TeleZapper - A Way to Avoid Telemarketers?

VeniDormi asks: "While watching TV on my TiVo, I actually stopped to see an ad for a device called 'The TeleZapper', which claims to foil tele-marketers by convincing their auto-dialers that your number has been disconnected. The FAQ is light on technical details, only mentioning that the device 'emits [a] tone briefly when the line is answered'. I'm hoping Slashdotters with more telecommunications expertise can enlighten me as to: how/if this might work and whether or not it is something I could reproduce with a sound card, say for recording at the beginning of my voicemail message. Could it be as simple as playing back the three shrill tones I hear when I dial a wrong number?" Ah, the telephone equivalent to SPAM. Too bad phones don't have the equivalent of procmail filters.

Better Idea

[InfinityWpi]

I don't care about the telemarketers. They dont' call me. I wanna device that'll tell people that the reason some strange guy picked up the phone at their daughter's place WAS BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T DIAL THE RIGHT NUMBER! Geeze, people... I should start saying she's tied up to the bed... you'd think after the third wrong number they'd get the hint.

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[ruebarb]

I use Qwest's call screening service.

Works fine...except when I get calls from Qwest asking me to upgrade my service or notify me of special offers.

Unbelievable.

RB

Shrill tones

[Green Aardvark House]

Could it be as simple as playing back the three shrill tones I hear when I dial a wrong number?

Careful. Those may be copyrighted by your local telephone company.

Why waste it?!

[clinko]

I love when they call. Mess with their heads. I once told the guy "i'm on the can, but go ahead" Then strained and grunted while he was talking. It was fun, but I laughed too hard then hung up.

Zapper?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see anything in the article about sending large electric charges into the ear canals of telemarketers. Now there's an invention that will make its inventor a mint.

Re:Shrill tones

[The God Soldier]

No, they're copyrighted by those guys from Australia...

Just hang up...

[sterno]

How about just hanging up on every person who calls you? If it's important they'll call you back, even if they are a bit confused. Telemarketers never call back.

Advantages:

1) FREE
2) Causes confusion (always a plus)

Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[MadCow42]

Well, if you're bored, anyways:

1: "I'd like to ask you a few questions for a survey..."
you: "Sure, hold on a second, I'll be right back" (put phone next to stereo playing Cindi Lauper, for about an hour).

2: "May I speak to the man of the house?"
you: "Define 'man'..." (rant and rave about sexual discrimination until they hang up)

3: "I'd like to offer you a free..."
you: "Where is it made? Does it contain asbestos? Is it compatible with Linux? Were any animals harmed during it's manufacture? How much does it cost anyways? What do you mean free? Oh, sorry, I can't afford free."

4: "Hi, is this Mr. _____?"
you: "Sorry, he died this morning.... (boo hoo...)"

5: "We're going to be in your neighborhood..."
you: "Can you help me with something first... I gotta finish this math homework before I do anything else... What's the cube root of 42? How do you calculate the inverse tangent for triangle A?"

You get the point... it's amazing fun actually, you don't have to make any sense either! Annoy them enough, waste their time, they'll never call again, and be less apt to annoy your neighbors! If everyone used up their time, telemarketing would cease to be profitable, and would then stop happening!

MadCow.

Other "Opt-Out" Strategies

[soup]

There seems to be a "don't call" list out there; My son tried one tactic on a female telemarketer by treating the call as a "phone-sex" call, asking her what she was wearing, etc.

We haven't had ANY such calls since.

Of course, this might not have been as convincing if he had tried it with a man...

But that's no fun....

[Lizard_King]

Takes all the fun out of screwing with telemarketers!

Telemarketer: Sir, would you like to know how we can help you save money on your telephone bill?

"Uhhhh, actually, I've been trying to spend more money lately."

Telemarketer: But Sir! We know for a fact that you are spending too much money on your long distance service. We can help reduce your rates by....

"See, that's just the thing. I've been making a concerted effort to start spending *more* money these days. I've been a pretty cheap bastard in my days. Do you have any programs where I could spend more on my long distance calls?"

"Hello?"

Re:My solution to telemarketers

[Anonymous Coward]

Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.

It would just make my day if that's *not* an intentional joke... :)

Re:Better Idea

[CmdrPinkTaco]

I am a 24 year old male (don't worry, there is a reason that Im telling this). At the time that this occured, I still lived with my parents. One morning after a long night of heavy binge drinking I was awakend at the gawd awful hour of 11:00 to my phone ringing. Since I was the only one home at the time, I picked up. On the other end of the line was a telemarketer who was far too perky for my likings that was inquiring about the availiblilty of my sister.

"Yes, this is so-and-so from such-and-such a company, may I speak with Jessica?"

To which I replied in my gravely, gruff, I-smoke-2-packs-a-day-and-you-just-woke-me-up voice, "Yeah, this is her."

The part that really cracked me up was when the perky telemarketer went on to give me the sales pitch.

I just hung up. I have found that to be a very effective method in ridding myself of telespammers.

You people are getting it all wrong... try

[Lostman]

something like an EULA. Why just let them call or pay money in order for you not to get their calls, when them calling you can be a source of income?

Use caller-id and whenever you see a number that does not appear, answer the phone with "Thanks for calling the (whatever) residence. Because of the increasingly large amount of time taken up on the phone I am having to start charging a fee for those who wish to speak to me. By staying on the phone you acknowledge and aquiesce to the fact that you will be held responsible for a 5 doller/minute cost to speak to me. If you do not agree to this, please hang up now" -- since most telemarketers are under strict policies that they can not hang up on customers.. well, it worked for the software industry, right?

disappointed

[Dr. Awktagon]

TeleZapper

Aww, shucks, I saw this and I thought it would be some clever system that involved high voltage.

Re:Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[Thagg]

My brother lives with his boyfriend in Berkeley. This is his favorite script, from when he worked at home:

ring ring

Hello, this is ABC company. Is Mr. Caner in?

[imagine his deep voice] No, Mr. Caner is not in.

Oh, then can I speak to Mrs. Caner?


Speaking

[caller gets perplexed, always hangs up]

thad

Fun with telemarketers

[Anonymous Coward]

Profit in telemarketing depends on the ability to resolve calls quickly. Anybody who spends more than a minute or two on the phone without buying anything is bad for business. Therefore, if you are not too busy when a given sales call comes in, the best revenge is to waste as much of their time as possible. Besides, messing with telemarketers can be a lot of fun. (And this sort of behavior will often get you blackballed from their call lists!)

Step one is to get the sales-person "off script". Most telemarketers are very poorly trained, and given strict instructions to read pre-written sales pitches to you. The best way do deal with that is to pretend to be listening. Read the paper or something while they ramble on. You can even set the receiver down, since you are not really listening anyway. Eventually they will get to something like "so, can I sign you up today?" As soon as you hear the hopeful uptalking sound of them asking a question like that, respond by saying, "well... it sounds pretty interesting, but I have a few questions first." Now you are in the driver's seat, and can waste a lot of their time. The game now is to think of questions that they would be unlikely to anticipate, but related to the product enough that they don't realize that you are jerking them around.

If they are good at their jobs, they will try to turn things around by answering questions with questions ("That depends... how much are you spending on toner cartrages now, sir?"). The way to deal with that is to cheerfully turn it right back, with another question. One that's even harder to deal with... ("Well, before we get into the details of how much I can save, I'm a little curious about the recent report that the toner used to recycle cartrages might increase the risk of skin cancer. I think those stories are probably just bunk, but I wonder if you could tell me what you know about it.)

Eventually, they will start to lose patience with you. (You can hear the frustration rise in their voice... if the call goes on much longer without a sale, they get in trouble, but if they start getting snippy with you and their boss overhears it, they will also be in trouble. They're in a jam now.) They become more aggressive about getting you to commit to buying, and their hand is over the "hang up" button to drop you at the slightest indication that you might not buy. Now is you one chance at a parting shot to let them know you have been just making their lives difficult. My personal favorite: "I heard that companies have started using a lot of prison labor for phone sales, because they can't get anybody else to do it... so what are you in for?"

Re:Why? Telemarketers provide hours of free fun!

[e4]

Why not take it one step further and make a career of it, like this guy did [tommabe.com]?

Re:What's the point?

[S.Lemmon]

Here's my favorite telemarketer trick: when they first ask for someone say something like "hold on, I get them..." then just leave the phone off the hook. Check back 15 minutes later or so. If by some miracle they're still on the line, repeat.
Hey, let 'em call back if they like - see how much of their time you can waste!

Re:seems simple enough

[kilgore_47]

They could hire a telemarketing service to sell these things!

"You could have avoided this call if you ..."

Fun telemarketers story

[Nagash]

I might as well chime in with my super-fun-time story about telemarkets calling my place once.

Now, I must admit I don't get that many calls. However, they still get to me. At any rate, a friend of mine was over at my place and my roommate was home when I got the call...

Drone: Hello, I'm calling from etc. you know the drill

Me: Well, I can't say I'm terribly interested...

Drone: pitch continues

(At this point, my friends realize I'm on the phone with a telemarketer. They decide it's time for fun.)

Roommate: (bellowing) Junior! Get back in that box!

Friend: (timidly, in child-like voice) No daddy! No! I don't want to go back in there!

Roommate: I told you to get in that box! Do as you're told or you got a beating coming!

Friend: (crying sounds)

(All this time, I remain pretty silent, although trying very hard not to laugh.)

Drone: Uh, is everything OK?

Me: (flatly) Yes. Everything is fine. It's the TV.

Drone: (slight pause) Well, I'll be going now.

(hangs up)

--
Woz

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[well_jung]

I actually quite enjoy telling the marketers off. It's a great way to vent the frustrations of 13 hours in the server room. And it's a lot better than kicking the dog (well, for the dog, anyway)

Re:It's hasn't been much of a problem lately...

[LordNimon]

But some real messages from baffled people end up there, too, so I still do need to listen to it

Why would you want to talk to anyone that dumb? In fact, I would simply add a third option, "Press 1 if your I.Q. is less than 80."

Re:Why waste it?!

[Telecommando]

A friend of mine loves to mess with them as well. For years he'd listen to their pitch, then start breathing heavily, "Hehhh, Henh" and ask "What kind of underwear are you wearing? Is it soiled? Can you send me a pair?" They'd usually hang up right away. Once one of them called the police and reported him for making an obscene call. He explained to the cops that the telemarketer had called HIM and told them what he had done. I guess the cops were still laughing as they drove away.

Now his favorite routine is to try to "convert" them.

"Have you taken our Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior? Have you welcomed him into your heart? For LO! He is coming. Coming to cast all vile sinners into the firey pits of..." And that's about as far as he's ever gotten before they hang up. Pity, he's got about a 10 minute routine worked up. Funniest thing about it is when he receives one of these calls on his cell phone in a restaraunt. You should see all the other diners shut up and listen in, then nervously go back to their conversations.

Oddly enough

[jayed_99]

I watched this happen last Saturday. I'm over at a guy's home office setting up a FreeBSD web & mail server for him.

His phone rings. I watch him pick it up and say, "I'm sorry, Mr. Moreland passed away yesterday."

Then he says, "No, Mrs. Moreland is in custody as the prime suspect."

I nearly pissed myself.

Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager

[hieronymous72]

They get you either way. They either get their money from telemarketers for phone number lists or they get it from you to actually pay THEM so no one will call you.

It's a great racket on PacBell's part.

I generally don't answer calls from "unavailable" unless I'm in a ripe mood.

Phone telemarking E-mail

[azizlumiere]

At least with the telephone I never get telemarketing calls offering me to
ENLARGE YOUR PENIS 3 INCH++

Re:How it works

[madcow_ucsb]

Seriously, though. If the damn thing knows enough to tell you you need the fucking 1, WHY THE HELL DOESN'T IT JUST PRETEND IT'S THERE AND KEEP GOING????? It's like they go out of their way to make it annoying.

Re:Why waste it?!

[Jace of Fuse!]

I have some fun myself...
The following phone conversation really happened, but I'm having to recreate it pretty much from memory so the wording is probably not exact...

THEM: Hello, I'd like to tell you about our Vinyl Siding... (rest of sales pitch here)

ME: I don't need Vinyl Siding. I live in a doghouse.

THEM: Oh really?

ME: Are you calling me a liar?

THEM: Uh, no it's just...

ME: It's just what? How many people do you know who put vynil siding on their dog houses?

THEM: (click)

My favorite tactic.

[trilucid]

Back in the day when I still lived with my parents, there was a 6 month period where we were receiving an average of 3 telemarketing calls per night from long distance phone service carriers.

Smile. My father's an engineer with AT&T.

I think the record for the longest I kept 'em on the phone was something like 45 minutes. They'd give me the standard pitch about how much money they could save us over AT&T, and I'd politely insist that there was NO WAY that was possible...

Of course, I had to be nice to them, so I always asked them to go into detail on every plan they offered. This takes quite a while, needless to say, but I didn't care (watching TV, using the bathroom, whatever while they yapped).

You see, their call success averages depend on their ability to sign up a certain number of customers within a given period of time. I was *bad* for their numbers.

They just loved it when I finally got around to giving them a boarding pass to the Clue Train, inscribed with the message "Our long distance is free... my dad works for AT&T... he might quit soon though." I suppose my sense of humour is a bit sick, but they deserved every ounce of it. :).

My success story..

[LinuxHam]

After installing Junkbuster on my firewall, I also started keeping track of callers. I would tell them to take me off the caller list, not knowing that the phrase "Do Not Call List" was important back then. I would also tell them that I'm keeping records of the call and make them spell out the name of the company and their phone number. Before they could get into their pitch, I would oh-so-nicely say, "okay, thanks." and hang up on them.

My best success came with Omaha Steaks. They called one night at dinner. I told them not to call me anymore, and told them that I was writing down that they called. They called a week later:

TM: Hello sir, this is Omaha Steaks.

me: Oh, cool!

TM: Wow, I've never heard that before.

me: I told you guys not to ever call me again just ONE WEEK AGO! Now I can collect $500 under federal law! I'm saving up for a big tv.

TM: um, uhh, um, we don't have any record of that.

me: Obviously not, because you called me again.

TM: So sorry sir, it'll never happen again.

Never heard from them again. Also, the *only* purchase my wife made off of QVC that was worth anything was a phone with built-in caller ID filtering. It beeps in between the 2nd and all additional rings if the caller is in the "priority" or "normal" list.

Sometimes I've been known to say, "oh shit I thought you were someone important /click/" or "I can't believe I woke up to talk to you /click/" Also when a long distance company calls, I either say "I [send email|do video conferencing] instead of calling long distance." or "I'm required to keep my LD carrier for my work." And my favorite is with cellular companies:

me: "Hey! Sounds great! In fact, I'll transfer BOTH of my cellphones! All you need to do is pick up my early termination fees."

them: "Well, how much is it?"

me: "$175 per line"

them: "Oh, uh, I don't think we can do that."

me: "Yeah, I didn't think so. /click/"

Re:What's the point?

[posmon]

what about a revival of the chinese food scene from 'dude, where's my car?'.

AND THEN?

Re:simple solutions also work

[WickedClean]

I don't know man...that sounds kinda weird. Still, nothing beats the satisfaction of screaming profane nonsense into the phone and then hanging up. I once yelled "I GOT BALLS IN MY FINGER SANDWHICH" and then hung up.

Unhelpful telco messages (was Re:How it works)

[Guy Harris]

Or, at least, tell you something more useful than "We're sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed". What, am I supposed to stand on one foot and dial with my nose? Will the call go through if I dial it that way?

I seem to remember some human-interface type praising that message because it apologized for the problem, and didn't blame it on the user, and otherwise didn't hurt the user's sensitive feelings. If they just tell me what to do so that the call does go through, I'd put up with them calling me a blithering idiot....

Re:Oddly enough

[therick]

Yeah, as a college student, we always seem to get calls in our dorm rooms trying to get us to sign up for a 2.9% APR introductory rate credit card (that QUICKLY escalated to 29.9% or so). One particular evening, someone from one of those annoying companies called asking for my roommate. I frankly told them: "Oh, sorry, he's dead." They appeared to have flunked first grade english because the actual response I recieved was: "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that... I'll try again some other day." Wow. And someone actually HIRED that person and PAID them money to work. Makes the minimum wage for them seem a little over-achieving, doesn't it?