Oops, Dave Barry Does It Again 733
agdv writes "After the success of his first article providing the phone number of the American Teleservices Association, and the ensuing reaction by said organization, columnist Dave Barry attacks again, providing the ATA's new phone number. Read all about it! (the number is 317-816-9336, long distance charges may apply)."
I Agree with his work... (Score:5, Interesting)
Call Collect (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you accept the charges from "An Angry Phone Customer"?
UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Using "free speech" rights to quash the list in America is, in my opinion, an abuse of the constitution. Mind you, it's not the first time it's been mangled and abused for the benefit of some interested party.
Re:I Agree with his work... (Score:5, Interesting)
It reminds me of a friend that worked for US Airways. Her job? "I overbook flights." That always got an interesting reaction from people, although none that I saw were actually nasty.
--RJ
telemarketers on cnn (Score:5, Interesting)
In a later discussion on the same show someone pulled out the lame-sounding but apt question - should stealing cars be legal just because it puts people out of work if it's illegal?. Some dufus responded, saying it was an invalid argument since stealing cars is illegal. Finish the thought and you've got "...stealing cars is illegal and calling people who don't want to be called is legal". So the dufus had a rather circular argument - it should be legal because it's legal. I was rather annoyed that nobody called him on it.
Anyway, it's fun to watch this one from the sidelines. I haven't had a landline in 3 years.
Re:Note to self (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a surprisingly change over a lot of people punditing about world events, who's "research" seems to consist of skimming over one biased source of news like CNN and then misinterpreting that to fit their biases even more. It's almost a pity Dave Barry is a humor columnist in a way.
How do you handle Telemarketers? (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually work in a call center (service ONLY, no telemarketing) and I've heard of some unusual things happening. People calling from their car and getting into a wreck because they're trying to read an account number from their checkbook; some guy even had a heart-attack right when he called, the phone rep (who luckily already had his account info) called the paramedics for him. That's not a time when you want to hear 'Your call is very important to us....'
-Steve
Re:I Agree with his work... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know exactly how this works, but if you once slip up and do something like this, have you blown it for good? How far can the business relationship clause be taken? I think there should be a way to "reset" your do-not-call status in some way, essentially saying that you wish to have all current "business relationships" to be considered dissolved, and under no circumstances wish to receive solicitations from any company. Because once your name gets into the "business relationship grapevine," can you say "do not call me again" fast enough to keep your number from spreading like the latest royal family gossip?
ATA response (Score:5, Interesting)
A new business model (Score:3, Interesting)
THAT NUMBER IS LOCAL FOR ME!!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I live in the UK, (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Oh the irony! (Score:5, Interesting)
Thier usual tactic is to use the phone number of the Portland Police or Fire Department or to use my phone number as the spoof when calling me.
Re:Harassment (Score:5, Interesting)
When you pick up the phone to call ATA, what you are doing is harassment. You have nothing to sell them. In fact, you would almost certainly (with few exceptions) not be calling them unless you knew that thousands of your peers would also be calling. You hope that your actions will cause problems for the ATA. You are participating in mob behavior.
This isn't harassment. This is the American People(tm) making a democratic choice to call and offer their First Amendment right to make their voice heard, much like the ATA states that the First Amendment allows them to call us whenever, whereever. Harassment would be if we, oh, set up an autodialer and called them repeatedly with the intent to break the law/perform illegal activities. Again, it would be harassment if we started swearing, threatening, or performing other acts that the law would discriminate as "offensive". Simply calling a business to voice an opinion about something unpopular is by no means harassment.
By contrast, when a telemarketer calls you, they hope to sell you something. They have had success in this activity in the past, otherwise they would not try; the phone call costs money, as does the equipment, space, human resources staff, benefits, management, etc, not to mention the wages of those making the calls. They are not doing this to make you mad. They don't want to interrupt your dinner. If they could catch you at your most inconvenient time, they would. In fact, if they could tell without having to call that you were not interested, they would not make the call.
I don't know about you, but for every telemarkerter that has called me I have always told them (right noff the bat, before their little spiel) that I do not buy anything over the phone and to please remove my name from the list. I then hang up. (BTW, these are the actions one should take to, in theory, be removed from a list. It doesn't always work, however). Has this eliminated calls from telemerketers? Not in the least. As for the dinner comment, if these guys want to invest so much money into equipment and staffing, why not buy a map of the US marked off by area codes? This, with a little research saying that Americans typically eat dinner from, oh, 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM, would allow them to perhaps avoid those area codes during that time. It still gives them three other time zones to mess with at pretty much any given point.
I am not opposed to a Do Not Call list. I am, however, very much opposed to the legislation of said list. And I am opposed to the kind of mob behavior that caused the ATA to disconnect their phone line.
Again, you say mob behavior. This is not mob behavior, again it is the American People making their voice heard. What if 10,000 telemarketers calling tens of thousands of people called? Business? So it's business if you are paid to call people if they don't want to be called, but it is 'mob behavior' for us to call that company and complain?
And don't bother comparing this to calling your congressperson, they are supposed to hear from you and have budgets and staff explicitely for this purpose. Be honest now. If you called the ATA you weren't really trying to give them any information or state an opinion, you just wanted to inconvenience them. You were just happy for an opportunity to retaliate.
Perhaps you are confused. The ATA has a staff dedicated to answering calls such as these. It is called 'Customer Support', and many, if not most, companies have such a department. Their #1 priority is to handle complaints, comments, etc. from customers. And before you say we aren't customers, just remember that the phone ringing with "Unknown" or "Blocked" is due to some company trying to sell you something whether you like it or not. I am a customer, I never buy anything from them, they continue to call me, and I am fed up. It isn't mob behavior. It's me making my voice heard, and until someone abolishes the First Amendment we are more than welcome to do things such as this.
Re:I, for one, welcome our overbooking overlords! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never been bumped or even threatened, so I really don't know what it's like.
I didn't mean to say that overbooking was inherently evil or anything; I was just commenting that it's an unpleasant experience, because it sometimes causes headaches for the "bumpee".
--RJ
Here's what to do with the # (Score:4, Interesting)
Constitutional Rights FOr Corproations (Score:4, Interesting)
In all the law and criminal justice classes I have been taking these past 2 years, I always got the impression that the Constitution and, more specifically, the Bill of Rights defined:
the limits that the Government can infringe on the Pre-existing rights of Human Beings
Corporations are entities created by governments, and therefore have only the rights granted to them by those governments.
Now point me to a link that proves me wrong --
Slashdotting for "Revenge" (Score:2, Interesting)
True Tales of Telemarketing (Score:5, Interesting)
You may have seen a gizmo called a "TeleZapper" advertised on late-night TV, which purports to scare telemarketers away. Understanding its operation requires just a little familiarity with telemarketing technology, which I'll attempt to distill here: the telemarketing firm has a system called an "autodialer" which works sequentially through a list of phone numbers in a marketing database. After dialing a number, the system listens for one of three things: a person's voice, in which case the system then either plays a prerecorded sales pitch or connects an unfortunate person working as an automaton to deliver an "interactive" sales pitch (this is why sometimes you answer your phone and get a pause followed by a telemarketer asking "Hello?" even though you're the one answering the phone); a fax tone, in which case the system might either deliver a fax advertisement, or remove the phone number from the database and move on to the next in the list; or it might hear what's called a "SIT tone," which is that series of three ascending beeps you hear when you've dialed a disconnected number...such numbers are of course of no value to the telemarketing firm, so upon hearing this, the system will delete the number from the database and move on. What the TeleZapper does is intercept incoming calls, play a SIT tone, then (if they don't disconnect, as an autodialer would) put the call through to your actual telephone. I've heard one can achieve much of the same effect simply by putting the SIT tone at the start of their answering machine message...I had a WAV file of the tone on my computer somewhere, and just never got around to doing that.
Anyway, with the bulk of the techno-babble out of the way...
It was around noon on a Saturday that I received one of those delightful prerecorded sales calls. But this one was different. Normally, telemarketers block their phone number from Caller ID, so if one subscribes to that service they'll only see "Unknown" when such a call arrives. For some reason, this one didn't...my phone displayed the number from which the autodialer was working. That's odd.
Normally I'd shrug and go back to whatever I was doing. But I was just getting over the flu, stuck at home on a rainy Saturday, bored to tears. I just had to try something. Something evil.
I selected the "Call Log" option on my phone, which brought up the last incoming number...the autodialer...then pressed "Dial." Of course, the number was busy...the autodialer was inflicting its annoying sales pitch on someone else at the moment, and would be doing that all day. And even if it wasn't, the autodialer isn't programmed to answer an incoming call. But...but...if I could time my call just right, I'd finish dialing just as the autodialer is picking up to make its next call. As I said, I'm stuck at home, nothing to do...so...hang up, redial, busy. Hang up, redial, busy. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then, after only about a minute of this...hang up, redial, sound of autodialer trying to dial the next number in its database! I managed to intercept it!
Like a dog that finally catches up with the rabbit, I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it now. I cleared my throat. Since this wasn't a SIT tone, nor a fax beep, the autodialer interpreted this as a voice "answering" the phone and delivered its prerecorded sales pitch. Feh.
When it got to the end of the recording, it then attempted to drop the line and dial the next number. However, in another one of those phone technicalities, this won't work because I had initiated the call; only I can drop the line. Due to the chance timing, the autodialer had answered my call. So I'm still connected to the autodialer, and hear it try to dial the next number, blissfully unaware that it doesn't even have a dial tone.
So I try another experiment. Though I'm still a bit scratchy with a sore throat, I whistle my best approximation of the ascending SIT tone. And immediately, the autodialer tries to drop the line and proceed with an
Re:I live in the UK, (Score:1, Interesting)
If they truly feel "untold grief" then that's good. It means there is some vestige of a decent person left in there somewhere. They DESERVE to feel that way until they stop and find a different job. And if they can't find a different job, then they should become a panhandler, because that is ever so slightly more respectable.
Additionally, if anyone feels it necessary to reply to this regarding my "soldier" analogy in the first paragraph, please know I will dismiss you as a fool.
The ATA complains they weren't warned (Score:3, Interesting)
The designated person could print Dave Barry's article as a pdf, and email it to the appropriate ATA employee. This would resolve the concern they announced after the last article.
Just in case they don't have a pdf reader, the designaged person could open it up in the gimp and save it as a .bmp, then email it. Remember to render it at sufficient resolution that it is easily readable.
Take email server rejections on "too large attachment" into account when you render the .pdf as a bmp. An 8.5x11 bmp, at full color will yield the following file sizes at the following resolutions.
24dpi ~.5M
34dpi ~1M
76dpi ~5M
107dpi ~10M
600dpi ~300M
If you are not the designated person, don't send the email. Don't send the email in many different file sizes to see where the ATA's email server borks. Don't send the email to every ATA email address you can find. Don't send the email more than once.
From their previous complaint, I'm sure the ATA would be grateful for such a service.
Re: The association? Why not some home numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
> It's no good - these guys are on the do not call list.
The news reported last week that 11 telemarketing execs' names were indeed on the do-not-call list. When asked about it one said she just didn't like to get that kind of calls at home...
Maybe Dave's onto something here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How do you handle Telemarketers? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The association? Why not some home numbers? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The association? Why not some home numbers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike the Seventh Day Adventists and such, the Mormons actually have manners.