Telephone spam? Faux charities? How do they do it?

The BBQ Pit
1

Do I have to be grossly insulting to post in the Pit? Is it OK to be merely mildly pissed off?

I have 5 phone numbers coming in to my home/office, all unlisted and all on the national Do Not Call List, so it’s rare that I get unwanted calls, although there’s one junk faxer who won’t quit. Geez, email spam is bad enough.

Today at 10:22 AM, I got a call from what the caller ID box said was 877 291-7322. The solicitor, who wanted to speak to “the lady of the house,” said his organization was exempt from the DNC lists since they were a charity, but said he would put me on their internal DNC list.

At 10:39 AM, another call came from the same source. Same solicitor, who claimed to be calling on behalf of the Dove Foundation in Michigan, but hung up when I asked for the address.

At 10:42 AM, another call, same solicitor, who hung up again when I objected to three interruptions in twenty minutes and wanted to speak to a supervisor. A return call to the toll-free number got me to a polite supervisor, who claimed they were trying to find parents and grandparents. If so, they need to get a better list to start with, as I am neither (I think). She promised to put all my numbers on their DNC list.

First of all, the Dove Foundation may be hiding behind a faux charity designation, as they appear to be selling religiously-censored videos (to those who never want to see what the director intended, so that leaves me out).

But what I am wondering about even more is how, with three quite different, non-sequential, not even the same prefix, phone numbers, they managed to dial all of them within 20 minutes? It occurred to me that they might just be flooding some geographic areas so much and so fast, with huge operator crews, that they hit all numbers in the same area quickly. But then it seems unlikely that the same operator (I’m sure of it) would get connected to me.

I wonder if there’s some new kind of telephone solicitation device or scheme out there. Anyone have any ideas?

2

Aeons ago, when i worked as a car salesman back in Australia, the company i worked for used to purchase phone lists that were ordered not by name or prefix or phone number, but by geographic location. So, the list would show the phone number for 1 Smith Street, then it would show the number for 2 Smith Street, and so on.

If all three of your numbers are listed at the same address, this might be what happened to you.

3

I telemarketed for a small construction firm for about a week. You’re probably familiar with the drill: call up a prospective customer, state that we’re doing a special in their area, and see if they’re interested in having some work done. I worked from a phonebook, not the usual one arranged by last name but one arranged by address. Your solicitor may well have been doing the same thing.

4

Guess I should have paid attention to mhendo’s post, huh? :smack:

5

Lute skywatcher and mhendo:

If they’re not in the book or reverse directory, how can they be called geographically (other than area code/prefix)?

6

Apparently what the Dove Dudes do is heavily edit out anything from a movie that could offend anyone, ever. Must make for some pretty short movies. I get a kick out of the line frequently seen in the individual movie listings, exact quote: “Language: All the language in this movie has been edited out.”

I guess all that’s left is music, sound effects and grunts. :smiley:

7

Just because they aren’t in the book doesn’t mean they’re not in a book.

8

What manner of book is there to which you refer?

9

Blazing Saddles: brack! Brack! Brack! Braaaaack!

10

IIRC, the book I had to use wasn’t from the phone company.

11

The Dove Foundation got my number and tried to use it. I didn’t know they were into editing language, my reply must have given them a nice little work load. They haven’t called back.

12

OK, OK, so we know where it wasn’t from. Where was it from?

I dare you to find my phone numbers in ANY book, short of the CIA’s. What book has unlisted numbers and ones assigned only internally to the phone company?

How do you know they got your number? Couldn’t they have used a random or sequential dialer? That doesn’t require the knowledge of the number’s assignment, just generation of 11 digits.

13

Haven’t the foggiest. All I really remeber is it was huge!

14

Sounds like the Davis reverse directories. The data source is the phone company. It’s just rearranged by city and street. It is possible for a telephone customer to request ommission from those directories only, but an unlisted number is just that – unlisted. It will not appear in any legal directory by design. Which is why solicitors use sequential dialers – in some cities (e.g., Los Angeles), MANY residential numbers are unlisted, making the standard directory effectively useless.

15

**Lute ** and mhendo are both right. Years ago I used to have a friend that worked for a now defunct company that called geographically. One week it may have been Madison, WI. The next it could be Cleveland, OH. All that was needed were the valid prefixes in any given city/area code.

A decent sized call center could easily hit those 3 numbers in 20 minutes, statistically.

Personally, if I get a call from a charity or some such I know I’ve told not to call me, the fun begins. I kept one guy on the phone for 45 minutes having him explain exactly how much good the foundation was accomplishing. (It was some sort of Save the Tree Moss fund or something.) I pledged $250 to humor him.

2 weeks later I got a call demanding the payment. :rolleyes:

16

Let’s do some math. Taking the two prefixes in my immediate and very limited geographic area, that’s 2 * 10000 = 20000 numbers, or 1000 per minute, or 17 per second. With enough dialing equipment, phone lines and operators, theoretically possible – the automated equipment could weed out the non-answers, fax machines, busys and hangups, then feed the ops only the good prospects.

The time it takes to handle the non-answers, assuming 4 rings max, would limit the number of tries per phone line to 3 per minute as a worst case, so it might take 300 phone lines to handle that volume. Are there call centers that big?

But what are the odds that the same operator gets assigned all three of my numbers, which are not sequential or even in the same prefix? That’s what happened.

And I didn’t hear any delay or switching sounds after picking up the phone; the delay/switch that is typical of such equipment which routes the call to an op after analyzing the response.

I think something else is going on here. It doesn’t add up.

17

Here’s a strange telemarketing tactic I encountered for the first time a few days ago.
[phone rings]

Caller: Hey, Sal!

Me: I think you’ve got the wrong number.

Caller: Nobody named Sal there?

Me: Nope.

Caller: Is this 216-XXX-XXXX?

Me: Yup, but there’s no Sal here.

Caller: Oh well. Maybe you can help me out. I’m calling from the Northeast Ohio Police and Fireman’s Benevolent Society, and …

Me: If you’re soliciting funds for some charity that will only see 5% of your proceeds, I’m not interested.

Caller: Okay. Good day.

[Hang up]

I think it’s a new scheme to try to get around no-call lists by pretending to call a wrong number. Anyone else hear of this?

18

I work in a call center (mind you, incoming, not outgoing clals). The key is that it’s not necessarily one center, though, yes, there are centers that are that big. For example, my center is linked with 3 other centers that take the same type of calls; we have about 250 in our department here, another site has 300+, another about 100, another a little less (though that’s over 24 hours). Depending on the call length, I could see us handling that kind of volume if we shifted all of our staff to days and picked up some of the empty seats.

19

I got a “wrong number” call like this to my cell phone. As you may know, it’s illegal to call a cell phone with an autodialer, and usually if you get a solicitation call and tell them “This is a cell phone,” they apologize and hang up immediately. However, this person asked if [unfamiliar mangled name] was there, I said no, she said, “Is this the head of the household?” and I said “This is a cell phone.” She then said (I shit you not) “I’ll be brief, then. I’m calling for—” and I hung up on her.

Long story short (TOO LATE!) I don’t answer my cell phone any more unless I recognize the number.

20

I got a variation of the “wrong number” call last week. Three calls actually, so with the third I didn’t hang up right away and listened to the script. it goes something like this:

Them :“I’ve got that mortgage quote you asked for.”

Me: “I didn’t ask for any quote, you must have the wrong number.”

Them: “According to our records, we spoke to somebody at this address on July 8 and they requested a quote.”

Me: “Didn’t happen.”

Them: “Six % on $108,000? Doesn’t ring any bells?”

Me: “Not even close, sorry.”

Them: “Well, since I’ve got you on the phone, are you happy with your rate? Have you thought about refinancing?”

Me: Click