I laughed (OK, smirked; my wife’s still asleep, and I hardly ever laugh aloud anyway) at AntiPro’s comment about LD service. Get with the program, hon; those high charges help pay for your local service, and, more to the point, the local service of everyone else.
There’s no long distance plan that will help! RTFM; the special rates generally say, in the fine print, something on the order of “For calls initiated to Resume Speed, Iowa, between 0300 and 0315 on alternate Wednesdays”. A few lucky souls will manage to find a calling plan that will match their phone usage pattern; otherwise, no. Buy on the basis of something besides price (my LD service was sold to me by a friend; I reasoned, “Better that he should get the commission than some total stranger”).
There are laws and tools that empower the average person against every kind of intrusion, whether it be physical, electronic, or what have you. Use them. Don’t sit wringing your hands, don’t bother being outraged, quietly and calmly act against the telemarketing firms and send their owners back to asking, “Do you want fries with that?” Telemarketing, junk mailing, etc., is not done for the purpose of being annoying (although it can be); it’s done for the purpose of selling. Don’t buy, and you’ll see it happen about as often as you see the Goodyear blimp fly overhead.
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
While I’m sure this will make me generally hated, I worked as a telemarketer for a morage brokerage in high school for three months. Things I learned:
A.) If people are REALLY polite, and I was feeling generous, I’d remove them from the calling list.
B.) If people swore at me, hung up after insulting me personally, or otherwise were asses, I made sure they stayed ON the calling list.
C.) MOST IMPORTANT: If someone says “I’m sorry, but I am not interested in soliciation calls, please remove me from your calling list.” You are LEGALLY obligated to do so.
D.) Thanks to AOL I pulled the following:
Does all this remove my “former telemarketer” bad karma?
DON PEDRO: Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour.
BEATRICE: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born. -Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Sc: i
Actually, I see the Goodyear blimp every day! And all the idiots on the 405 freeway have to slow down to watch it take off or land from the field next to the freeway.
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Well I won’t ever use MCI because their telemarketer tried to pull a bait and switch on me. My sister lives in Canada so international rates to Canada are my top priority. I spent 15 minutes or more on the phone with an MCI person negotiating a flat rate that would cover both the US and Canada (at the time the best available was 10 cents). He agreed to 10 cents/minute 24/7 to both Canada and the US. I repeated it back to him just to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood their deal. He got his supervisor on the phone to verify and finalize the deal and she spouted off a bunch of stuff so fast I could barely keep up. But I did catch the fact that what she told me I’d be paying wasn’t even remotely close to the deal I’d worked out with the first guy. I told her she was wrong, that that’s NOT what I’d agreed to and she told me they didn’t even offer rates like that. I told them if they ever called me again I’d sue.
I use AT&T now on their 12 cents a minute to the US and Canada plan for a $3.00/month service charge (if I want a lower per minute rate I have to pay a higher monthly fee). I call first using AT&T to make sure the person I’m calling is home and can chat. If they are, I hang up and dial right back using 10-10-811 (VarTec Telecom, Inc.) which is 5 cents per minute 24/7 to the US and Canada. Their minimum call is 50 cents. Calling first on AT&T means that if someone’s not home it only costs me 12 cents to leave a message instead of 50 cents. And if they are home, I pay 12 cents for the first minute only and 5 cents for every minute after that.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank
The following is a great site to learn all about telemarketers and how to deal with them in an effective manner. www.scn.org/~bk269/telemarketing.html
I think writing to the TPS is an invitation for more calls, not less.
“If I pinch my nose with my fingers, close my mouth tight,
and blow real hard, I can make my ears bleed. It’s
not as cool as Superman’s X-ray vision, but it’s my own
special talent.”
Oh, and the best way to stop junk mail from filling your box is simple. Every piece of junk mail that arrives with a postage-paid reply envelope should have everything that was sent to you (including the outside envelope) stuffed inside. Wherever your name and address appear, cirlce them, and write the following: Drop my name from your lists, or heavier objects will follow.
Remember, those bastards spend about four cents to send you crap, but they pay first class rates on returns.
None of them want to pay first class rates to get their own crap back more than once.
“If I pinch my nose with my fingers, close my mouth tight,
and blow real hard, I can make my ears bleed. It’s
not as cool as Superman’s X-ray vision, but it’s my own
special talent.”
I called my phone comp once after getting ‘slammed’ thats when they change your long distance comp without your permission. They told me that they could set it so that I can’t be slammed anymore.
