a scam that cheats people out of 100 bucks each. When you get caught, you have to pay 50 bucks per person scammed as a fine. Question: Do you stop scamming, or is those 50 bucks just the cost factor to take into account for your next run?

Re:And that's what fraction of the profit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even then it's not enough. Because of limited liability, they normally only find the corporation. Close that one down and start another one. That's what everyone does. Every corporation that doesn't get caught returns a profit. Some of the guys who runs these have has dozens of corps in dozens of anti-social things. I know the guy behind the corp harassing me used to do fax spamming.

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get this DNC, as I am not from the US.
So, (1)I don't wanna do business with telemarketers. (2)I register on the DNC so they won't call me. (3)They call me, because I might still be interested...
Doesn't calling the DNC defeat it's purpose? I registered there because I'm not interested in buying anything over the phone, why would you call me?

Re:WTF

[xaxa]

I don't get this DNC, as I am not from the US.

So, (1)I don't wanna do business with telemarketers. (2)I register on the DNC so they won't call me. (3)They call me, because I might still be interested...

Doesn't calling the DNC defeat it's purpose? I registered there because I'm not interested in buying anything over the phone, why would you call me?

I don't understand it either. The UK equivalent to the DNC list, the TPS, is paid for by the industry to save them calling people who aren't interested in their services.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand it either. The UK equivalent to the DNC list, the TPS, is paid for by the industry to save them calling people who aren't interested in their services.

I guess the UK (or some of its business sectors at least) is just trailing the pack in the big race-to-bottom that is modern gotcha capitalism. In the USA, the notion of a company voluntarily paying anything NOT to annoy and frustrate its potential customers is rather... quaint.

Re:WTF

[tompaulco]

A not insignificant number of people who put themselves on the DNC list are people who are aware that they have a difficult time saying "no" to people and probably end up buying crap from telemarketers. Therefore it makes sense to call the people on the DNC list on the hopes of reaching one of these people.

express

[fafaforza]

expressed* written permission

Re:Penis

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you fine someone a negative $20? Isn't that really just paying them? And while I will admit that the lame first posts are a high price to pay for the freedom to express ourselves here on slashdot, it is well worth the cost. That being said, $20 seems to be too high a price for anal violation. I have no first hand knowledge, but I'm reasonably certain that you can get that for free (as in "beer") and in some situations you would even be hard pressed to avoid it...

Telemarketing (Junk) Call Blocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at program jcblock. Its on sourceforge.net. Just type in 'jcblock' in the Search: window.

Here's the challenge and the problem

[RaigetheFury]

Most of the "really guilty" companies use VOIP with callerid spoofing. It's illegal but almost impossible to prove on a sweeping scan of the industry. You have to watch one company to catch them doing it and most of these guys switch their names, change location etc... and often times aren't even in the United States and thus, not under their jurisdiction.

- I don't want the Government to be able to wiretap companies without a warrant.
- I don't want the telephone companies / ISP's filtering content.
- We can't punish the companies who use them because it could easily be used as a bankrupting tool for innocent companies (company A wants to bankrupt company b and "hires" telemarketing company as company A).
- I refuse to pay my telephone company or the government more money for something that should be happening in the first place

So how do we stop these guys especially when we can't prosecute them under our laws?

Solutions
1) Filters - You can have automatic private/unknown block. I know two people who have private numbers who would have trouble calling me. This is flawed because you block people you want to talk to and callerID spoofing bypasses the rest. If it comes to traffic identification that means ISPS are scanning traffic... uh NO. No matter what you basically you hurt yourself here.

2) Fines - won't work on the really bad ones outside the US. A pointless endeavor except to inside the US.

Sure the above two work to deter it within our Country... however I think jail-time of the company owners should be mandatory. That would pretty much stop it within the US. However... it's pretty minor here. Most calls you get are from out of country.

Here is my solution... but its easier said than done due to difficulty of implementation. The requirements are the follows

1) Create a complaint system where users can do *123 (or something) that identifies that call as an unwanted sales call.
2) Users who have access to this feature must be on the DO NOT CALL LIST
3) This system must be profitable for all those involved or negligible in cost or it's a pipe dream.
4) There has to be a bit of leeway because lists are purchased and occasionally even the best companies screw up.

When a caller identifies a call by hitting *123 it flags that call for the telephony company. It stores the data of that caller in a database. This database is given to a US agency who runs reports identifying repeat offenders or "areas" of the world where it comes from the most (including the US).

This helps the US target those areas and identify the companies that relay those calls, or that companies VOIP id's etc. From this information we can block them entirely. Like all blacklists there has to be a measure of care taken before someone is placed on it.

Good exploiters of the system are constantly moving, constantly changing to not be identified. Here's what the cherry in my plan comes from. When telemarketers like this are identified, it's almost a shoe in to identify the companies that do business with them. Begin to fine those companies. WHY?!?

When companies begin to get hit with fines, and the threat of being identified as "bad marketers" receiving bad media... you bet your ass they'll start looking for more reputable marketing groups. You'll see a SHARP decline in the number of unwanted calls that occur.

Unfortunately this is a long term solution and would take over a year to begin culling the data and identifying trends. Except one thing...

AT&T, Sprint and several others have been doing this for years. They have the data, they know who it is... all they need is little push from a Governmental agency dedicated to spam! The fines and such would self manage this agency. When fines are high this agencies focus is here... when it's low this agency can focus on other issues.

The best part is that when this problem becomes small... so will the governmental agency.

My perfect world i guess...

Re:Here's the challenge and the problem

[houghi]

What if you do *123 with a debt collector? Would they also be prosecuted for this? What if the debt collector uses a call center?

Re:Here's the challenge and the problem

[sjames]

Even better, forget about 'caller ID' which says whatever they want it to say. Send the actual phone number that called (or if it's a PBX, the 'main' number that it's billed to). They're calling ME, they have no right to keep their number private.

Next on the list is to narrowly define 'existing business relationship'. If I do business with A one time, I do NOT have an existing business relationship with B even if they did shake hands with A. I would like to see it narrowed further such that an existing sale or service can't be used as an excuse to telemarket additional sales or services, but that would be hard to properly define.

Re:Here's the challenge and the problem

[Neanderthal Ninny]

For your tag line, on the movie "Lethal Weapon II" Martin Riggs line "I can shoot you through the door and you can examine the bullet"

Debt collectors are exempt from this particular law but must adhere to other laws regarding debt collection. The federal, state and some local municipalities have debt collection laws regarding what language to use (ie non-abusive), what time to call and other things so they are allowed to do.

Re:Here's the challenge and the problem

[mxs]

Two things.

4) There has to be a bit of leeway because lists are purchased and occasionally even the best companies screw up.

.

Too fucking bad. If you are not unsure as to whether the numbers you are "purchasing" are opt-in, OK to call, you deserve to get hit with a huge fine. Quite frankly, even the concept of "purchasing" address and number information is something that should be clamped down, hard, unless expressly permitted by the person being called, and even then only one time, with clear audit trail, and extremely clear removal procedures known up-front, as well as tracking of said "transfer" of data so you can call the company you did give permission to and make them give up all the people/companies they transferred your data to. Should it turn out your data ended up somewhere else, too, they should be fined. Hard.

When companies begin to get hit with fines, and the threat of being identified as "bad marketers" receiving bad media... you bet your ass they'll start looking for more reputable marketing groups. You'll see a SHARP decline in the number of unwanted calls that occur.

Just like you see a SHARP decline in the number of unwanted eMails you receive. Right ?

The only thing that might change is the content of those calls. You might get called up more often by bottomfeeders trying to dump herbal penis enlargers or new ringtones on you. They really do not care, and VoIP botting is easy enough.

AT&T, Sprint and several others have been doing this for years. They have the data, they know who it is... all they need is little push from a Governmental agency dedicated to spam! The fines and such would self manage this agency. When fines are high this agencies focus is here... when it's low this agency can focus on other issues.

AT&T, Spring, and several others have absolutely no freaking interest in doing any of that. They are making good money from telemarketers. If anything, they'll try to find more loopholes to sell your account data to the highest bidder -- that is after they have called you themselves 10-15 times trying to sell you new crap. Prior business relationship and such. Bollocks.

Bullshit.

[RulerOf]

...don't think the telemarketers didn't factor fines like this in the price they charged clients.

When you solicit someone over the telephone who knows they're on the DNC, before they can even start to complain, you've already announced your intentions, and more importantly, the company you're calling on behalf of. If a telemarketer calls a customer on the DNC on behalf of a client, and word gets back to them, that client's business is gone instantly.

DNC violations are taken very seriously by professional telemarketing firms. Furthermore, in the telemarketing business, the costs associated with dialing illegally are usually so high that, when it happens intentionally or through some type of technical failure, people often get fired. And yes, there's plenty of ways to get fined or sued aside from calling DNC numbers.

Re:Bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. I've had telemarketers refuse to tell me what business they represent. I had "Card Services" call me once or twice a week. They'd hang up the second I went off script (except one who started swearing at me). I asked dozens of times for them to stop calling. I filed complaints. I even tried to play along. They said I wasn't eligible, only to call back two days later. This went on for over a year and a half. Telemarketers are assholes. Stop pretending otherwise and get a decent job.

You must have skipped Grammar Nazism 101

[Anonymous Coward]

...always check your facts before attempting to correct any mistake. Case in point: "express" can also be used as an adjective, meaning "explicit" and opposed to "tacit" or "implicit".

Next time, spend 20 seconds doing some research before making a fool out of yourself.

Car Warranty

[Provos]

Now if they can just get the idiots that call me and tell me my car warranty is about to expire on a regular basis, despite me repeatedly telling them to take me off their list AND my phone number being on the do-not-call registry, I'd be happy.

Re:Car Warranty

[Macrat]

And they call cell phones.

And they use different fake caller IDs

Re:Car Warranty

[Bigbutt]

Not only that, I don't have a car. Idiots.

[John]

anyone else get calls from "credit card services"?

[e40]

I get them a couple of times a week. They're robo calls, with the usual "press 1 to ..." and they all start with the claim to help you with your CC rates and that this is "your last chance".

Once, I played them. I pressed 1. Said I was interested. Was asked if I had "at least $4000 in CC debt." Once I passed that test, I was handled off to the closer, a really slick asshole who asked for my CC#'s. I stalled. He waited. I acted dumb and said I'd look for my statements. I just set down the phone. 10 minutes later I hung up. I immediately got a call back. At first, he thought I accidentally hung up, but I hung up again. He called back again and before I hung up again I hear "you'll be sorry..." The next 5 rings were people that asked to be taken off their list. I had to take the phone off the hook for 30 minutes.

Better than Canada

[Midnight Thunder]

It is nice to see that the "Do not call list" (DNC) in the USA has teeth to bite back at the abusers. In Canada we just suffered a huge blow to our version of the "Do not call list", whereby the list was sold to telemarketers and people on the list are now getting more calls, not less. What is the government doing to punish people abusing the list: Nothing! What is the point of having a DNC list if the government will not even step up and fine companies abusing it.

Re:Better than Canada

[Night64]

You know, the only way that DNC will be taken seriously is if someone puts Oprah personal number on a bunch of shady telemarketeers call list.

Re:Better than Canada

[Midnight Thunder]

I was thinking of the whole parliament, though I'll leave that as an exercise for someone else :)

Re:Better than Canada

[piltdownman84]

The Canadian one is a joke. Has anyone ever tried to make a complain? They require a company name and valid phone number. So they won't even take your complaint about the robocalls. Since I signed up with all my numbers I get an order of magnitude more calls. I wish I had never signed up.

Re:Penis

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!

Bankruptcy

[nurb432]

Ditch the fine, reorg under a new name. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Re:Canada SELLs its DNC list to other countries

[denis-The-menace]

Just be happy you don't live in Canada.
We have a DNC but our very own government SELLS the list to foreign telemarketers.

http://www.globaltv.com/globaltv/ontario/story.html?id=1176350

He said it was robocalls

[danaris]

...and I've gotten robocalls on my cell, too, saying my car warranty was going to expire.

If, as you say, you have to have someone actually on the line, then no, they're not legal.

Dan Aris

Re:He said it was robocalls

[RulerOf]

I've gotten robocalls on my cell, too, saying my car warranty was going to expire.

Alas, that's not solicitation, so the legality of it doesn't fall into the scope of what I understand about actual telemarketing. If my company was contracted to do robocalling, it would never get to me since I'm a Windows site/systems admin. Our programmers deal with all the nitty gritty dialing stuff. :P

Make it opt-in!

[Anonymous Coward]

Telemarketing and spam need to be made to be opt-in only on an individual product basis. That means noe more of this BS that you ask for info on one product, and you have unknowingly opted in to a couple hundred companies whose products are completely unrelated to the one you asked about. You ahould ONLY get teleohone or email advertising that you specifically ask for, and then only for the specific product that you asked about! And the same shoud apply to the snail mail spam industry as well!!

The no-call list is flawed, as it does'nt preclude those who signed up from getting calls asking for money, and does not preclude political calls!

Call waiting services are also implemented in a flawed fashion, and have never delivered what was originally pronised. What was originally promised were devices that could be programed with a white list, and only those on the list would get through, or a black list whose members would never get through.

I could go on, but thats enough ranting for now!

So... a question of opportunity...

[Stewie241]

This seems like an appropriate place to throw this one out... it baffles me why nobody has capitalized on this opportunity. It shouldn't be *that* expensive to design a telephone that has call display that will allow you to block calls from unknown numbers, or at least forward them to voice mail, or do something.

I mean, there is asterisk, but that is out of the budget and hard to configure for the average consumer. I would think there would be big money to be made there, with low development costs.

Heh

[spartacus_prime]

I worked in telemarketing for 3 months last summer. The guy who owned the company (which has since either changed its name or disbanded) got sued for blast faxing in Indiana by the guy who created the Do Not Call idea. It explained why my last paycheck didn't cash for a few weeks. But in all seriousness, $1.2 million is not enough. It's not so much that telemarketing is annoying, it's downright predatory. Most of the people that were called at the place were either the quite elderly or the clearly retarded (mostly with Southern accents). And this was just for refinancing. I won't even begin to go into the people we hit up for reverse mortgages. I got called every name in the book, including various ethnic slurs which don't even apply to me. Telemarketing is a cancer on the United States.

What we REALLY need

[sjames]

All residential phones may press *25 to charge the last caller $0.25, applied against the phone bill. No exceptions. If it's not worth risking $0.25 to call me, it's not worth my time to answer.

The phone company must give you the $0.25 credit even if the caller skips out on their bill. Also no exceptions.

I'll bet the industry quickly figures out who really doesn't want to hear from them and stops calling those people. Evening and dinnertime calls would tend to go away.

Curse you DRS!

[illegalcortex]

Damn, I was really hoping they got that infernal Nancy Miller from DRS. I get several robocalls from her every week. Even if you pick up, it's just a message saying to call her. Googling it suggests it's some sort of scam (I'm shocked).

--

Well, I finally broke down and called them back to tell them to stop calling me. They claim to be a debt collector. The person who they are looking for has my same name, but a different social and was married to someone else. My name isn't THAT uncommon, so I have to wonder how many other people they are harassing about this same debt. They now claim my number will be taken off within 72 hours. Great! Well, except for this.

USA Callers to the UK Lines

[Kryptic Knight]

Now if only us Brits could get your DNC list to accept our numbers.

Your pesky call-bots are giving us grief!

Re:USA Callers to the UK Lines

[igb]

I've had the same UK phone number for twenty-two years, and the number of marketing calls of any description I get is close to zero. I'm in the TPS, of course. I give my work number to anyone I'm a bit dubious about, and I don't give a UK number to any company whose legal entity is outside the UK except under the direst emergency. Remember, the TPS legislation (derived from the European privacy directive) means that the responsibility to obeying the preference service lies with the ultimate client of the marketing, not the organisation that carries it out. But I've also been ex-directory for most of those twenty-two years. The trick is to be really XD, _not_ UL (unlisted). UL numbers aren't in the phone book, but are available from directory enquiries, and given how open that business is these days I suspect the boundary is pretty permeable. The combination means that the only marketing calls I get are people stretching the prior-relationship angle to breaking point (for whom my existing business is worth more than pissing me off, so they usually get the hint and only do it once --- although I cancelled my BT ISP contract in part because they called me twice around renewal time) or people who don't know my name because they're dialling randomly. The set of calls I get from non-geos, internationals and so on is so small that if I'm not expecting a call they go to the answering machine, as do mobiles I don't recognise. There was a fascinating article in the Graun a year or so ago (in the Saturday magazine, so not archived online) which talked about how as the TPS gets more traction, the pool of people who are targets for outbound telemarketing gets smaller, so they get more pissed off and sign up for the TPS even if they wouldn't have done at the prior level of junk calls, and so it goes downward. It's hard to get worked up about this: it's not value creating work, if anything the opposite, and the vast majority of outbound marketing is not economically productive. The ultimate end of the line is a good one for all parties concerned.

This is your second notice

[Cracked Pottery]

This is your second notice that the warranty on your annoying telephone scam is about to expire.

Re:anyone else get calls from "credit card service

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an opportunity for software. No point spending your own time. When you get one of these guys, press a button and let your computer/phone handle it, by playing back your own voice...

"I'm very interested..." ... ...
"Tell me some more?" ... ...
"Just let me turn the stove off. I'll be right back" ...
"Can you explain that again?" ...
"Sounds very interesting." ... ... ...

I wonder if I could do that with Android?

Why is this not criminal?

[dontmakemethink]

Why set up the Do-Not-Call list if it's not a criminal offense to violate the order? It's tantamount to trespassing or mail tampering. Wussy fines aren't enough to stop shady telemarketers, who already know how to make it near impossible for people to trace their number. Tracking them down requires police action, not civil complaints.

If the actual individuals placing calls and their superiors could be charged with a misdemeanor for each call, that would accomplish something. Robocalls might even warrant a felony charge, since they're especially defiant.

It would be nice if phone companies got involved, but with VOIP providers coming on the scene that are just servers in a closet, I'm not too confident on that prospect.

YES!

[grikdog]

Thank you, President Obama!

Proper implementation of the DNC registry

[Ifni]

The DNC registry should be scrapped and replaced by a law that any telemarketers that wish to make calls register all of their outbound numbers to a Telemarketer Registry. Then phone companies should regularly update their systems with that list (as the telemarketers do now with the DNC) and provide customers with a free service to block all incoming numbers on the list. Optionally, numbers from certain businesses can be unblocked if you have a reasonable expectation to receive calls from them (much like current email lists have the "friendly reminder" to make sure that your spam filter allows email from their domain).

Some fleshing for the finer details is needed (it could be tedious to make exceptions, and this places considerable burden on the phone provider), but in general I think that it would be far more efficient to maintain a list of telemarketer numbers than customer ones, and it places the burden of registering to the list on the party that potentially gains from the contact as opposed to the consumer that is more often than not uninterested in what the call might offer.

Great, now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now do something about these debt collector agencies who keep harassing ME and using threatening language as they're looking for the previous tenant of my apartment and accusing me of being that person. Calling at 5:00am in the morning and refusing to identify their contact information whenever I ask them. SOMEONE WITH POWER NEEDS TO HOLD THESE SCUMBAGS ACCOUNTABLE GOD DAMNIT.

The great car warranty scam

[BulletMagnet]

I really wish the FTC would go after these fuckwads. I first started getting them from the same number - and filed an FTC report to which I got a "can't help you" type of response in the mail from them. Thanks a lot. Since then, I get 4-6 calls A WEEK to my cell phone from various bogus VOIP callback numbers at all hours (7am - 9pm) and it's always the same thing: Press #2 if you want to be dropped from the callback list (you get d/c immediately and they will call back anyway) if prompt through to to talk to a human being, and even mention that you're on the DNC, they hang up on you, and continue to call. Since nobody has invented a way to stab someone over the phone yet, I am thinking I might go try to get the closer and the drone on the line together and fire up the 200 decibel air horn through the phone. I could give a shit less if I deafen one of these sleezeballs.

How I handled it...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the years leading up to the national DNC registry, I remember receiving as much as six telemarketing calls per day--of course, most of them were hangups, as the auto-dialers would call 20 numbers and whoever answered first got the human telemarketer; the rest, a hangup.

I tried something that very quickly reduced my call volume. When a telemarketer got through to me, I said "Per federal law, you will add me to the DNC lists of your telemarketing company and the company you are representing. You will also mail me confirmation that I have been added to these lists."

You laugh, but I got confirmation mailed to me a handful of times, handwritten in at least one case.

What happened? I cost the telemarketer over $1 in overhead costs to mail me the letter. I was promptly added to the "asshole list". And even though telemarketers aren't allowed to trade their asshole lists, they do anyway. My name was probably sold to other telemarketers for cents with the warning that "This guy will pull out all the stops".

My call volume dropped like a rock after doing this a few times.

Sleezy telemarketers

[triffidsting]

I'm on the DNC list, and I've had telemarketers call me anyway with an automated dialer that does not give me the option of blacklisting my number. So, I punch one (or whatever) to speak to a sales rep, and immediately ask to be added to their DNC list. They immediately just hang up on me.

So they naturally call back again in a few months. Instead of asking to be removed, I ask to know what their company name is, and with whom I am speaking. They hang up immediately again. WTF?!

Re:anyone else get calls from "credit card service

[triffidsting]

Yes! These are the asshats that I was referring to in my earlier post. They will not remove you from their list, no matter what you try.

Pure window dressing.

[cwsulliv]

I doubt that more than one in a thousand (or ten thousand) complaints will result in any FCC action unless the FCC is specially funded to support these actions (which in this economic climate is highly unlikely). The telemarketers are just playing the odds.

I had an old FAX machine which used coated paper on fairly small rolls. For a while I regularly submitted complaints about SPAM faxes, probably about 20 in all, supplying all requested information and enclosing a copy of the fax. I heard nothing until 3 or 4 months later when I received an envelope from the FCC with a single sheet titled "How to submit a complaint to the FCC" which had nothing at all to do with SPAM faxes.

Exactly.

[soldoutactivist]

I couldn't have said it better myself. Scale penalties would cure a lot of things.

Re:anyone else get calls from "credit card service

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like a company I worked for for a few days. I applied for a different job and they put me on the sales floor, telling me that they don't put anyone in any other job to start. The "training" is basically watching someone not care about do not call requests. They wanted me to get people's CC#'s, or I wouldn't be paid. These companies are scamming on both sides.

True cause of telemarketing

[Anonymous Coward]

The true cause of telemarketing and cold calling is circumcision - don't laugh.

The problem is caused by men loving money more than sex.

Circumcised men get less pleasure from sex because of keratinsation, the loss of pleasure sensors at the end of the penis, makes men lose some of the glorious sensation that results from sexual activity, this loss of penile sensation is compensated by wallet hunger.

A lot of men lose money chasing women, but no men lose women chasing money, being circumcised helps men forgo sex.

Another side effect of circumcision is because of the loss of penile sensitivity, the male gets more pleasure from the stimulus of the prostate gland via anal intercourse, this helps the spread of AIDs.

Try this

[wmorrow]

Answer the phone. If its a telemarketer, or the dreaded 2 second pause while _they_ pick it up, just put the phone down and walk away. If everyone does this, each of us will get half as many calls, because each call will take twice as long. Telemarketing will be half as effective. Companies and organizations will stop using it. Join this group http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=59627788672 and report if anything interesting happens.

Re:Try this

[virg_mattes]

Sorry, but no. Even if you have call waiting, it won't make a signal audible when you're not holding the phone. This means that for every telemarketing call you're requesting that each call recipient give up some span of phone service. I won't do this because it makes my phone inaccessible to those I want calling me, and to me if I want to place a call. I'd rather take the call long enough to identify the telemarketer and then sic the authorities on them so they get driven out of business. The Do Not Call list is their problem, not mine.

Virg