Unsolicited commercial faxes from companies with whom you have no business relationship are prohibited by the Federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) [47 U.S.C. 227] .
The nice thing about this law is that you don’t need some Federal agency to enforce it; it empowers the victims to sue in state small claims courts, getting $500+ per infraction. Junkfax [dot] org and similar sites have details.
Some good ideas for fucking with these jokers can be found here. My humble contribution:
[QUOTE=Hal Briston]
These chuckleheads call our office constantly. My standard response is to tell them the model number is “three”. When they question this, I simply explain that it’s a very old copier.
[/QUOTE]
In my last library job, I worked the front desk, and thus was often the first one to answer the phone. It lead to some interesting encounters.
Me: Hello, *** Library.
Caller: May I speak to Mr. or Mrs. (name of a director who had died about twelve years before).
M: I’m sorry Mr. *** hasn’t been the librarian here for quite some time.
C: Do you own that building sir?
M: Uhh… No, the state of West Virginia does, we’re a library on the *** College campus.
C: Well, I’m calling from ripemoff roofing, and I’d like to offer you a free estimate.
M: The college has its own maintenance department, they handle that sort of thing.
C: Can you connect me to them?
(It goes on a little longer, but by this time I wasn’t about to tick off the maintenance department, so he never did get the information from me)
The next one was a scam more than a telemarketer. A guy collecting for some “policeman’s” charity that first wanted to talk to the person who handled our “charitable donations.” I informed him that being a library, we WERE a charitable donation, and really didn’t have a great deal of spare money lying around. Unperturbed, he tried to get my personal information so that I could make a “donation” myself.
MissTake: How odd. I’ve got Comcast, and I’ve called multiple times about various things, and I’ve never gotten the volume of calls you’re describing. I wonder if it’s a regional thing - maybe some parts are better at it than others?
[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
The junk faxes, BTW, are illegal in some states. The rationale is that when they call your phone, they’re paying for it, but when they send you a fax, they’re using up your paper and toner.
[/QUOTE]
And that was the undoing of my mighty get rich quick scheme…
Send a fax with LOTS of BOLD TYPE, pictures, stuff that takes a while to scan and send. A full page.
Make it a survey with a controversial theme: “How do YOU feel about homosexual gun ownership among the homeless?”
A: All for it
B: Huh?
C: Why do you hate America?
Have the return number be a 900 number and hope whoever sends it back doesn’t know what a 900 number is (have the disclaimer and price in tiny, tiny print). Set the cost of the call at $13.99/minute. Lots of content on the page helps tie up fax lines for at least a minute.
Send to 23 jillion fax numbers daily with a new survey.
Profit!
But it was illegal and I never made a cent.*
And here I am not even knowing what a homosexual gun IS.
My only ideas are unprintable. :eek:
[QUOTE=Little Plastic Ninja]
And here I am not even knowing what a homosexual gun IS.
[/QUOTE]
Not sure, either. But if Duke of Rat can own one then by golly the homeless should be able to own them, too.
[QUOTE=Raza]
Unsolicited commercial faxes from companies with whom you have no business relationship are prohibited by the Federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) [47 U.S.C. 227] .
The nice thing about this law is that you don’t need some Federal agency to enforce it; it empowers the victims to sue in state small claims courts, getting $500+ per infraction. Junkfax [dot] org and similar sites have details.
[/QUOTE]
And having dealt with the junk fax twits let me just add “Good luck getting anything but frustrated”.
To start with, they will lie. I guarantee that if you actually get to speak to someone and ask why they are sending you stuff they will claim that you requested it. When you inform them that you did no such thing, they will apologize for the “mistake”. Under no circumstances will they admit that they have done anything wrong.
This is assuming that you can ever speak to somebody, which they will go to great lengths to make impossible - the fax number will be a dummy (that’s illegal too) and the “Call this automated number to get off our list” will probably transfer to Canada (I’m not making this up) or some other location beyond US jurisdiction.
I went through this with fax.com - I had them dead to rights but they insisted that “someone” must have given them my fax number, and they wrote a confirmation letter to me stating that the “Customer who requested his number be used has now requested that he be taken off our list”. This is the type of shenanigans to expect.
FWIW I documented my experiences with fax.com and complained to the FCC. Shortly thereafter they got hit with a $5.4M fine for multiple violations of the TCPA. I can’t say it was my doing but I like to think I had a little hand in it 
Similarly with the telemarketers - for the record, I have it in writing from the FCC that the anti-telemarketing laws that apply to you the homeowner do NOT apply to your business. Roughly speaking, anyone can bombard you with phone calls offering toner or light bulbs or timeshares or whatever and as long as they are calling your business it’s extremely hard to get anything done.
I work at a big law firm and we started getting prerecorded calls from “Dorothy at the Mortgage Company” offering home refis. It took me a lot of time and effort but I was able to trace the numbers they used (despite things like them blocking caller ID), track down the small phone companies that “owned” those blocks of numbers and get the owners on the line. One guy was a blatant bullshitter (he was reviled online, other people had tracked him down and published all of this contact info, I think he was sick of hearing about Dorothy) but I kept after him. The other guy happened to be chief legal counsel for one of the telecoms; I politely explained the situation and he actually took action - checked on the offender, confirmed that their behavior was generating massive amounts of complaints and violating some kind of terms of service in their contract and had their phone contracts terminated.
“Dorothy” has pretty much vanished now.
So if you’ve got a lot of time and resources, and a very stubborn streak, you might be able to get something done.
[QUOTE=Leaper]
MissTake: How odd. I’ve got Comcast, and I’ve called multiple times about various things, and I’ve never gotten the volume of calls you’re describing. I wonder if it’s a regional thing - maybe some parts are better at it than others?
[/QUOTE]
It’s the only thing I can think of. I don’t have Comcast for my home net connection and have never received a call. Until I made the service call from my office phone I hadn’t received any calls from them. And they know my name - but the bill (I would guess) is addressed to my employer. Oh, and both my home number and office number are unlisted / unpublished.
It’s weird. And slightly annoying.