Telemarketers Plan Counterattack 587
Chris Hoofnagle writes "CNN reports that companies who heavily use telemarketing are planning to counterattack consumers with a barrage of spam and junk mail in October, when the new do-not-call registry goes into effect. Slashdotters should be aware that, as well as anti-spam email software, there are tools to avoid junk snail-mail, such as Junkbusters' free Declare, Private Citizen's excellent service and the Postal Service's Prohibitory Order service, which is described at the EPIC privacy page."
sociopaths!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhpas we'll need a "do not mail, and do not e-mail" list now as well.
Seriously, I think spammers should go to jail if they are requrested to stop and DON'T. I'm not even convinced that the death penalty would be considered "cruel and unusual" for these idiots who JUST WON'T LEAVE US ALONE!!!!!
Yes... (Score:4, Interesting)
They are asking for trouble..... (Score:4, Interesting)
They better have some heavy duty security in place. And they better have armed escorts to and from the parking lots. Someone is going to get a belly full someday very soon and they will go looking for a pound of flesh..
The odds are against them because they so viscously and relentlessly hound and harrass such large numbers of people so endlessly.
Sooner or later, the numbers say that a certain percentage of their victims will snap..
And you know what? I won't shed a single tear for one of them. Not one....
Why don't they get it? (Score:5, Interesting)
If your business model requires hassling your customers then when they prevent you doing it via the phone it's time to change business models not the method you use to hassle.
It's self defeating and why business's think that customers want you to cold-contact them I do not know. Find a market, advertise on mass media or in media that your customers read and then sell to them. Don't bother everyone else with your crap.
Fun ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
If you get mail, try to always reply... on their dime. E.g. when they have business reply stuff.
Otherwise, if there is a return address mark "dead" on the mail and send it back.
If you're getting calls always try to find out things about the caller. Ask where they go to school [most are students]. Ask what political party they voted for, etc.
The bottom line is instead of trying to run and hide from them why not have fun instead? Answer the phone, just don't give them useful information. Lie through your teeth while learning things about them.
Tom
Do your part (Score:2, Interesting)
Instead of pranking a telemarketer next time they call, get the phone number of the company on whose behalf they're calling. Get in touch with that companies marketing department and explain to them exactly why you will now NEVER consider their services. Make sure you tell them that you will tell other people. If there's a big enough backlash, believe me, they WILL listen, because eventually the backlash will be costing them more than they'd make by doing this shit.
Re:Another one bites the dust (Score:2, Interesting)
I know it's hard for a company to get promoted these days with all the competition, but I agree, this is going too far.
I always wonder who keeps these people in business, because I know that I never buy from spammers. I even email them and tell them that...
Re:How about the libertarian angle? (Score:3, Interesting)
We have laws against people playing loud music for hours at night (aka Disturbing The Peace).
We have laws against murder and rape, I dont think any reasonable libertarianw would argue that the govermnent has no right to protect us from each other in that regard, so I dont see why this concept can't be extended to highly annoying telemarketers (or spammers) without encroaching on our rights.
Another way to SHUT THEM DOWN. (Score:5, Interesting)
The next day, I did not receive a phone call from company A, so I decided to call them, and darn it, there phones had been disconnected.
True story, it really works. If you are persistent, you can get their phones turned off.
Re:RReaahh (Score:3, Interesting)
If it's war they want, then they shall have it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what you do. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They are asking for trouble..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone know how to find out where a telemarketer is REALLY calling you from?
Wouldn't that be great, you could sell a telemarketer's number to other telemarketers?
WE NEED RECYCLING LAWS FOR SPAM!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
this will:
1. help the enviroment
2. create more paper recycling jobs
3. cost spam more money.
4. hopefully reduce spam!
Forwarding email to ftc, all 27 addresses (Score:1, Interesting)
evidently he likes spam, he can have mine.
Re:They are asking for trouble..... (Score:4, Interesting)
I just wish there was LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE legislation so that no commercial or non-profit organization is allowed to call, by default, unless they can prove that the end user has opted in.
Oh, you say we've opted in? Well, that opt-in expires every 3 months, at which time they have to opt people back in. That's the way the opt-out stuff works now, at least in Canada.
They want to discuss the case in court? Then they have to record EVERY call they make for future reference. If their LUDs show they called the number, and they're missing any recordings of the calls in their records, then they lose by default. "But that's expensive, and complex, and costs us money!" Well NOOOO SHIT, and TOUGH LUCK.
As to the auditing, "keep them honest" part of this process? Make them pay for it... part of the cost of doing the marketing.
I'm sick and tired of corps/politicians/orgs claiming it is their RIGHT to call me and bug me, and them making ME jump through hoops to try and stop it.
If that's their right, it should be MY right to beat the crap out of them. Seems fair to me.
Spam is *not* better. Who pays? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can google for that one... but it's out there, and it was in the newspapers at the time. So if you buy Allstate, expect to be cheated.
But for me, what really caught my notice is that they think I'm a dog. Okay. But keep your spam away too.
- . - . -
I should also note, while I'm at it, that Allstate is by no means the only dishonest/evil insurance company. You have to be careful. For example: do not become a partner of Lloyds of London. Lloyds was discovering that all their asbestos insurance was a huge liability, so they suddenly opened their insurance to new "partners", who were relatively new multimillionaire Americans, and then switched the documentation so the asbestos liability went to them. When the Americans sued (there were about 8 of them), they were all mysteriously murdered within a year. The last I heard was that the heirs of one of them continued the suit, but the law offices of their lawyers, one of them in James City County, were all mysteriously burgled, and the documents stolen. So... umm... realize that Lloyds is owned by murderers before you do business with them. [That was from the Daily Press of Newport News, about 1996].
FCC said Telco can sell numbers you have dialed (Score:2, Interesting)
There's only one real solution (Score:3, Interesting)
And it's the same as for email addresses. Protect it savagely.
My friends and family know my home 'phone number and my primary email address. The only company that knows my phone is my telco, and I made sure to tick the "Don't even think of publishing or sharing it" box. My primary email is postmaster@my.domain.com, which is an address that spammers (demonstrably) avoid (they like sales@ though). Companies that insist on having a home 'phone number for me, e.g. my credit card issuer, get given their own number, just as they get postmaster@their.domain.com or uce@ftc.gov for an email address if they have no legitimate reason for knowing it, or their.company@my.domain.com if I do need to hear from them. Funnily enough, I haven't had a single telemarketing call or piece of spam to my home phone or primary email address in three years since I decided on this policy, switched telcos and bought myself a domain.
It is within your power to protect yourself.
Re:Snail-mail spam (Score:2, Interesting)
We have a problem with litering in our neighborhood. "
Well, my municipality charges the sender of the flyer with littering, whether its' been posted or left on the windshied of a car or a door. If it winds up on the ground, the sender gets charged. Makes the town quite a nice subsidy. Enough to keep the streets clean, anyway.
Waste their Precious Time (Score:4, Interesting)
I had one lady hooked, asking questions about warranty, return procedures, etc. Then I would say "hold on, somebody at the door" and put the phone down for a few minutes, and come back for more questions.
Finally, after about 25 minutes of this, I asked a question the drone did not have a script for, and the supervisor came on the line. Asked her a few questions, finally got tired of it all, and said, "You know what? I changed my mind. I don't want it after all. Thanks, bye."
I did not receive another telemarketer call for over a month. (Usually got them once a day...)
And before you go on about, telemarketers are human too, I used to work as one, etc. Well, I'm human, wish to be left alone, and if polite requests don't work, then this is war. TFB.
Re:STOP BUYING. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, I must agree with this. When I was younger, I took a job doing telemarketing calls. On my first day they gave me a list of numbers and a script to follow. After about an hour, I started to notice that most of the voices on the other end of the phone sounded fairly old. Unfortunately, the older folks were the ones going for the script too, which made me feel pretty crappy, so I threw out the list of 'leads' I had gathered so far and quit the same day.
We need to put pressure on the companies that hire these types of firms. Without any money to support them, these telemarketing/spam/etc companies will simply go away, as they are motivated by greed.
Re:STOP BUYING. (Score:4, Interesting)
Making fun of the telemarketer calling you is like punching someone who has their hands tied, and isn't allowed to run away...
...Who ran up to you on the sidewalk and gave you a kick in the butt because someone promised him a nickle to do it. Yes, I can insist that I be placed on the do not call list, and as often as not, the scumbag who called me will try to weasel out of it by saying back "so you want to be removed from the call list?" (meaning I will be removed for the week until the NEXT call list is generated if I agree to the statement), or do their best to hang up before I can finish saying "please place me on your do not call list".
Frankly, they deserve a physical punch in the nose, but since they're hiding behind the phone, I have to settle for a verbal assault.
In some sense, the peons making the calls are worse than their employers since they are the ones actually doing the annoying, and they do it for chump change.
Really, it need not have come to this. Telemarketers COULD use restraint by not calling at every godawful hour of the day that isn't explicitly prohibited by law, by realizing that if I didn't want my home remodeled last week, I probably don't this week either, if I say I don't have a pool, there's no sense in calling me back again for pool cleaning service, by accepting 'no' gracefully, sending out a proper caller ID rather than 'unavailable', or worse, a randomly selected personal name, and treating the people they call with respect rather than as a faceless number worth no more than the amount of cash that can be extracted from them, but obviously that didn't happen. If they're not going to play nice, they're not welcome here at all. My house, my phone, my rules.
Hmm.. new business plan? (Score:3, Interesting)
This gives me an idea. Up here in Canada, we don't have the protection of a national "Do Not Call" registry. But it *is* still illegal to call people on phones for which they are charged to receive calls (eg., cell phones).
I see here an opportunity for the telecom companies in Canada to increase profits, while stamping out annoying telemarketers. What if they offered a "service" whereby customers could opt-in to a model where on top of their monthly local access fee, they pay an additional 1 cent for every call received. This would add up to at most a couple extra dollars a month for the vast majority of customers, but it would now make it illegal for telemarketers to call them on their land lines. People who are stingy and don't want to pay to receive calls could stick with their existing service. The phone companies would increase revenues by a percent or so, and telemarketers would be shut down.
A capitalist solution where everybody wins, instead of a politcal, legal solution. I like it! What do you guys think?
Re:Advertising as a substitute for Service (Score:2, Interesting)
yes, there is. i used to work for a small manufacturing company that did just this, they made by far the best product in their (small niche) market and provided independant scientific proof that their products were better than the competition. in fact, the founder of the company (an MIT grad) created the market with this product and other larger companies had been trying to copy it for years, unsusccesfully. the founder was a doctor and very busy researching product improvements and new products, however, he still took time to personally answer every customer question from email, forums and phone calls. they actually listened to customer complaints and responded by making changes in distribution channels and packaging.
while i was working for them I can say the sales people were the most professional and caring people i have ever worked with. our customers information was guarded ferociously as there were many many request for phone and email lists. and even though we had a dealer locator on the web site, the dealer had to opt-in before we would even list that.
i could go on and on, it was a great company. but now we get to the downside. since it was a small company that did not feel the need to harass customers, market share was slowly being eaten away by large conglomerate's that had unsuccesfully tried to by them out. these other companies had inferior products that were priced much lower than ours, but they pushed them on dealers and customers much harder. they mass-marketed the hell out of their products. even going so far as to name their products similarly and use the same packaging colours. we constantly had customers calling and asking if we had been bought out because they had received junk-mail advertising 'new and improved' products that were compared directly to ours making it seem that the 'new and improved' was ours. a federal judge put a stop to the advertising, but the damage had already been done. i talked to many people in that particular industry that just assumed we had been bought out and never questioned it.
my point is that there is a place for companies that value product quality and service, but because the majority of consumers just mindlessly believe what is shoved down their throats that place is 'getting beaten by companies that are sleazier and greedier'.
Marriage mail (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Here's what you do. (Score:3, Interesting)
Better by far is to print off a form letter asking a silly question, and send that to them.
Then they pay postage for your letter, postage for their reply, and worse, salary/office costs for the person who writes the reply.
That really really hurts their profitability.
~Cederic
Excempt Business: LD Phone Companies and Insurance (Score:2, Interesting)
If you look in Google's cache, the Do Not call site used to read:
"Exempt business include:
- long-distance phone companies
- airlines
- banks and credit unions; and
- the business of insurance, to the extent that it is regulated by state law."
Oddly enough, this text is no longer on the web site:
http://donotcall.gov/FAQ/FAQConsumers.aspx