I've done some collections in my time. Fave tactic of a debtor was to dispute the debt over and over and over again. We'd routinely send out copies of the original bill over and over again to validate it. And we'd get that in the mail way before the required 30 day limit.
Then we'd get the morons who'd backdate a dispute letter to 29 days previous to the postmark on the envelope, then two days later drop a demand letter into the mail to order us to 'immediately cease, desist, and stop' all collection attempts on that 'unvalidated debt', including removing it from their credit report, because we 'failed to validate it within 30 days of 'request''. Our cover letter, along with validation of debt, advises them that the date we need to reply by is the postmarked date, and when could we expect payment in full of this now validated debt?
Actual violations of the FDCPA are rather rare. Agencies and collectors who screw up tend to lose their licenses. The agency I was with has had its license for over 30 years. They don't screw around and play quasilegal games. If they send you a letter, it's been vetted by their lawyers, who have been doing collections law for decades as well. If they call you, they comply to the letter of the law in timing and content, because their lawyers told them to do so or face lawsuits. They have yet to lose a suit they've been involved in.
Palm Pre is a relatively new phone. It uses the Palm webOS, not PalmOS. Apple dropped sync support for it through Itunes. Just coincidently, Apple also sells a smart phone.
Because those scripts are reputedly 'designed by smarter people' than the CSRs to 'quicky determine the problem' and 'resolve it' to 'keep call time to a minimum'. Our client required an average 7.5 min/call but our employer (3rd party) required 7 min flat/call to keep your job. This time limit decreased in the 2 years I was there on the phone to 6.5 min/call at our client and 6.0 at our center. The most important thing we were (repeatedly) told in training was, STICK TO THE SCRIPT no matter what. As a customer, if you want your problem solved, you should let them stick to the script so they can route you to the proper person if the issue needs escalating to something a 'mere CSR' isn't authorised to handle. CSRs with anything on the ball probably know what the problem is, they just don't have the authority to do anything about it, being at the bottom of the food chain so to speak. For instance, we were required to 'troubleshoot the phone' by script, even if the customer told us they'd run over their cellie with their car before we were allowed to send them to Sales to buy a replacement or to Insurance Claims if they actually spent the additional money per month to insure their cellie. Common sense had zero to do with it, the CSRs didn't have the authority to route the call someplace else until they'd satisfied the requirements of the script.
If you have ever seen that TV show 30 days where this guy tries to live on minimum wage for 30 days, you know it is nigh impossible.
That sounds like a bunch of crap. Assuming minimum wage is $7/hour (I haven't checked recently), that's $14000/year. If you get yourself a place to rent for $400/month and share it with someone, that's $200/month for rent, leaving $966 for all other expenses (plus taxes, which should be very little at that level).
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Craigslist for San Francisco is showing minimum rents to be on the order of $900/month unless you want a $750/month studio apartment in downtown Oakland. Thing is, most of us Slashdotters wouldn't be caught alive in Oakland...
It's not fluent English or Spanish or whatever that I need. Many of these off shore call centers speak English fluently enough. It's that they don't understand the words they are speaking nor do they understand the concepts or customers. Irony is lost on them. Detecting frustration in the voice is also lost. You don't need to understand frustration in the voice when you are told "Look I've been on the phone for 56 minutes now and this really is just a simple problem that should have been solved 50 minutes ago!!!". Parsing that sentence into "Fuck I'm pissed off" does not take rocket science! And spare me the apologies - I don't want apologies - At this point I WANT SOLUTIONS!!!
I spent a couple years on the fones at a call center here in the States, and I can tell you that we had a script we were required to follow, no matter how irate the customer got. Failure to follow the script could lead to immediate termination. Could be, those Filipino call centers are scripted the exact same way, and to go outside the script means they get fired.
Guess it gives a new dimension to the expression "hacking heavy metal"...
Problem I see with totally automated rigs is, there are some situations that will arise that require humans to work around. Teleoperated rigs just won't be able to handle it without some "hands on" work. I've got some friends in the drilling game (water & core sampling here in the Southwest), and they tell me that every hole drilled is different, each presents its own set of problems. Until they build true machine intelligence, people are gonna need to be in the loop.
A lot of companies decided to hang back til the smoke cleared when SCO first filed their suits. Remember, back then, nobody knew if they were legit or not, only that they were suing some people and wanted $699/seat for their 'Linux license' with no guarantee you wouldn't be sued if you bought it...
Then the US team will go to Discovery, while the Russian team stays in Leonov.
But only until the Monoliths implode the planet to kickstart it as a new star. Then they'll use Discovery for the launch booster and Leonov for the return vehicle.
Kinda reminds me of the The Black Knight. "Oh, oh, I see! Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!"
Speaking as one who has been on the internet since when there were fewer than 10,000 hosts connected, I'd say your memory is flawed. "Flame wars" were as bad (or even worse) then.
Second, while the right to privacy isn't explicitly enumerated, it flows naturally from the 4th and 14th, and SCOTUS has said as much in Griswold v. Connecticut and Row v. Wade.
The 10th, I think. The one that says any rights not vested to the feds or given to the states devolve to the people:
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Yeah, that's what gets me, too. She's a model FFS. As such, she has a reasonable expectation her name and likeness will become well-known to the point where she's easily recognisable. After all, the more she's out there and liked, the more she can demand for her services and image.
The only problem is, we were not supposed to live past the 40.
Actually, a lot of people lived into their 60's and beyond, it's just that a lot of infants died that skewed the numbers downward. If you take the median between a person that lived to be 100 & a baby that died 10 mins after being born, you'd get an average life expectancy of 50 years. That's why they call it 'average'.
Re:Is really a bad, bad idea...
on
NASA May Outsource
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· Score: 2, Insightful
They call it 'derating'. Build it WAY past specs to make SURE it works over any conditions you can think of (and any conditions your team can think of; get bizzare here...), then it'll outlast your original design requirements.
NASA is famous for that, which is what makes them look so good with the unmanned probes.
Oh, come on, Stallman. The odds of emacs running on the new Nokia phone are slim at best. And besides, emacs isn't an editor, it's a religion. And on top of it all, I still like nano better, and with its small footprint, much more liable to run on that phone.
Slashdot Mirror
Like the obnoxious neighbor kids? I'll take 2...
Sounds like you got collected on.
I've done some collections in my time. Fave tactic of a debtor was to dispute the debt over and over and over again. We'd routinely send out copies of the original bill over and over again to validate it. And we'd get that in the mail way before the required 30 day limit.
Then we'd get the morons who'd backdate a dispute letter to 29 days previous to the postmark on the envelope, then two days later drop a demand letter into the mail to order us to 'immediately cease, desist, and stop' all collection attempts on that 'unvalidated debt', including removing it from their credit report, because we 'failed to validate it within 30 days of 'request''. Our cover letter, along with validation of debt, advises them that the date we need to reply by is the postmarked date, and when could we expect payment in full of this now validated debt?
Actual violations of the FDCPA are rather rare. Agencies and collectors who screw up tend to lose their licenses. The agency I was with has had its license for over 30 years. They don't screw around and play quasilegal games. If they send you a letter, it's been vetted by their lawyers, who have been doing collections law for decades as well. If they call you, they comply to the letter of the law in timing and content, because their lawyers told them to do so or face lawsuits. They have yet to lose a suit they've been involved in.
Palm Pre is a relatively new phone. It uses the Palm webOS, not PalmOS. Apple dropped sync support for it through Itunes. Just coincidently, Apple also sells a smart phone.
Because those scripts are reputedly 'designed by smarter people' than the CSRs to 'quicky determine the problem' and 'resolve it' to 'keep call time to a minimum'. Our client required an average 7.5 min/call but our employer (3rd party) required 7 min flat/call to keep your job. This time limit decreased in the 2 years I was there on the phone to 6.5 min/call at our client and 6.0 at our center. The most important thing we were (repeatedly) told in training was, STICK TO THE SCRIPT no matter what. As a customer, if you want your problem solved, you should let them stick to the script so they can route you to the proper person if the issue needs escalating to something a 'mere CSR' isn't authorised to handle. CSRs with anything on the ball probably know what the problem is, they just don't have the authority to do anything about it, being at the bottom of the food chain so to speak. For instance, we were required to 'troubleshoot the phone' by script, even if the customer told us they'd run over their cellie with their car before we were allowed to send them to Sales to buy a replacement or to Insurance Claims if they actually spent the additional money per month to insure their cellie. Common sense had zero to do with it, the CSRs didn't have the authority to route the call someplace else until they'd satisfied the requirements of the script.
GP was insinuating you could live in San Francisco on Federal minimum wage. I showed them that wasn't likely without a ton of help.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Craigslist for San Francisco is showing minimum rents to be on the order of $900/month unless you want a $750/month studio apartment in downtown Oakland. Thing is, most of us Slashdotters wouldn't be caught alive in Oakland...
I spent a couple years on the fones at a call center here in the States, and I can tell you that we had a script we were required to follow, no matter how irate the customer got. Failure to follow the script could lead to immediate termination. Could be, those Filipino call centers are scripted the exact same way, and to go outside the script means they get fired.
That tends to keep those multimillion dollar awards coming. Whether or not the defendant can pay them is immaterial.
Problem I see with totally automated rigs is, there are some situations that will arise that require humans to work around. Teleoperated rigs just won't be able to handle it without some "hands on" work. I've got some friends in the drilling game (water & core sampling here in the Southwest), and they tell me that every hole drilled is different, each presents its own set of problems. Until they build true machine intelligence, people are gonna need to be in the loop.
Guess that ain't gonna happen, eh?
A lot of companies decided to hang back til the smoke cleared when SCO first filed their suits. Remember, back then, nobody knew if they were legit or not, only that they were suing some people and wanted $699/seat for their 'Linux license' with no guarantee you wouldn't be sued if you bought it...
Absolutely. The guy sounded like Rajesh Koothrappali FFS.
But only until the Monoliths implode the planet to kickstart it as a new star. Then they'll use Discovery for the launch booster and Leonov for the return vehicle.
Kinda reminds me of the The Black Knight. "Oh, oh, I see! Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!"
Pitchfork. $25
Torches. $10
Angry Villagers. Priceless.
For everything else there's Groklaw. Don't surf the Net without it...
What the hell do they have left except what furniture and office supplies that Darl & buds didn't nick on the way out the door????
Sounds to me that Batman is shit outta luck then...
But at least back then, they showed their math.
Cue l*wy*r attack in 3.. 2.. 1..
The 10th, I think. The one that says any rights not vested to the feds or given to the states devolve to the people:
Pretty much says it all.
Counter suit?
Actually, a lot of people lived into their 60's and beyond, it's just that a lot of infants died that skewed the numbers downward. If you take the median between a person that lived to be 100 & a baby that died 10 mins after being born, you'd get an average life expectancy of 50 years. That's why they call it 'average'.
They call it 'derating'. Build it WAY past specs to make SURE it works over any conditions you can think of (and any conditions your team can think of; get bizzare here...), then it'll outlast your original design requirements.
NASA is famous for that, which is what makes them look so good with the unmanned probes.
Have you seen how much disk space emacs takes up lately????
Oh, come on, Stallman. The odds of emacs running on the new Nokia phone are slim at best. And besides, emacs isn't an editor, it's a religion. And on top of it all, I still like nano better, and with its small footprint, much more liable to run on that phone.