I’d hate to think of the criminals that get away because the cops are busy chasing after telemarketers! Surely the police department has more important things to follow up on. Your best route is asking to be removed from the calling lists. There really isn’t much the local police can do…believe me, it won’t stop the telemarketers from calling! Going through an attorney or contacting your state attorney general’s office is the best legal route to get you started if you are serious about pursuing it.
Same goes for if you have a credit card, own a car, have ever taken out a loan, own a house or business or have purchased ANYTHING through a catalog or mail offer. If you have done ANY of these things ever in your life, you are on a list somewhere.
The good news is there are more and more states adopting restrictive legislation against unsolicited sales calls. It is making it more difficult for companies to make offers through phone sales…however I think telemarketing isn’t going away anytime too soon.
The whole notion of “they sold your number” or “get an unlisted number” doesn’t work with predictive dialers. I worked for a company that manufactured and programmed the things, and they couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you’re listed or not (depending on what the product is they’re trying to sell) – they can just do a random generation of all the numbers in one particular area code or prefix and start dialing those. Now it is illegal to dial all of those random numbers in sequence, because the dialer could wind up calling every phone in a hospital or an office or something one right after the other, so they have to dial them randomly, but they don’t check to see if they’re your line, or an unlisted number, or anything.
Now, there are certain “campaigns” where they only want a certain group of people. Then they will buy a bank of numbers from some number broker. But don’t count on not getting called just because you’re unlisted.
http://www.verinet.com/~geoff/Enigma
(I hope that worked in to a link!)
Somebody posted this link on the About This Message Board Forum. I can’t remember if it directly discusses anti-telemarketer tactics, but if it doesn’t then it links to places that do.
-Melin
You can get an unlisted number and keep it unlisted Nick, but some telemarketers simply use a computer program that dials every possible combination of number. Sure to hit plenty of unlisted numbers. IE:
555-1234
555-1235
etc
The more I think about it, the more I think “irrational” doesn’t even begin to cover it, Nickrz.
I mean, “Hey, lady, sorry you had to take this job to feed your kids, and get paid minimum wage plus a commission that you don’t even get to collect until you get 50 sales, but I’m going to act abusively towards you, even though you don’t own the company, because I don’t like advertising”–what kind of asshole does that? Comparing telemarketing operators to Nazis? Are you daft?
Back before I got my present job, as a broke college student, I was a telemarketer for 4 hours. Call me whatever you want, but the job sucks. I don’t care who you are or what you are selling, I just want to be left alone. If I want a new service, I will call the freaking company that provides it and let them know. The worst part is that lately, my local phone company(GTE) has been calling me to offer new services. So my number is safe from no one. Keep in mind, i don’t harass them when they call, i just say I’m not interested and hang up. But privacy is a big deal to me and it freaks me out when people come to my door to sell things, even though i live in a No solicitation apartment complex, they still try to sell me stuff and it’s not like it’s little kids, who I am happy to buy stuff from if it’s for a school fundraiser, I’ve had creepy looking adults come to my door. I call my apartment complex and they tell me to call the police, and I call the police and they tell me to call my apt complex. WHY won’t these people just leave me alone!!!
pldennison writes, “I mean, ‘Hey, lady, sorry you had to take this job to feed your kids, and get paid minimum wage…’”
I’m with Nickrz on that one. Can the sob story here. Their lack of job skills is not my fault, I didn’t make them have kids, and “it’s just my job” is not a valid excuse for being rude, which cold sales calls are. I am always polite to people who are polite to me. But if you act like an ass to me first by calling me at dinner time trying to sell me crap I could not possibly be less interested in, well, don’t expect me to be overly nice in return.
I’m a very charitable guy in general, but I won’t be guilt-tripped into feeling sorry for these people.
I usually temper my hostility towards them somewhat, but I am at least curt with telemarketers. If they don’t like this, then they don’t have to call me.
k0myers
“…the boobs who can’t make a living doing something else…”
Ok, well, as a former telemarketing boob who has just landed an executive position due mostly to skills learned at my boobesque telemarketing job, (in the same building, BTW, that houses this regions BBB department), I can give you two foolproof ways to prevent the otherwise unemployable morons from ever calling you again.
- Everytime you get a call, politely, yet firmly interrupt the salesperson. Example: “Hi Blank, this is So&So calling with Acme Marketing…”
“So&So, Acme Marketing. So&So, I no longer wish to receive offers from your company. I want you to have my name removed from your call list. I’m writing down the date and time of this call, and if I receive another call from your company, I will file a complaint. Is it clear to you that I want my name and number removed permanently from your calling list?”
Unless the salesperson really is an idiot, this shouldn’t be a hard concept to understand. You can be assured that your information will be deleted from their system within the week. Keep in mind that many companies have offices nationwide, and each one of those offices has a lead with your name on it. Just because you tell one guy to delete it does not ensure that your desire to be deleted has been made known throughout the entire company network, and you may get a call the next day. Again, give it a week.
- Invest a few more dollars per month in the Privacy Plus (or equivalent). So what if a predictive dialer recognizes it as an answering machine and tries to call again later? It will still think it’s a machine and any attempts to reach you will be futile. When a telemarketer who is not using a dialer hears the privacy recording, he/she will treat your number as a wrong number or disconnected and you’ll be put in a pile. From then, someone will call information, attempt to get your new phone number, realize they have the correct number already, call it again, hear the privacy message, and put you into the DNC databank.
The DNC databank does not remove you from all call lists… it only removes you from the lists managed by the company whom you told to remove you. If you elect not to get privacy manager, you will spend a little while telling people to add you to the DNC databank.
In defense of the position, may we consider the following:
- To repeat what someone said above, if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t be such a widely used sales method. Many companies that one would not expect to need telemarketing services employ a full telemarketing staff for that very reason.
- In that so many people find telemarketers in general to be a despicable and disgusting offbreed, to make any money at it requires that you effectively employ powers of command persuasion simultaneously with customer service sensibility. Indeed, this is not the position for someone who is unemployable or fundamentally retarded. People who are as such do not last long, perhaps not even one shift, as telemarketers and are forced to either go to school or work fast food or housekeeping positions.
- I do not defend “cold-callers”, those who call straight from the phone book. However, again to repeat a bit from someone above, if you’ve placed your name on any sort of registration card, subscribed to a magazine, ordered an item by phone, mail, or email, you’ve shown an interest in a particular company or product and therefore have zero right to complain when someone believes that you may be interested in their offer based on such information. Just as easily as tossing junk mail into your recycling bin, you can refuse a telemarketer by instructing him/her to place you in the DNC bank.
Just my $1.25 worth, but then again, why should you listen to me? Evidently, I’m a boob.
Hey Phil - I may be daft, but I don’t have people calling me trying to sell stuff I don’t want.
If you’ll read my posts a little more carefully, you’ll see I have an unpublished number and I was not comparing telemarketers to Nazis, I was comparing people who say “I’m just doing my job” in defense of their violating my privacy to Nazis who defended their misdeeds by saying “I was just following orders.” If you don’t see the parallel, don’t blame me.
And I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head here in GQ.
So, let me see if I’ve got all this straight?
–People are only allowed to have the jobs that Nickrz, k0myers, and Doctor Jackson think they should have;
–Companies are only allowed to engage in sales practices pre-approved by them;
–If someone has a job or engages in a sales practice they do not approve of, they are permitted to be abusive;
–Companies are supposed to be psychically aware of the details of these mens’ schedules, such as when they are napping or eating.
That about cover it?
Actually, it’s much simpler than that:
Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
Well, this is a spicy debate…
I can tell you Nickrz, from being on the inbound end of a telephone banking center, they people who call in are hardly any intelligence trophy winners either.
I am rarely bothered by telemarketers, I firmly tell them to remove me from the list.It works, and I dont waste energy getting stressed about it. When I get the market research calls, I am happy to give them my time, it is like voting in an election, if you dont contribute, you dont have the right to complain about the outcome. What I am saying is that if they suddenly make all coffee pink, it might be because folks that like pink took a few minutes to participate in a survey.
As for the advertising on tv and radio ‘stealing’ your time…wow! relax man! The ads in papers, radio and tv are what pay for the product…no ads, no shows…try watching pbs for a week, then see how you feel.you americans have the best tv on the planet…even your commercials are good. Lighten up, life is too short.
As for getting hostile/rude/obcene with telemarketers…that is not nice,they are not trying to bother you, they are just providing a service, if you dont want the service, just say so. Is that how you treat the check out clerk at the store when she asks “will there be anything else?”.
I will agree on the auto dialers though…they call multiple #'s at the same time, and only the first one to answer gets a person, the rest ring , you pick up, and nothing…that is harrassment in my opinion, and many areas are taking action to stop auto dialers.
So spotgirl, imho, get a contact name and phone number of the company calling, tell the caller to remove you from the list, and if the same company calls again, call the contact and give him hell!
“give me ambiguity…or give me something else…”
“As for getting hostile/rude/obcene with telemarketers…that is not nice,they are not trying to bother you, they are just providing a service, if you dont want the service, just say so. Is that how you treat the check out clerk at the store when she asks “will there be anything else?”.”
I would be tempted to be rude to the check out clerk if she came to my house and bugged the shit out of me while I was trying to sleep.
good point.
I’ll consider myself told… 
Phil, in his usual knee-jerk style, sez:
Bullcrap! Most municipalities have laws against door to door soliciting. If a law is not on the books I can put out a “No soliciting” or “No trespassing” sign to keep salepeople away. I do not have to give up property ownership to avoid being hassled. Tell me how telephone solicitation is less invasive. If telemarketers were surcharged by the phone companies and subsidized my phone bill I would agree. But they are not and you are wrong.
Phil also halucinates:
Please show me one post where I said:
A) Anything about telemarketing as a job, as opposed to a business practice;
B) That I was, or approved of, being abusive to telemarketers (you have proved repeatedly that posting a non-Phil approved opinion on a message board is permission enough for you to become abusive);
C)That I expected any company to know my schedule. That is one reason I despise telemarketing. They wrongly assume that I want to stop whatever I am doing in order to hear their latest fantastic offer of aluminum siding for my brick home. Hugely presumptuous, but that would fit with your on-line personality anyway.
Otherwise, shut up.
As for you second “point”, if a company uses practices I do not like they will not get my business. I said as much in my post. Until this odious practice is abandoned I will continue to vote with my dollars.
Nickrz was right when he said “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”, but Holly absolutely nailed it.
The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. – E. Grebenik
Holly says, “I would be tempted to be rude to the check out clerk if she came to my house and bugged the shit out of me while I was trying to sleep.”
Well said, Holly! I couldn’t have put it better myself. Be polite to me, and I’ll be polite to you. Be rude to me, and, well, don’t expect me to pretend like I’m enjoying it.
It is no less than sheer arrogance to think that my time is free for the taking just because you want to sell a product. Carried to the logical limit where every company did this, telephones would be useless, since you’d be receiving telemarketing calls constantly.
pldennison says, “–People are only allowed to have the jobs that Nickrz, k0myers, and Doctor Jackson think they should have;”
Howzabout this: I’ll pay somebody $10 an hour to set up a loudspeaker in front of your house and blare recorded salespitches at you all day and night, maybe even when you’re trying to sleep. It should be OK with you - after all, don’t begrudge this person their job! They’re just trying to make a living like the rest of us.
k0myers
Signing up for phone service + putting telephone number in book distributed to every house in town = “Call me.” I mean, presumably, that’s why it’s in there, right? Otherwise, you’d simply give your number only to those who need it.
And don’t respond with any crap about unpublished numbers, because I specifically said if you bought a phone and had your number published. If you don’t fall into that category, why take issue with what I said?
Yeah, well you’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny. And it certainly doesn’t cost you extra to answer the phone, does it?
You’ll notice I was including you in a group of 3. Not all of you will meet all the criteria.
Some other person:“You and society gain nothing being angry to a stranger just doing their job on the phone.”
You: “Not true.”
So, here, not only do you approve of getting angry, which one can assume covers “abusive” or “nasty,” you do in fact blame the person holding the job rather than the company, so there.
Oh, please. Give it a rest. If you want to engage in ad hominem, I’ll meet you in the pit.
You expect them to know they’re interrupting you. “Naps, dinner, family time, reading, and movies uninterrupted by spurrious telephone calls would be examples of what I stand to gain.” How the hell are they supposed to know what you’re doing when the phone rings?
And what’s with “spurious”? I assume these are actually real telephone calls, no?
Are you implying that I have something to do with telemarketing? Oh, and by the way, pot/kettle/black.
Oh, my, how mature.
Actually, you said they don’t deserve to be in business. Ergo, only companies which conduct sales practices of which you approve deserve to be in business, on Planet Jackson.
Well, bully for you. I expect most people do the same. It would take a particularly ignorant person to support companies he or she doesn’t want to support. On the other hand, I don’t walk into Wal-Mart and yell at their clerks for working for a company I don’t like.
I’m like Kat & Voguevixen. I am usually online most of the time. In the event of an emergency, my company’s answering service pages me, not calls me. My relatives also have my pager # or they reach through IM.
Like Nickrz said, you must not give out your number and beware of responding to any mass mailing. Look for a box or stick a note on it saying don’t sell your name & address.
Thanks to Reality Chuck for the answering machine tip. This has worked for us.
If you hate being getting telephone solicitors during lunch, dinner, nights, weekends, pretty much any time you or your sons & daughters are not on the phone, then write your name, address, and phone number
and send it to:
Direct Marketing Association of Farmingdale NY
P.O. Box 9014
Farmingdale, NY 11735-9014
It is published quarterly.
May you get some peace and may your answering machine not fill up with hang-ups.
“Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
E A Poe
Yeah, that’s a rational comparison. What’s that job called? “Stupid Things That Only Exist In My Head And Have No Bearing On Real-Life Stuff”? Who gave you the right to decide what jobs other people may and may not have? (Quick hint: Nobody did, so get off your high horse about it.)