"Do Not Call" Listings to Expire:
Remember the FTC's "Do Not Call" list? Well, individual listings expire after five years, so numbers will begin to drop off the list in 2008 if not renewed. The AP reports here.
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If you press "1" to speak to a live hustler, you're transferred to someone who answers "Customer Service". Naturally, they won't reveal who they are, their phone number, or even where they are located.
When I inform these lowlifes that what they're doing is illegal, they sneer basically, "what are you going to do about it?".
At least before the List went into effect, the peddlers operated above the radar. Now it's worse because after a dip in the volume of calling, it's up to where it was before the law took effect, and since the people calling know they're already lawbreakers, they don't police themselves in any way.
A better way to stop spam phone calls is to take up the spammer's time, or his employees' time. If it's a prerecorded call, listen to it all the way through. Press the button to talk to a representative. Talk to the order taker as long as possible. Tell them you've forgotten your address. Ask them what's in their "product". Ramble, but never give any personal information. After about 10 minutes, when they're about to hang up, tell them you want to be removed from their calling list. They'll hang up, and you'll never hear from that particular phone spammer again.
If the call is by a live person, you don't even have to press a button to talk to a representative.
The people actually talking are most likely just minimum wage workers who don't know what kind of scamming scum they are working for. No need to be nasty to them. Just take up their time. It's their straw boss who will be telling them to hang up, and removing your number. The minimum wage phone flunkies aren't the criminal scammers. Their bosses are.
When I started wasting their time, the number of unsolicited commmercial phone calls I received dropped dramatically.
And yes, I consider every unsolicited commercial phone call to be an attempt to perpetrate a fraud. I've never heard of any legitimate goods or services sold by telephone solicitation.
Yes I'm sure the power of your phone presence did the trick.
My experience is that no one actually removes your number from their "call list", as these lists are automatically generated and regenerated daily if not more often. What I think happens is that one gets a surge of calls over a couple weeks or a month, then they drop off, then a new campaign starts again. If you have a second line to your house for business as I do, then forget about trying to stop these calls, as business lines are exempt from DNC. The worst phone scams, however, are the so-called charities, and the worst charity scam is the firefighters.
Fub is right about wasting the callers time. But why let them waste as much of your time as theirs? I try to stay on long enough to get someone live, then just set the phone down on my desk and continue with my work. After I hear the funny buzzing sound, I hang up. Revenge? Hardly, but I do what I can.
The DNC register was supposed to stop all this.
If any telephone service provider offers to allow me to do "telemarketer abortions", I'm signing up.
No "phone presence" used or needed. I got robo-calls from the same scam every day, and several times some days, until I wasted their time. No more calls from them after that. Maybe coincidence, maybe not. But wasting phone spammers' time is an easy recreation.No need to waste your own time. I just turn on the speaker phone and go about my business. When the spamdrone on the other end stops speaking for a second, I just say something at random and let him respond. No need to follow the spammer's side of the conversation closely. Turning on a radio to a talk show can be fun too.
Before i switched to only having a cell phone, I would just set the phone down without hanging up and walk away. Once I heard the beeping for the receiver being off the hook I would hang up. That meant that they have to spend time and money dealing with me, but I do not have actully interact with them. Just yesterday I received 2 calls from a recorded sales message, which are the first calls I ever remember getting since I switched to my current cell phone number about 7 years ago.
lol, I thought DNC stood for Democratic National Committee.
Jimmy S. DNC is probably being confused with D &C, which is an acronym for Dilation and curttage. It is use for abotions of a fetus of < 12 weeks. It is also a treatment for Dysfunctional Uterine Bleeding (DUB) which has nothing to do with an abortion. I could go on, but I won't. Now, if this isn't more information than you ever wanted about DNC or D &C, I would be very surprised.
Dilation &Curretage and abortions.
Mac, when you say you get a dead line, do you mean a dial tone, or do you mean silence? I believe some telemarketers with recorded messages are A) programmed to ring only a few times, so as not to trip answering machines, and B) programmed not to connect the call until they hear a voice. I once managed a phone system like that (that wouldn't transfer calls until the recipient said hello) and my CEO got very annoyed that he had to say hello twice so that the caller would know that he'd picked up the phone.
Fub,
That is as good a guess as any. It is getting extremely annoying, though, whatever it is. More likely Calif., I think, as it never rings before 9 a.m. However, I guess they could program these things to take a person's time zones into account. Whatever, I move that we do away with civil penalties for these bums and bring back tar and feather. For the masterminds, not the poor slobs working the phones. I am sick of them.
In addition, if they are going to exempt charities and politicians, they should demand that their name and number show up on Caller ID and that it can't be blocked. If the American Cancer Society, The American Heart Assn. et al, call me one more time wanting me to take envelopes to my neighbors and so on, I am going to get an air horn. They just don't want to take no for an answer.
Arvin,
Neither, exactly. I think there is a difference in silence when someone is not talking and silence when someone has disconnected. It is the latter. I am getting to be an expert on the latter ever since my daughter got a blue tooth thing. I do say hello, sometimes twice, but I never get an answer.
What is likely happening is that it's a call from a telemarketer using an automatic dialer. They have this aggravating technology dial two or more phone numbers and, when one answers, it automatically disconnects the other(s).
It saves time for the telemarketer, since they no longer have to wait for the phone to ring to find out there's no one home. They simply are fed a series of pre-connected calls. Of course, the cost is the irritation of all of the people they call and disconnect without speaking.
My wife and I have a rule that we never buy anything when approached, period. If we want something we research it a bit and then go buy it when we are the initiators. It's a simple rule but serves us well.
I never signed up for the do not call lists because, cynical as it might seem, I figured at some point that list would either be sold or stolen and then used against me in the manner opposite to its purpose.
Senator X,
I think you may have it. That seems to be exactly what is happpening. I wish Congress would do something useful and fix this instead of posturing all the time.
One of my favorties:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un_PjRXV5l8