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View Full Version : Notice an increase in Telemarketing? It's NOT your imagination.



Jim Underwood
10-15-2013, 10:22 AM
I've been in the office for the past couple of hours and the telemarketing calls have been driving me batty. I was thinking to myself that these folks must be ignoring the Do Not Call list.

Apparently they are. The number of complaints to the FTC has risen 54% this year.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/15/business/la-fi-lazarus-20130716

A pox on these "businesses" and the people who work for them. I rank them right down there with hackers and scum who write virus programs. If you belong to either group YOU ARE NOT MY FRIEND!

Fred Maiman
10-15-2013, 10:45 AM
I agree. And I think it is a shame they do not have a do-not-call list for businesses. Where I work we get endless calls from places that want to sell us google consulting.

Ken Fitzgerald
10-15-2013, 10:58 AM
For the record, telemarketers are calling homes more now too than they have in the past years. I am retired, our home phone is on the "Do Not Call" list and they seem to ignore that minor fact.

Brian Libby
10-15-2013, 11:24 AM
+1 to what Ken says-
My phone number has be on the "do not call list" for a long time - It means NOTHING! Just another government program that does not work!!

Dave Anderson NH
10-15-2013, 11:24 AM
I agree that both business and home telemarketing calls have increased. At work we seem to run through cycles of people wanting to do our phone service, business consultants wanting to tell us how to run the business, and agents trying to do our business, health, and workmans's comp insurance. We also get the google calls, website developer calls, and the folks wanting to teach us how to sell to the government. Then there are all of the ones asking for specific perople, usually stockbrokers or people telling us we are preapproved for equipment loans. It never seems to stop.

On the home front the charities and semi-legit charities never cease. Living in NH we are about to start the cycle of politicians starting their "explorations" on whether or not they will run for president. In another years this will kick up to between half a dozen and a dozen call per day for almost 18 months. What we really need is to expand to a Do Not Call list which includes political calls, polls, and charities.

Matt Meiser
10-15-2013, 12:06 PM
I would be willing to vote for almost any candidate that promises to not make one unsolicited call. Most of the calls we get are scams. They are criminals to start with--why would they bother following a different law? And I'd lump the political calls into that groups too!

Anthony Whitesell
10-15-2013, 12:06 PM
I agree that both business and home telemarketing calls have increased. At work we seem to run through cycles of people wanting to do our phone service, business consultants wanting to tell us how to run the business, and agents trying to do our business, health, and workmans's comp insurance. We also get the google calls, website developer calls, and the folks wanting to teach us how to sell to the government. Then there are all of the ones asking for specific perople, usually stockbrokers or people telling us we are preapproved for equipment loans. It never seems to stop.

On the home front the charities and semi-legit charities never cease. Living in NH we are about to start the cycle of politicians starting their "explorations" on whether or not they will run for president. In another years this will kick up to between half a dozen and a dozen call per day for almost 18 months. What we really need is to expand to a Do Not Call list which includes political calls, polls, and charities.

Unfortunately those were explicitly immunitized again the Do Not Call Registry. Now with Vonage, Magic Jack, and VOIP providers the caller doesn't have to be based in the US. So now they can call from the moon (or other foreign country) for the same price a calling from the next state. Of course, the laws of the US only apply to those within our borders so we are powerless to stop them.

Dave Sheldrake
10-15-2013, 12:06 PM
I tend to use "Happy Valley Funeral Home" if the call is unexpected on my home number (strangely enough my home phone is unlisted yet still seems to be sold to marketing companies) or occasionally "Serious Organised Crime Agency,reporting desk" if I'm in a bad mood.

PPI calls are the bane of my works number, "have you been miss-sold insurance in the last 10 years sir" the Liam Neeson response usually works for those.

cheers

Dave

Jim Underwood
10-15-2013, 12:07 PM
In the article listed, there was a prize given for the best solution to unwanted calls. Unfortunately, it would take a mass uprising to implement it. Our phone companies are not our friends either...

Myk Rian
10-15-2013, 12:12 PM
I was thinking to myself that these folks must be ignoring the Do Not Call list.
That's why we got rid of the home phone, and my smart phone rejects all calls, and text messages not on my whitelist. Very handy.
The Do Not Call law was written with no bite to it. After all, if they were to really enforce it, we wouldn't get political calls either.

Matt Meiser
10-15-2013, 12:45 PM
After all, if they were to really enforce it, we wouldn't get political calls either.

No, as usually they wrote an exception for themselves into the law.

Ken Fitzgerald
10-15-2013, 12:50 PM
My understanding is Matt is correct.

Political calls are still allowed as are polls and charities. Of course some of the telemarketer calls begin "Hi! We are conducting a poll.....followed by would you be interested in buying........?

Myk Rian
10-15-2013, 12:51 PM
No, as usually they wrote an exception for themselves into the law.

Yes. I'm aware of that.

David Weaver
10-15-2013, 12:54 PM
I can't remember the last time I got an unwanted call. The only robocalls I ever get are from the water company (which, of course, I like to get so that we don't use the water when they're flushing the system).

Dumped the land line about 8 years ago, and can say that I haven't missed it at all.

Headhunter calls come on a regular basis at work, I usually try to be polite to those folks for no other reason than I know they are pretty closely related to the industry. But, I've got a slight uptick in people who want to send me literature on their investment offerings - and I hang up on them in the middle of their spiel. I'm not sure why soliciting investments is considered remotely appropriate for business lines.

Rick Potter
10-15-2013, 1:33 PM
One group of people that are allowed to call, even if you are on the list, is any company that you have done business with...including their subsidiaries. So, as I understand it, if you shop at HD, you may get calls from roofers, heating and air, etc., if they sub out to HD.

Whenever the phone rings, we wait for about three rings before answering it, which gives the mass dialing systems a chance to catch someone else before we pick up. When I pick up, they only get a couple seconds to say hello, or I hang up (Sorry Aunt Clarabelle), and I can usually hear the 'boiler room' noise in the background. The ones I most dislike are the robo-calls that ring long enough to get my answer machine and then leave buzzes, dial tones, and fax squeals that I have to listen to, while clearing the machine....several a nite.

Why do I keep it? Because it gives 911 my address, and with two of us old timers and one special needs kid, you never know when you might need it.

Rick P

Brian Elfert
10-15-2013, 1:54 PM
I've not noticed any increase in telemarketing calls recently. I really don't get all that many.

Doug Ladendorf
10-15-2013, 2:12 PM
The do not call list seemed to have worked well for several years for us. However lately we have been getting more calls, and a lot of them don't actually say anything when I pick up. Even if I wait for them. I'm still trying to understand what would be the purpose of calling then jumping. It happens daily and I don't have a teenage daughter (yet).

Jim Underwood
10-15-2013, 3:01 PM
I missed that Liam Neeson response the first go-round... :D

I'm still chuckling.

Stephen Cherry
10-15-2013, 5:16 PM
I've noticed that since I got rid of my home phone, the telemarketers have stopped calling me on it.

Kevin Bourque
10-15-2013, 6:23 PM
I keep getting this call that starts with a blaring fog horn....then it tells me I've won a cruise. I'm just a naturally lucky guy.

Frederick Skelly
10-15-2013, 9:08 PM
I ask if theyd like to buy some Amway. They usually stammer and hang up.

Bill Huber
10-16-2013, 10:01 AM
Don't forget the Faxes, at work, that is when I was working, the fax machine always had a stack of paper from faxes coming in to it, just junk faxes.

Then Fedex went with their own fax server and things changed big time, no more junk faxes and every copy machine is a fax.

Steve Peterson
10-16-2013, 11:02 AM
The do not call list seemed to have worked well for several years for us. However lately we have been getting more calls, and a lot of them don't actually say anything when I pick up. Even if I wait for them. I'm still trying to understand what would be the purpose of calling then jumping. It happens daily and I don't have a teenage daughter (yet).

Those calls are made by an automatic dialing machine. They wait to hear a real person before assigning the call to a real person at their end. We screen all of our calls so we never have to deal with them. We get about 2-3 calls from unknown callers per hour. Usually they just hang up.

Steve

Jim Underwood
10-16-2013, 11:10 AM
If my automatic response when answering the phone is to say: "Good morning, MyBusinessName", then why doesn't the auto dialing machine go ahead and assign the call to a real person? Why does it hang up instead?

Jim Underwood
10-16-2013, 11:12 AM
As for the faxing problem we've finally got that one licked. All our faxes come into the network printer and then are routed to someone's desktop as a PDF file. Then one can view and delete or print as desired.

Well... except for the old phone/fax line which is forwarded to our main phone number. I still get faxes coming in on that line, and sometimes it's a pain to get the company to quit using that number. I can still transfer it to the network printer, but it's a hassle.

Michael Weber
10-16-2013, 11:32 AM
I knew there was an advantage to being deaf. I never answer the phone!

Dan Hintz
10-16-2013, 11:47 AM
If my automatic response when answering the phone is to say: "Good morning, MyBusinessName", then why doesn't the auto dialing machine go ahead and assign the call to a real person? Why does it hang up instead?

If there are currently no open operators to handle the call, the autodialer will hang up and add your number to the retry list. It's like doctors packing the waiting room... they don't want a minute to go by without them seeing a patient as that's lost money, so packing the room takes care of cancellations, late patients, etc.

Wade Lippman
10-16-2013, 12:21 PM
My son got a temp job as a telemarketer and walked out after 4 hours. I gave him hell; the temp agency will certain not find him anything else after that. He said he didn't care, he couldn't spend hours annoying people. Hard to say which of us is right...

I use google voice. It automatically blocks 80% of the spam and lets me flag the ones that get through so they are blocked in the future. It helps.

Jim Underwood
10-16-2013, 4:10 PM
Google Voice works on land lines?

Rudy Ress
10-16-2013, 5:37 PM
I screen all my calls through the answering machine. I have a personal greeting with the first part the telephone dial tone sequence signifying a disconnected number (you can get it from a Google search), followed 2 seconds later with a statement to leave a message. The number of calls has dramatically dropped since doing this. Only works with some of the autodialers. Still get the political calls coming through.

Rick Gibson
10-16-2013, 5:43 PM
Do not call list seems to semi work here, I only get a couple a week. Didn't mind to much until they let them start calling cell phones. At that point they are stealing from me. The wife pays for a block of time to last her a year and usually it does. Took her a while but she eventually learned that everytime she answered one of their calls they were stealing time from her block. Sometimes if I'm really bored I'll see how long I can keep them on the line, best so far was a little over 3 minutes. Charities I do support if they call I just point out that I have no way of verifying they are who they say they are and they are wasting their time and hang up.