Do Not Call List - The man who stopped it - Page 3

kashi · #61 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 12:07 PM

My most notable experience with an Indian telemarketer goes like this:

Telemarketer: "is a Mrs. ____ home?"
Me: "no"
T: "when would she be back?"
Me: "don't know"
T: "okay I'll call back then"

I'm fairly sure they just follow a script.

gwiz · #62 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 12:20 PM

We've got a national list here in the UK, I registered for it a few months ago and the sales calls dwindled to one every few weeks. Now, if I've got time on my hands, I can get their details then tell them they're breaking the law.

Enzp · #63 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 12:25 PM

SOmetimes I am rude, and sometimes I play with them. If I am not busy, I figure I can waste their time just as effectively as they can mine.

I get the DUn and Bradstreet "surveys" all the time. They assure me it is not a marketing call, but I know better. My company is tiny, but one time I told the survey that we had about 1500 employees and some other nonsense. All of a sudden my mail changed. I started getting things mailed to the HR director. Near holidays I would get several thick gift catalogs - one for HR, one for general manager,and a couple more. All for employer gifts to staff type items. I'd get all manner of offerings for things a company of that size might use. DUn and Bradstreet must be making a bundle selling lists, considering the bulk of things I got. Now I just hang up on D&B, I get enough mail.

I gave up on fax. I unplugged a couple years ago. I don't know what your business needs are, but in mine, I figure anything that could be faxed can also be scanned and emailed. I can't imagine any suppliers or other businesses that haven't the capability of scanning. No fax, no waste paper, no phone line tied up, win-win. When someone asks my fax number I just say "we no longer support fax."

Chuck · #64 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 03:34 PM

At work I have a computer receive faxes. Then I look through them and print the ones I want. No wasted ink or paper.

mickal555 · #65 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beskeptical

Darn, just when I was going to make an addition to the topic...

We put our numbers on the do not call list when it started. Our junk calls went from 3 or more a day to one a month usually in the guise of a survey. But some jerk distributor I bought something from for my business managed to let my fax number out to a fax spammer. Not only did they start faxing every day, but if I unplugged the fax, their rude machine would make attempts every 30 minutes until I relented. (The fax is a different number but there are two numbers on the line so I can't just take the phone off the hook, but I digress.)

Anyway, while I'm still looking into suing for that $500 per illegal fax, I had the number changed. It took several attempts since the first new number was some bank loan officers old fax line. That was awful. The phone rang with a fax within an hour of getting it.

The phone company then gave me a number that supposedly had never been assigned to anyone in the past. Well, it's not on the do not call list yet. I came home the first day to no less than 5 recorded advertisements on my answering machine. I get call after call every day on the machine. And the phone rings twice as often when I'm here, always with a recorded advertisement. In other words machines are dialing every number not on the do not call list by the hundreds, maybe even by more than that. There are no people involved anymore. Just a machine trying to get your attention.

Who would listen to any of these ads? The marketers must send out a billion calls to get one fool to hear the stupid ad through to the end. But then what do they care, it's just a machine they plug in. They pay for a phone line and electricity, but obviously no wages to anyone. If you want to scream at the guy you expect to answer at the end of the recording, it isn't going to happen. Instead, you just go through some automated answer by following the menu...push 1 if...enter your number...etc. You can't even tell them to take your name off their list. It's mind boggling.

Clearly they changed some of the rules to let more garbage through while implementing the do not call list. In the past a real person had to say hello before pushing the start button on the recorded ad, and I only rarely ever had a recorded ad left on my answering machine. They could easily fill up your recording time. It is disgusting, to say the least.

I have to wait now for the do not call entry to take effect. I'm tempted to just discontinue the number but I don't want to give the other number out to anyone as a fax number. If some other fax spammer gets it, I could have to change my regular phone number.

Wow...

You get a lot of calls...

We don't...

about 24% of our calls are from someone looking for the " "(gah- I can't remember the name... grrrr )

and 16% are telemarkerters
-most if not all, are from india

It's funny because we have two numbers(cause my dad works for telstra) and they arn't that similer they differ by about 200 combinations and as soon as I hang up on one the other rings(it has a different ring pattern)

one indian lady(who had a voice of an end of middle aged cross-dresser)
"Hallo"
"er... hi"
"I ask if this is the head of the household?"
"um.... yeah why not"
"OK, can I ask your name?"
*pause*
"hmmm..... greg? nah um, wait... er.... bob- yeah bob"
"hello bob"
"what is your current anual household income *gives a range*"
"yeah couple of mill"
"could you please state your anual household income using of these options *repeats range*"
"whats the highest- put that down"
"*I got bored and hung up at this point*"

dvb · #66 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 05:59 PM

lol Mickal

Canada is finally catching up with the times. New legislation has passed for a do not call list. The database won't be in place until early 2006, but it's about time, none the less.

Here's the juicy part.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.ns...e?OpenDocument

Quote:

Penalties of up to $1500 per offending call for individuals and up to $15 000 per offending call for corporations would be imposed for telemarketers who fail to respect the list. Funding to operate the list will be obtained on a cost-recovery basis from telemarketers themselves.

Lianachan · #67 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 06:09 PM

The one in the UK works well, but doesn't seem to be widely known about.

beskeptical · #68 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuck

At work I have a computer receive faxes. Then I look through them and print the ones I want. No wasted ink or paper.

I'll probably go that route if my current problem recurs or my fax machine breaks down.

beskeptical · #69 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mickal555

Wow...

You get a lot of calls...

We don't...

....

Just wait until the Internet long distance phone system becomes the norm and there are no more toll charges.

I love the jokes. I did that often before the do not call list. My son always came up with good ones as well.

But you can't have any fun with a stupid recording.

On another note I get frequent misdialed numbers because I have the same number as the 'IT' department of the phone company with one digit off the area code. I was so sick of them continuing to call at all hours with no concern about correcting the problem that I started telling them to hold instead of that they have the wrong number.

Sometimes I tell them to bug off, I've had a bad day without saying they have the wrong number. Or, I've told them the system is down and to call back in an hour. [tee he he]

Gillianren · #70 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 11:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beskeptical

Who would listen to any of these ads? The marketers must send out a billion calls to get one fool to hear the stupid ad through to the end. But then what do they care, it's just a machine they plug in. They pay for a phone line and electricity, but obviously no wages to anyone. If you want to scream at the guy you expect to answer at the end of the recording, it isn't going to happen. Instead, you just go through some automated answer by following the menu...push 1 if...enter your number...etc. You can't even tell them to take your name off their list. It's mind boggling.

I've done live outbound calling. (Not often, as I've a phobia of making cold calls and would have panic attacks, but still.) I can tell you for an absolute fact that making one sale in an eight-hour day is about average. We got a bonus for every actual sale, and it was a big deal to get even as many as five sales in an eight-hour day.

I can also say that being rude to the person at the other end, when there is a person at the other end, is extremely unfair. Anyone who has much in the way of authority in the company will never be on the other end of that phone line. (I once had a customer on inbound demand, at 8 PM Pacific time, demand to speak to the vice president of the company whose name appeared on the application he'd been mailed. Because, you know, that's going to happen.) Politely asking that your name be removed from their calling list is much more effective.

I realize, Beskeptical, that your problem won't be solved by such a situation. However, I thought I'd get my two cents' worth in.

SeanF · #71 (**permalink**) 02-December-2005, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gillianren

I can also say that being rude to the person at the other end, when there is a person at the other end, is extremely unfair. Anyone who has much in the way of authority in the company will never be on the other end of that phone line.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. In my opinion, cold calls themselves are inherently rude, and I don't see why it's "unfair" to be rude back to someone who's being rude to me, just because someone else is paying them to do it.

Gillianren · #72 (**permalink**) 03-December-2005, 01:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SeanF

I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. In my opinion, cold calls themselves are inherently rude, and I don't see why it's "unfair" to be rude back to someone who's being rude to me, just because someone else is paying them to do it.

Because they didn't set the policy. I, for example, was initially hired for inbound. It was a job, and one I desperately needed, as Olympia's job market is very, very slow. The person is being as polite as they can (being rude is a very easy way to get fired in that job!), and believe me, they'd rather not be calling you. Most of those doing the actual work in that job think the idea's a stupid one, given the sheer number of man-hours that go into one sale.

Yes, the calling is rude, but being rude to the person on the other end of the phone isn't going to do any good to anyone. It'll just make that individual's day harder, and believe me, it's a pretty hard day anyway, due to both the scores of rude people they deal with in any day and the company's thoughtless policies. What you want to do is make them stop, right? Yelling at the person on the other end won't do that. Maybe, and I doubt it, complaining to someone with the authority to stop the company's policy of unsolicited calling might help. But the best thing to do, the thing that I believe will eventually spell the end of the industry if enough people do it, is get on the DNC list. (If you tell a solicitor from my former employer not to call you, you're on the company's DNC list for ten years--not the client's, though you're on that, too, but the company's. Which in our specific case meant about four clients at any given time when the company was still doing outbound.)

Van Rijn · #73 (**permalink**) 03-December-2005, 02:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gillianren

Politely asking that your name be removed from their calling list is much more effective.

Perhaps today, but I'm on the DNC list anyway. This is why I used to sometimes get rude: I had times where I would tell the representative that I absolutely wasn't interested, they had been calling every other day, and would they please stop calling? They would often say they had taken down my name and number ... and they would call again two days later. After going through that cycle a few times, I wasn't so pleasant. Sometimes I would just hang up, but sometimes it was more like "I'VE TOLD YOU A DOZEN TIMES TO STOP WASTING MY TIME WITH THESE [insert swear word of choice here] STUPID PHONE CALLS! *SLAM*" I don't apologize for that, I was fed up. Note that the calls were usually in the middle of dinner.

Some companies would "only" repeat call every month, others would be on a much shorter cycle, but there were no more than one or two companies that actually stopped repeat calling.

I never bought a product through one of these calls, and made a point of telling them that I had noted their company as one I would not deal with in the future, because of the calls.

Before the DNC list, the situation was just ridiculous. You needed a machine just to cut down on wasted time answering the phone.

Gillianren · #74 (**permalink**) 03-December-2005, 03:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Van Rijn

Perhaps today, but I'm on the DNC list anyway. This is why I used to sometimes get rude: I had times where I would tell the representative that I absolutely wasn't interested, they had been calling every other day, and would they please stop calling? They would often say they had taken down my name and number ... and they would call again two days later. After going through that cycle a few times, I wasn't so pleasant. Sometimes I would just hang up, but sometimes it was more like "I'VE TOLD YOU A DOZEN TIMES TO STOP WASTING MY TIME WITH THESE [insert swear word of choice here] STUPID PHONE CALLS! *SLAM*" I don't apologize for that, I was fed up. Note that the calls were usually in the middle of dinner.

Well, you know, it does actually take time to clear you out of lists. We were supposed to advise that it would take a few weeks. Besides, it's often different companies, but people only remember that it was, say, for a credit card. (Not everyone understands that there are many different banks that all offer Visa cards, for example.) I know this for a fact, having had people tell me they'd already told one bank to stop calling/mailing them, and I was doing calls at the time for a different bank.

However, I do understand your frustration. I would also like to point out that people came in starting at 7 AM (which meant they could legally start calling the east coast) and left at as late as 8 PM, which (if I remember properly; it's been four years since I needed to know this) was as late as they could legally call on the west coast. Trust me, they work more than just during dinner; it was merely your bad luck that the dialer only got you then!

Chuck · #75 (**permalink**) 03-December-2005, 05:12 AM

Even if they delete a number from their list they get it back when they buy someone else's list.

I don't see how people who are rude to others for a living can reasonably expect politeness from their victims. It would be different if they didn't know they were causing a problem but they all know it by now since it's a decades old problem. They're annoying people intentionally.

Gillianren · #76 (**permalink**) 03-December-2005, 07:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuck

Even if they delete a number from their list they get it back when they buy someone else's list.

I don't see how people who are rude to others for a living can reasonably expect politeness from their victims. It would be different if they didn't know they were causing a problem but they all know it by now since it's a decades old problem. They're annoying people intentionally.

Actually, no. They don't delete the number; they add it to the DNC list. If they buy another list that has that number on it, the number remains deleted from the call list. (No, really.)

As to "being rude for a living," that's harder. Yes, we knew that what we were doing was annoying people. Believe me, we got told that all the time. (I had a customer make me cry once when I was trying to get out of the call because he wouldn't let me read the thing I had to read before disconnecting.)

Most of my coworkers were single parents or people with no other job experience. Most of my coworkers were poorly educated; I was practically unique in having a college education. (And I've got other problems.) More than a few of my coworkers had had some kind of problem earlier in life that meant they'd been out of the job market for a while--unplanned pregnancies, drug addictions, and in at least one case, jail time. Add to that the fact that, when I took the job, there was a hiring freeze for state employees, the biggest employer in the area. (Yay, state capital!) In fact, quite a lot of state employees--and Boeing employees--had recently been fired. This meant a surfeit of overqualified people for every job in town. (Including that one.)

Yes, everyone there (just about) would rather be doing anything other than calling people up and asking them to apply for a credit card. However, when it's a choice, as it was for me, between doing a much-hated job and being homeless, well, you do what you have to.

Again, get angry at the people who make the decision that outgoing calls are an effective sales tool. Maybe that'll actually change something.

Chuck · #77 (**permalink**) 03-December-2005, 08:46 AM

Back in the nineties some insurance selling telephone solicitors kept calling at work even though we asked them not to call so finally my boss asked to talk to a supervisor. He asked the supervisor why we hadn't been removed from the list and the supervisor said we were but they regularly bought other lists and added them to their own. Maybe that wasn't true and they just never bothered to remove people.

In any case, the problem got so bad that we now have a mandatory national do not call list. I had been getting from one to three calls per day on my answering machine while I was at work. Now I get about one per month. They probably tried to call me in the evening as well but I'm still using dialup and spend a lot of time online. I don't know what the people who used to call me are doing for employment now. I don't think any of them starved in the street.

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