I was under the impression that state and federal Do Not Call lists don’t apply to charities anyway. Is that still the case?
They asked for Mr. Rat. Nobody calls me Mr.Rat. The only reason they got that far was the outside chance that somebody actually important might be trying to reach me, but given the hour of the call, I was skeptical going in. This already had me ready to unload on them, and as soon as they said they were from the Dove Foundation, they were educated.
We’ve had solicotors leave messages on our answering machine, messages for people whose names are completely different from the ones on our outging message.
I beleive it’s still the case. What I don’t understand is why they would want to skirt a list of people that simply will not give them money over the phone. Take our family for instance. I will not buy in to whatever it is they’re pushing. We put the number on the list. They get around it by being a charity. So, in effect, they’re overriding my notice that we don’t want unsolicited calls, leading to a waste of their resources that they were warned about.
I don’t understand it.
So I guess they’re not the same as the Dove people who are plastering the subway walls with posters of sexy ladies with “real curves” in their underwear?
(See Dove dot com, slightly not work safe.)
We have gotten the “wrong number” scheme on numerous occasions. I generally just hang up on them as soon as they start the “By the way…” line.
Yes, I realize that the poor schmoes are just doing their job, but there are a lot of other jobs they could do instead. No one is forcing them to be telemarketers, and if no one agreed to work as a telemarketer, the world would be a nicer place. 
I don’t answer calls on my cell phone unless I recognize the number. If someone really wants/needs to talk to me, they can leave a message, and if necessary, I can call them back later.
We got caller ID a few months ago, and now we screen calls at home, too. It drives my mother crazy to know that we might actually be home, but choose not to answer the phone, but I’ve been ignoring the phone for years without caller ID anyway. At least now I have a better idea who I’m ignoring.
What gets me, though, are calls that we have been receiving on an ever-increasing basis. They sound like collection calls, rather than spam, but they always ask for someone by a completely different name. If they were to leave a message with the name of the business, the reason for the call, as well as the name of the person they are trying to reach, I might be willing to call them back for clarification. However, it is generally an anonymous toll-free number (not listed in Google or anywhere else that I can find), and the message simply states that Mary Smith should call them back about a very important matter. After a couple of weeks, the message just gives a phone number, with no name.
Since I am not Mary Smith (or whatever name they give), and I don’t know anyone by that name, I don’t feel any obligation to call them back. After a couple of months, if I happen to be home when they call, I will answer and explain that they must have the wrong number. They usually just apologize at that point, hang up, and don’t ever call back.
Is this telephone spam, or just idiocy???