After reading Coldfire’s rant about payphone gouging, I decided to start a new thread (instead of hijacking the current thread) about something that pisses me off.
I get at LEAST 10 calls a day from telemarketers… they usually come up “out of area” on my caller id. It has been a gripe of mine for a long time that the phone company has the technology to stop these calls, but choose not to because the phone company gets paid for every call that gets through, even if it reaches an answering machine. It’s the same reason the post office delivers junk mail. It’s a revenue source.
I just got an ad in the mail informing me that, FOR A MONTHLY FEE, the phone company will block “out of area” calls.
F*CKERS!
I hate telemarketers. But I hate the phone company more for allowing this intrusion into my home… and extorting money out of me to make it stop.
How the hell do people get that many telemarketing calls a day? The most I’ve ever gotten was maybe 4, and that was a really BAD day for it. Most of the time, we don’t get any. That includes my parents and sister when I’m at home. And it’s not as though they’re hermits or something like that. They’ve got a rather large selection of credit cards and what-not.
Though they do have an unlisted number. I still find it odd, though. Y’all are doing something wrong ;).
I couldn’t agree more. It’s a revenue source, hundreds of billions, and I’m really surprised that some slick lawyer hasn’t been able to bring a case against the phone companies for this. It’s harassment as far as I’m concerned. Often the stupid computer that’s calling you won’t even say anything, because one of their telemarketers is tied up dealing with other customers so you get silence for about 15 seconds before it hangs up on you. About 1/5 of my tele‘ ends up like that. I too, was averaging up to 10 calls a day on my business line, and it had gotten so bad, that I hired a Private Investigator to put a tap on my phone. But if they are using the PBX machines, these are not going to be traced. I had to spend over a month trying to cut this shit out. If you do a Google search, you’ll find some excellent sites that can help a great deal. The worst thing you can do if you’re trying to stop them is run it through your answering machine. This is because most of them are on computer, and when it gets your answering machine, the computer is able to detect the necessary tones to know this, so it will continue to keep on ringing it throughout the day, week, month until somebody eventually answers it. So if you get one of those “out of the area” or “unavailable”, don’t run it through your answering machine. The second thing you can do is once you get one of those assholes on the line, is to ask them for their name. This is easy, because they think you are interested in what they are selling. You then ask them for their companies address or phone number. I’ve never had a problem getting both from any of them. By federal law, they are required to give it to you. After you get this, you say the magic words: “Please take me off of your mailing list and don’t call this number any more.” It’s going to take you about a month, but I promise you, if you do these things, you’ll see a huge difference. I did this all in May, and by June, my calls from telemarketers are down from over 150 a month to about five a month. I hope to get it down better than that. The tele-zapper machines work only so so. There is also another great machine that you can use for your private residence, available by Amazon and others. Your phone will never ring unless the party calling punches in a particular number that you give you family members and friends. There are also some state laws now that you can find on the internet and if you pay something like five dollars, it is supposed to keep you off of all tele-marketers list for something like 10 years. If you get three calls from them after you’ve told them to stop; you can then get fairly large sums of money from them. All of this is a lot of hassle, but it will be worth the effort.
Thanks for the information, John. I guess my biggest problem is that I rarely answer calls that come up “out of area” or "unavailable.
Apparently, you are right! I have no idea how my phone number appears on a list, but it’s there. Whether I like it or not.
Exactly. Why not? The phone company has no problem blocking calls that are marked as “private” if I choose not to accept them. My phone does not ring at all. Instead, a message is generated that says “the person you are trying to reach does not accept private calls”… (well, something like that).