I was going to toss this in the pit, but I am genuinely interested in trying to figure out a strategy for dealing with my problem. I’ve been on the Do Not Call list for about 4 years. I’ve been consistently called by a robotic caller for a credit card company. The message is always identically the same, with a woman telling me to respond immediately because I have a very good opportunity to take advantage of lower interest rates.
Normally, I just let it run its course through my answering machine. But this company is very persistent and calls me every week. Listening to this message is pretty aggravating. So, I started to answer the phone and actually spoke to a human, explaining that I am on the Do Not Call list and please stop calling me. They apologize and say that I am on their Do Not Call list.
I’ve now talked to a human probably 5 times, with increasing degrees of animosity on my part. Each time they assure me that I’m off their list. Today I pretty much lost it. I pretended to be interested in their spiel in order to try to figure out who the company is. I talked to the guy and asked him what the name of his company is. He responds with the nebulous “Financial Services”. Strangely enough, you get more than a couple hits when Googling “Financial Services”. I ask him for a phone number and he won’t give it to me. I tell him that his company better quit calling me and he says, well it will take 90 days. I’m sure that I’ve spoken to a human more than 90 days ago, but that is immaterial since I am on the Do Not Call Registry.
I asked to talk to his supervisor and the asswipe made the same claims. I basically lost it and told him he was full of shit and to never call me again. I’ve filed a complaint with the FTC. It seems to me that there is no way to identify the perpetrators of this crap. Will the FTC be able to track the caller by using phone records? I sure as shit am not going to get caller ID just to track down these bastards, but would that help? Aren’t they probably spoofing their caller ID anyhow?
The interesting thing is that on October 23 the FTC was having hearings on whether or not to make the Do Not Call registry permanent. By the way, you guys, the DNCR lasts only 5 years at which time you have to renew it.
I could use some help here too. If Caller ID is an 800 number, or Unknown, I don’t answer. Or sometimes I answer and immediately hang up. Sometimes I answer and put the phone down.
That’s pretty passive-aggressive, I know, but I don’t want to give these people the satisfaction of getting a live person on the phone.
I used the Who Called Us website to ID one number that was calling three or four times a day. It’s Bank of America. I went to the BOA website and set my Privacy Policy to No Phone Calls. That hasn’t helped.
I’d be interested to know if anyone’s gotten results from FTC complaints.
This may be a painfully stupid question but did you follow the standard procedure EXACTLY when you asked to be removed from their call list.
That would be waiting for the initial operator, and then interrupting and saying the exact phrase, “Please put me on your Do Not Call list”.
The reason that I asked this is that call centers are very automated with war dialers and sophisticated software. I have consulted on some of it. At the start of the call, all an operator has to do is hit a button to both take you off the list and disconnect the call to receive another one. Demanding to speak to a supervisor without doing that would actually require more work and they might not even care.
Not that any of this is your fault but I would try that approach even if you tried it before and someone made a mistake. I find it hard to believe that a call center wouldn’t have the procedure I described down pat because the legal repercussions would be severe enough to shut down the company.
Not the FTC, but I reported a telemarketer to Missouri’s Do Not Call List, and was impressed by their response. I’d been pestered by some scammers in Florida who kept calling to tell me “I’d won the Grand Prize” despite me pointedly telling them several times to put me on their do not call list.
So I mailed off my DNC complaint form to the State AG, and one week later, the calls stopped. I’d put it out of mind once it stopped, but a couple of months later I got a letter from the AG’s office, thanking me for participating in the DNC and that they’d taken the scammers to court and got an injunction against them.
Which was nice. The annoyance ceasing was what I was after, but the closure was an added bonus.
They wouldn’t by any chance be hawking a credit card for Bank of America, would they?
We’re also on the “Do Not Call” registry and have been getting multiple daily calls, at all times of the day, from a particular 800 number for weeks on end. I’ve never bothered answering the phone, but entering the number into Google quickly brought up a site where dozens of people complain about constant harrassment from the same idiots. From what I gather they are only tangentially affiliated with Bank of America, and they absolutely refuse to stop calling. Some people describe being met with rudeness, profanity, and threats to increase the number of daily calls when they demand to be taken off the calling list.
I haven’t found any recourse except to simply try to ignore them, but good Christ, it’s annoying. The Do Not Call list doesn’t help, and I’ve ensured that I have every “leave me the hell alone” option selected in my bank’s privacy preferences. I reported the harrassing number on the FTC.gov website. I event tried to use call blocking on the number (since it always seems to be the same one), but a rep for my phone provider said you can only use that to block local numbers (??!)
So essentially, it appears that if unidentified scamsters/telemarketers want to continually harrass you from an 800 number, as long as they don’t block the number from caller ID, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them.
I got rid of my land line around 6 years ago. I use my cell phone for everything, only give my number to people I really want to hear from, and have caller ID blocked. In the past 6 years I have gotten one or two wrong (misdialed) numbers. It works for me.
Companies that have or can claim some sort of previous/existing business relationship with you are allowed to call. Maybe this company is calling on behalf of one of your current credit card companies? The robot calls really bug me too though.
Discover is about to drive us crazy where we work. We have a merchant account, so that we can accept Discover cards for payment. It doesn’t amount to a whole lot of our credit card charges, maybe 10%. Anyway we started getting these calls from India, the person in very bad English wanted to verify that our credit card terminal was working. We kept putting them off because 1) Our terminal works fine and 2) It of course smells like a scam. Then finally after a couple months of weekly calls, they started changing the focus, they wanted to send us information on some sort of protection program for $19.95 a month. But it would always take them a minute or so to get around to the point of the call. One day I almost let them, I figured if they sent us something to look at in writing maybe they’d stop calling us. But then something the guy said made it sound like they were signing us up for it, so I told them STOP, we didn’t want to sign up for anything. They are still calling once or twice a week, I have NO idea how they can afford to keep bothering their merchants that way. We really don’t want to cuss them out because we do need to be able to charge Discover cards.
I finally answered the phone when they called again today. It was Bank of America. I told them I had closed out that account. If the calls keep coming, I’ll contact the FTC or somebody.
I don’t know how, but - judging by the start of the recorded message - I’ve managed to get myself on an American dialling list (I’m in the U.K.). I get the odd message on my answerphone now and then. It’s most annoying because the other end obviously detects that there’s an answerphone at my end or something and cuts off.
We have a method in my home that we refer to as, ehem, “red-neck opera” . Basically, we answer the phone, realize its a telemarketer, and then say, “great, sounds good, hang on a sec” and put the phone down.
We then embark on a free form, extemporaneous, knock-down, drag-out, Jerry Springer-esque fight, attempting to escalate the intensity by believable stages until it sounds to the telemarketer as though we’re going to kill one another. Screaming “I’m gonna kill you” helps with this. At some point during the scuffle, you hang up the phone, so it just cuts off and goes dead on their end.
So far, no cops have shown up, and a good time is had by all.
I don’t get any calls to my home phone other than a local charity looking for clothing donations. However, about a month ago, I got a spam text message to my cell from McDonalds about the monopoly game. How somebody thought that was a good idea, I’ll never know.
. Basically, we answer the phone, realize its a telemarketer, and then say, “great, sounds good, hang on a sec” and put the phone down.