Do Not Call List Under Attack 599
smooth wombat writes "Do Not Call. Those words are music to millions of Americans who have signed up for the list so they're not bothered by telemarketers. Not content to let things as they are telemarketers are now lobbying the FCC to have state laws which regulate the practice overturned. In April an ad-hoc group of firms ranging from the Direct Marketing Association to the National Children's Cancer Society filed a joint petition asking the FCC to declare that it has 'exclusive jurisdiction over interstate telemarketing calls.' The issue revolves around some states whose Do Not Call laws are more strict than Federal law and which prohibit telemarketers from calling anyone on a Do Not Call, regardless of an existing business relationship." Update: 07/21 18:42 GMT by Z : Official EPIC page, with contact info and background.
This could be VERY bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Stay off my phone! (Score:4, Interesting)
Wah! I can't bother people and piss them off during dinner, quiet evenings, and fill up their answering machines with partial recordings not knowing how long the machine's message was.
Businesses are busy scrambling to create new and interesting ways to get your phone number so that they, and their subsidiaries and sister companies, can contact you with their telemarketers. Companies telling me that they cannot process an order without my telephone number, companies telling their employees that they must take a telephone number down for pickup orders placed over the phone, and requiring a phone number to ship a package [lazylightning.org]. Most employees are doing their job and refuse you service (which is a company's right to do at any time) but I find it increasingly annoying. I'll do anything to not give out my phone number including asking for a supervisor, giving out a phone number with the area code and all zeroes, or just giving the switch board number out at work.
I really have no sympathy for companies that are crying to the FCC about this. The public had been whining to the FCC for how many years to get telemarketers to stop? They finally did, creating a list that the telemarketers can reference to narrow their endless search of a customer to people that might be interested in their products, and they still complain?
Give me a break and stay off my phone.
8:00am wakeup (Score:4, Interesting)
--
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Re:Doesn't bother me anymore (Score:2, Interesting)
It is called harrasment (Score:5, Interesting)
The law we need even more than "DO Not Call" is a law which says "You can not sell data about people unless that person gives you consent". There must be a way to opt out of having your information added to a sales list. For example, how can anyone opt out of the bank sales lists? Banks are well known for taking their clients data, and selling that information to credit card companies. Credit card companies use this information to mail solicitations for their services.
Likewise, when I go buy a DVD from a store, why do they need my phone number? They want to sell that information to someone, here is a good lead for a guy who buys DVD's?
The Do Not Call list is a great start, but consumers need more protection from harrasment. We need our information kept confidential. When we do buisness with a company, the company should not be allowed to sneak some fine print in the contract which allows data to be sold. God knows what rights I signed away when I applied for my grocery store shoppers card.
And did anyone here about the lawsuit against the company that made the small gadget you connect to your phone line. When you get a call, the device lets out some small noises. These are noises the phone companies use to signify a line is disconnected. Marketing companies that use computerized auto-dialers recognize these noises and immediatly hang up. The marketing associations sued the company of this product saying it violated the marketing companies first amendment rights.
And while we are making laws protecting consumers, lets do away with the mail in rebate.
Uniform standards (Score:3, Interesting)
Re the automated dialing, back when I was a kid and you called a phone # and hung up it was called crank/prank calling and it was a crime. How is their machine dialling different (aside from the fact that kids don't contribute to politicians)?
Re:Your right to swing your fist.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Get the landline, for 911 only. It is federally mandated to be free. I have the landline with that alone on it. I recently got a phone number on it for DSL, and I'm in the process of working out what I need to do to keep the DSL, but go back to 911-only service. Then I can use my local 911 with asterisk, have a plain old "red phone" for 911-only calls in case asterisk goes down, and I get my DSL service.
Re:I wonder.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps my logic is wrong- but wouldn't telemarketers like the DNC because it would save them wasted calls? I mean, if people sign up for the DNC, doesn't it mean that they hate getting these calls and would never buy anything from them?
It is like spam- if no one bought anything from these "tele-spammers," maybe they would go away....
My solution- one of those air horns people have at sporting events. My grandmother had one for obscene callers (Those over 25 remember obscene callers, in the days before caller ID when tracing a call meant "pulling the Logs"), she would toot the horn into the reciever- this really would hurt someone's ear drums....
Re:It is called harrasment (Score:3, Interesting)
If you don't like these things, give them bad information. Memorize the address of a crack house and the phone number of your local police department's fraud bureau. Nobody checks this information before reselling it. The more the databases are poisoned, the less value the data will have.
Re:I wonder.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Previous business relationship termination? (Score:3, Interesting)
Could you state to one of the harrassing business' callers that you have "terminated the business relationship" and have that be enough? How can you create a "do not cross this line", after online purschase for example?
Re:I wonder.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I just configured my Asterisk phone system to filter all toll free numbers (800,888, etc.), unknown and blocked numbers, and obviously fake numbers (000-000-0000) where the caller has to "press 5" to get through.
In addition, I have a blacklist of annoying callers that just get a recorded message, and calls outside normal hours just go direct to voicemail unless it's a known family member.
This has reduced my annoyance calls to near zero. Now I only get one or two per month instead of several per day.
Re:I wonder.. (Score:5, Interesting)
How so? While they certainly have every right to stand on a street corner and state their views (provided they don't violate any noise ordinances) they have *NO* right to interrupt me, use my phone's electricity, etc...
Just because they have a right to talk, doesn't mean I *have* to listen. And by calling me, they are forcing me to do that. Even if it's just long enough for me to realize who they are and hang up on them.
Re:Doesn't bother me anymore (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, don't worry about getting calls on lines you don't use. Instead, encourage calls to lines you don't use. Encourage them to leave messages. Give the number out. Keep it off the Do Not Call list.
Why? It's a frickin public service. When they're talking to you, they're not talking to other people.
One very bored spring break a few years back, when I was stuck in the dorm, I played deliberate phone tag with mortgauge spammers and wasted hours of their time. Boy were they pissed when they figured it out.
Or record a very very quiet message, and then sound an airhorn at them. Not quite as useful, time-wise, but lots of fun.
Seriously, people. Volunteer a hour of your time each week by wasting telemarketer's and spammer's time. Do some good in the world.
oops (Score:3, Interesting)
I truly didn't have an answer for him. That is, until he started getting calls to donate for a firemans' ball in another county (where he once had a speeding ticket). Then it was a policemans' ticket raffle in our county, then there was the half dozen calls for the American Heart Association. I think it was the worst though when the CDC called on a "marketing study". Last but not least, I saw a paper survey from the US Postal service. Call it coincidence.
Ironically, he still gets credit card calls, mostly from Puerto Rico or some other location where I suppose this doesn't apply. He told the last one he was on the do not call list, and the guy promptly took him off.
I asked what the policeman said who called about the raffle, "We don't have a list to take you off of." That was last year.
He got another call from the same officer last week. It's a small county/town too, so there really is no excusing it. He told me (over the phone) he was just going to buy a cell for my youngest sister and remove the phone.
I told him he'd lose Internet, but he said the phone line would still be there, just not the phone.
I guess drastic times call for
Re:I wonder.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Some guy has some crap to sell.
A spammer offers to reach "3,000,000" e-mail addresses with e-mail marketing for a single flat fee. No promises are made about who is getting it, or if they are at all receptive.
The spammer could chose to write in a way which doesn't duck around word filters or pretend to be a "Re: Dinner tonight" message from some hottie... and that would mean that there would be a much higher return of business per recipient. However, the spammer doesn't give a shit about how much "V1AGRA" is sold by that schmuck, who will probably be out of business next week anyway. He just wants his flat fee for reaching as many inboxes as possible.
Re:I wonder.. (Score:3, Interesting)
when will telemarketers try to slip in a 'Vote Bob' at the intro then go into their pitch? is that then political speech?
Personal experience (Score:4, Interesting)
We were told to keep the customer on the line, interacting for as long as possible. If they were not interested, we were supposed to weasel more 'leads' out of them; meaning we asked them for the names/phone numbers of their friends that might be interested. This constitutes a business-relationship which we could exploit.
Another business-relationship was when we'd call everyone within 20-25 miles of our recent customer. The sales pitch went like:
Hello, this is X calling from Y. Your neighbor, Z, living at Z has recently purchased our product and since we're in the area, we're offering special discounts....
We'd use their address and names to get their neighbors to start listening to us.
When we got somebody that was obnoxious, or just didnt like that we disturbed them, we'd often set them up to be called back in the next few hours. Asking for a supervisor most often yields a hang-up as well. What we were supposed to do is fill out a form stating that the customer didnt want to be called back but since it takes a second to press the 'next' button and a lot longer to fill out a form, virtually nobody was taken off.
Actually, even then I dont think it was possible to permanently remove yourself from our list - even with the form you'd get maybe a few months of respite but after a while, all these forms were just added back to our database. Although this was before the DNR, I cant imagine anything's changed.
Re:State DNC lists are redundant (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I wonder.. (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems they want people in the habit of going to the web site instead of following links - thus fake emails with fake links won't work (one hopes, but many people, even with online banking, are clueless t00ls).
Re:fcc reform (Score:0, Interesting)
I'm missing the part where 3 congressional appointees, or 3 UL appointees, or 3 IETF appointees would not be easily corrupted. See, I'm pretty sure that it's not the FCC title that "corrupts" them. I'm guessing that the corruption happens because they have very political, partisan responsibilities. And they become political because Americans disagree strongly as to the right answers.
No, the only remove partisanship from the responsibilies of the FCC is for all Americans to basically be monolithic in their views on how those responsibilites are to be handled. As you probably already realize, that's not going to happen.
-BrentRe:It is called harrasment (Score:4, Interesting)
Can't say I've been to Radio Shack much, but the last time I went was to pick up a $9 cable while I was out running some errands. Went up to the counter, plunked down the cable and a $10 bill, and spent the next five minutes telling the obnoxious little shit at the register that he wasn't ever going to get my name and phone number no matter what he argued. This conversation wouldn't even have lasted that long had I not been startled and more than a bit confused over why the snot-nosed punk was asking for personal information when CASH was sitting on the counter.
Finally it came down to me telling him to either sell me the damn cable right then and there, or forget about the sale altogether. I walked out with both the cable and the resolve to never, ever set foot in a Radio Shack again, anywhere, for any reason. And I haven't.
Perhaps there aren't enough folks like me to make much of a difference, but when a company pisses me I tend to boycott it - forever. And that includes companies who've called my home when I've expressly told them to piss off and never bother me again. I eventually ended up terminating my land-line service, but not before a number of companies ended up on the Eternal Shit List (e.g., AT&T).
Max
Business Relationship In a Pig's Eye (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually wandered into your store (online or otherwise) and bought something. You call it a business relationship. I call it a purchase.
DO NOT CALL ME at me home because I bought cheetos from you. DO NOT START SPAMMING me left and right because I bought something from your online store AND for heaven's sake don't start sending junk mailto my house! And what's worse, don't give my name to all YOUR FRIENDS (people who paid for you to give up my info) and have them start calling me, spamming me, and sending me crap!
You are not my business partner just because I bought something from you once or twice and you certainly aren't entitled to anything from me but fair payment for what I bought.
If I want to buy something else from you, I'll find you or one of your "friends". Otherwise, LEAVE ME ALONE.