TeleZapper - A Way to Avoid Telemarketers? 688
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.
I guess they can't sell this over the phone. (Score:0, Informative)
This procedure works, is absolutely free and will never break. Unlike...ahem.
Even easier (Score:5, Informative)
A polite but firm... (Score:5, Informative)
Cuts right through their spiel. They have to honor your request: it's the law.
I cut my telemarketing calls down from four daily to once every two months. It worked a hell of a lot better than "So, what are you wearing?".
k.
Re:How it works (Score:5, Informative)
It's hasn't been much of a problem lately... (Score:3, Informative)
2) I use an answering machine with a "voice mailbox" capability--mine was made by GE and cost $40. We don't assign anyone to Mailbox 1. Intro message says "Press 2 for Dan, 3 for [my wife]." Those few outfits that use automated equipment to leave message end up in mailbox 1. (But some real messages from baffled people end up there, too, so I still do need to listen to it).
3) On EVERY call I do get, my first words are "I don't want to be called, take me off your list." I believe this really does have some effect.
I currently get less than one solicitation per week.
4) If, for some reason, you're like me and have trouble being rude, a technique that it quite effective with phone solicitors and door-to-door salespeople is to say, politely, but firmly, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." The person who gave me this tip said that many salespeople are specifically trained NOT to break off the conversation or go away until they have heard "no" seven times. Give them their seven noes and they'll break off gracefully. I don't know if that's the explanation, but it does work.
Re:A polite but firm... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Informative)
no call list (Score:2, Informative)
The only thing I miss is getting to pick on the poor telemarketers. Oh well.
You should ask them not to call (Score:4, Informative)
I registered quite some time ago and almost all of my sales calls went away. Just the little local people an newspapers were still calling.
You might also check with your state. In Missouri you can sign up here [state.mo.us] and it becomes illegal for people to call you (with some exceptions for people with powerful lobbies.) I am on this list as well and can't remember the last time I got a sales call.
The only thing to do... (Score:3, Informative)
1. If you get a telemarketer on the phone, all you need to say is "Please put me on your do not call list." Thats all, nothing more. If the telemarketer says anything else to try to get you to buy, ask to talk to their supervisor. After a few months you won't receive any more calls. Telemarketing houses buy lists of names from distributors and are required by law to keep you on a permanent do not call list of you ask for it, and are also required to pass that list back to the distributor.
2. Be careful when you sign up for Magazines, credit cards, etc. Businesses will sell their subscriber's info to telemarketing houses.
3. Look up your state's Public Service Comission. In some states, it's illegal to contact a person that has been put on the state's do not call list. In some cases you can sign up over the Internet.
4. If the phone rings and you get dead air, it's probably a telemarketer. Don't hang up!!! Wait for them to come on the line and follow #1
...and why it DOESN'T work.... (Score:5, Informative)
This is all well and good, execpt that my answermachine is pretty smart. It can sense when an extenion picks up the phone, and the the answering machine will stop and hang up it's extension.
So, follow along:
1) Telemarketer auto-dialer dials a number
2) No one is home, so the answering machine picks up.
3) The telezapper, seeing an extension pick up, also picks up, and plays it's little tones.
4) The answering machine, realizing that 'someone' picked up an extension, stops the playback of the outgoing message, and hangs up.
5) The telezapper, having played it's tones, also hangs up.
Now... in that process, when was an ACTUAL caller allowed to leave a voice message?
That's right. Never.
Pretty severe logic flaw, IMHO.
Looks to be a national law... (Score:5, Informative)
"No person may
-- Initiate any telephone call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party)...To the telephone line of any guest room or patient room of a hospital, health care facility, elderly home, or similar establishment; or
To any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call."
It looks like you can also receive up to $500 in damages if they do call your cell phone (though I don't know if they can be held liable if you claim it is your home phone number.)
The Telltale Pause (Score:2, Informative)
When I receive a call that I suspect is from a telemarketer, I pick up the phone, say my greeting, then listen for a pause. If there is a pause, I hang up the phone right away.
Occasionally this catches people making legitimate calls offguard, but they usually call back. Telemarketers, because they're on a round-robin dialer, won't call back right away. Unfortunately this really doesn't solve the problem because (as I understand it) your phone number just gets put back in the dialing queue.
If you really want to get rid of the telemarketers, you need to put your phone number and address on a Direct Marketing Association "blacklist".
I believe there are other resources similar to this.
NOTE: I have not tried either of the above, but I've heard of others that have used it successfully.
See also the Telephone Consumer Protection Act [google.com] and this Anti-Telemarker / Anti-Spam [netmegs.com] web page.
Re:My solution to telemarketers (Score:3, Informative)
It is a nationwide law, and THANK GOD FOR THAT!
Re:It's hasn't been much of a problem lately... (Score:5, Informative)
I've found that this is the single most effective way to cut down on telemarketeing calls (aside from hunting telemarketers for sport, of course). I started doing this about a year and a half ago. At the time I was getting 2 to 3 calls per night (and about a dozen during the day judging by the caller-id box). Now I get one call maybe every six weeks or so. That I can handle.
When I do get a call, I just interrupt them as soon as it's clear that they are a telemarketer. I always use the phrase "place me on your do-not-call list". If you just say "take me off your list", they will - but as soon as they buy some more numbers that happen to include yours your're back on the list. The "Do Not Call List" is different, as once you are on it, you should never get an unsolicited call from that organization again (and all telemarketers are required by law to have such a list).
junkbusters.com has lots of good info on the subject.
Re:My solution to telemarketers (Score:3, Informative)
Seems to me like more states need these laws, write your state legislator. I know I am on the list, and my parents and we never get any telemarketer calls.
Re:Related question (Score:5, Informative)
Telemarketers don't dial the phone at all. They are repeatedly presented with calls that a computerized system has made. The system is tracking calls and knows "how long an average call takes", "how long it takes on average for a called-party to answer", etc.
So telemarketer is talking on the phone to you for 30 seconds. The system knows that "60 seconds is an average call" and it takes 15 seconds for a called-party to answer. So, when you reach 45 seconds, it dials the next number, figuring that "on average" you [or one of your cow-orkers] will be ready for the call when they answer the phone.
What you're seeing is that the calls in the call center are taking longer than average (which is actually sorta unusual because the more calls they make, the better the sample-rate is, and from the experience I had deploying two of these systems, they're REALLY good at it). So, because there's no telemarketer "Ready for your call", you're getting silence... the dialer is "hoping and praying" (so to speak) that one of the marketers gets off the phone quickly so it can hand you over to them.
The short answer is yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Believe it or not, this is exactly how simple it is. For your enjoyment here is a list of the four SIT's, with the frequencies and the length of each tone, and their meaning:
Not being a phone company myself, I cannot guarantee that the above tone sequences will always work, but they are the published values.
In case anybody's interested, a recent issue of Poptronics Magazine had an article about SIT's and how they could be used to defeat telemarketers. Sorry, I don't recall the month, but it was quite recent... a perusal in the library through this year's issues should turn it up, if you are curious.
wisconsin (Score:2, Informative)
"Get bent" does not work (Score:5, Informative)
Junk Busters [junkbusters.com]
Use Enigma to log the calls [verinet.com]
See if the FCC is already after them [fcc.gov]
I have already been offered $250 from one telemarketing firm - but I want to go to trial. Also, since I have used the JunkBuster anti-telemarketing script, I am lucky to get any calls at all. The last call was from Qwest on last month - a month after I was sent a letter from one of their lawyers explaining I was on their "do not call list". That call will make me $500 to $1500 when we go to court
Connecticut residents have a cheaper solutions (Score:2, Informative)
Why this won't work, and why thats good (Score:1, Informative)
Are you aware that if a telemarketer calls you back after you've asked them not to you can make $500? Everytime you are called, ask what call center they are calling from. Pay attention to the language they use. If the caller says they are calling 'on behalf of', that means they are at a 3rd party call center. Ask them the name of the call center and request to be put on the 'do not call list' for both the 'behalf-of' client and the call center. Write both the names down, along with the date and time.
If you get called back, you just won the lottery. Write letters to the organizations and they will send you the money to prevent you getting the law involved. If you don't get your money, call your district attorney.
I know this because I owned a call center.
A lady I know bought this thing (Score:2, Informative)
FYI: Canadian regulations (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How it works (Score:2, Informative)
How some telemaketing systems work... (Score:3, Informative)
The actual tones in question... (Score:3, Informative)
Error tone:
0 330ms 950Hz -15.0/-15.0/-15.0 dBm0
1 330ms 1400Hz -15.0/-15.0/-15.0 dBm0
2 330ms 1800Hz -15.0/-15.0/-15.0 dBm0
3 5000ms Silence
(source: 'show call progress tone usa' on a Cisco 5340)
Second, a story from about 5 years back about telemarketers:
My mom received a call from a telemarketer (well, looking back, probably someone involved in a telemarketing scam) to which my mom politely replied "Sorry, I don't buy things through telephone solicitations." At this point, the telemarkter got really indignant and my mom simply hung up.
Several times during the nights following this, we started receiving several "ghost" calls with nobody on the other end (this was rare happening for us) which my mom deduced to be the evil caller from a few nights before. What I especially love was her response to this: At the time, the local telco switch was rather broken (don't ask me how, exactly, I don't know much about telco switches) in that if anyone in our town didn't hang up the phone, the other caller *could not* hang up their phone. One night, my mom received one of these calls again and simply left the phone off-hook for about an hour, which basically made it impossible for the offending party to hang up their phone (probably running up a nice charge for whoever was calling.)
We never received another ghost call.
SIT tones (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I use PacBell's Privacy Manager (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Related question (Score:3, Informative)
In the event that you pick up the phone after 3 or so rings, and hear nothing on the other end, you'll typically have your number placed right back into the queue. Expect another phone call within 5 minutes or so.
I consulted for a company that used these in their AR department (read: collections), and they apparently saved the company an incredible amount of money.
...at your time/expense, of course.
No-Call Registry (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No-Call Registry (Score:2, Informative)
Arizona no-call policy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This used to be illegal (Score:1, Informative)
Circa 1983 was about the time of the AT&T breakup, when people were allowed to purchase their own telephones, and started using answering machines and connecting other kinds of devices to their phone lines, willy-nilly: faxes, modems, etc. If this regulation is still on the books, it is effectively a dead letter.
Don't beat 'em, (ab)use 'em! (Score:2, Informative)
Examples: while the 'marketer gives you his babble, just butt in with random animal noises. Or why not tell him your life story over the top of his sales pitch? Pretend to be psychotic! Slurp soup loudly, fart into the phone, try to talk backwards. Let them finish their pitch (or even better, interrupt them with enthusiasm) and haggle with them mercilessly; make THEM give up on the sale! It seems to me that an absolutely mindless release like this must be extremely good for stress. Especially when you get to hear the reaction of the guy/gal at the other end.
So come on people; don't worry about how to rid yourself of that annoying teleperson! Use them to lower your blood pressure, and get a geat laugh besides! Hooray for telemarketing!
Market Research and You. (From an industry worker) (Score:2, Informative)
Primary difference of being, of course: A market researcher is -never- selling/promoting/'giving' anything.
Some market research companies use auto-dialers, some don't. I personally dial manually.
Some important differences and modus operandi you need to know in dealing with market researchers: (based off of working in Canada, laws differ by area)
1. Asking who the client is, will, under 90% of the circumstances, be useless. Most surveys are done double-blind for us, meaning the only folks in our call center who know who the client is would be the manager. If the survey is not double-blind, then the client WILL be named in the introduction.
1b) Asking about the subject of the survey. In my experience, this is revealed in the intro about 35% of the time. If it isn't given, don't get all paranoid. What a lot of folks don't understand is research companies are frequently interested in what people DON'T like, as well as what they do. It prevents bias, which keeps the responses recorded more accurate. IE: We may be doing a survey about pop, and you don't drink pop. You hang up. But our clients also want to know the percentage of the population that doesn't drink pop, and what they're drinking instead, etc.
2. The company 'calling on behalf of' is seldom the name of the company we're hired under. Reason: Companies spend big money on these surveys, and make their living making them. It's their property. Then they hire a call center company to do the actual calling. We're the pony the cowboy rides on. Without fail, we're instructed to introduce ourselves as the company that wrote the survey, and not with our call center company. (Only exception: When our call center IS the company which wrote the survey.)
3. The dreaded 'Remove me from your list.' command. Worthless. Here's why: Unless you were asked for by name, 99% of the time your number was generated randomly. Yup, it's inefficient, but it allows us to throw away lists and start over each time. In fact, it usually means we don't HAVE a 'list'. So we just nod, say 'of course', code as a refusal, and the number is tossed away. Nothing preventing it from being re-generated in the future however.
4. The 'Do Not Call' command. This is trickier. In Canada, there are a few provinces that have legislation about this, but there is no federal law requiring us to obey it. That aside, any market research company worth their salt will obey this nonetheless. If they're part of the Canadian Survey Research Council, they're bound to by the membership requirements.
5. Being funny might get you somewhere, but being rude will not. Rude, hostile respondents have a 'mysterious' habit of ending up with 'accidental' call-back commands by vengeful interviewers. (Or an entire row of them, if your number gets passed around for being a particularly intense lil' firebrand.) Most crack after the eight call in five minutes. Folks: If you're not interested, say so politely and firmly. Don't yell, don't swear, don't be rude.
6: Always a good idea to ensure who you're talking to is legit, if you're interested in the survey. A good way is to ask the company, if Canadian: "Are you a member of the Canadian Survey Research Council?" Follow this up immediately if they say yes by asking: "Can you give me the number for them?" (Should be: 1-800-554-9996). Then ask for the survey file number. Most of the time they will have to consult a supervisor prior to releasing this information. If they thereafter refuse, use the Do Not Call command and hang up. If they co-operate, hey: Ask for a callback and check out the data given in the meanwhile. If they're legit, do the survey!
7: Ask the length of the survey. Whatever estimate is given, add 3-5 minutes. It may not necessarily take that long, but in my experience, the script-writers are a little... optimistic in the timing estimates. Depends on the survey though. I've had some that say they'll take 25 minutes, that take only 15. On top of that, there's plenty of times where, quite honestly, the surveyer cannot give an accurate time estimate. Many surveys have questions and sections that change/appear/dissapear depending on the answers given. In my experience, 12 minutes is an 'average' survey.
8: Answering for other people / refusing for other people. Except under rare circumstances, we cannot accept answers from unqualified respondents. Translation: If you want your wife to answer the questions, first ask the researcher if that's possible. If not, either schedule a callback or terminate the call. By the same token, don't refuse calls for other people. If we're asking for someone by name, unless we speak with that person, we're under no obligation to accept refusals from others. (We usually do anyway though.) Besides, what kind of house were you raised in that you think that's acceptable?
9: Beware and be aware that there's times where market research and advertising tread a fine line. They're rare, and as a rule the folks working loathe 'adveresearch' questions that, if they weren't followed up by a question, would be shameless advertisement. It's hard to understand, but there's a lot of pride in the market research industry that "We're not the bad guys." We're the nastiest ones in the biz on telemarketers, because _they make our job harder_.
10: Best way to avoid getting called back by a market research company? Do the survey. I'm not kidding. Think of it as 15 minutes invested in avoiding further calls about the subject. Additionally, some surveys offer rewards for participation, hook-free. (When this happens, you bastards get paid more than us for doing the bloody survey. Be grateful!)
11: Be polite, but be firm. If you're not interested, say so. Don't hem and haw and schedule callbacks you don't want. A simple: "Thank you, but I'm not interested." will suffice.
12: Before you refuse, consider this: In an age where companies basically don't give a fuck what you say, we're their ears. It's a rare opportunity to actually say something to Brother Economy and be _heard_.
13: Finally, if you REALLY want to piss off a market researcher: Start the survey, and near the very end (ask periodically until you're near the ending) terminate the call. In every survey I've ever done, a midway refusal means the survey answers are tossed out and all that effort was for nothing. Big time anger for the researcher. (This cuts both ways though: If you have something about the subject you want heard, unless you complete the survey, you're just wasting your own time.)
Hope this was insightful/informative/funny and whatever else gets me some bloody karma already!