Telemarketers and Unwanted Telephone Calls

April 22nd, 2009 by admin

Telemarketers and the No Call List…What a joke on both counts! Actually, some telemarketers are welcome, especially if we’ve invited them into our lives and phone lines.

Well, as you probably know there is a Federal or National ( in the USA) No Call List (read more about the list here). A person can put their phone number(s) on this list, and in theory, it’s supposed to keep telemarketers from calling you. It’s too bad theory and reality are often very different things!

The type of telemarketer I’m writing about today are the few that really don’t give a damn about the No Call list or whether you want to hear their sales pitches or not. They know the chances of prosecution or pretty remote and that most people will give up pursuing it because of the paperwork, lack of communication with the agency in charge and the lack of reward to the complaining party when taking this route. Creating crap like this is something our politicians seem to be experts at! At least they recently amended things to allow our numbers to stay on the list until we want them off (originally we had to “renew” our desire to not be called every 5 years, now it’s indefinite…hooray!) .

In our case, it has stopped most of telemarketers calls, although the major exception seems to be in the Oil & Gas exploration industry. There are hundreds and hundreds of small exploration companies that buy address and phone lists from what appears to be some pretty shady list brokers. They also appear to use the phone lists much more aggressively than the address lists. I’ve received 100’s of calls, not a single letter…yet!

These list brokers claim to have “scrubbed” their lists (eliminating the numbers on the no call lists), but I firmly believe they only say that so the list can be sold. Money is a powerful thing and these list brokers and telemarketers seem to be a little on the greedy side.

I know for a fact that our number has not been scrubbed from their lists. We’ve been on the National and our State list since the inception of both (just a thought, why the hell do we need both lists…a national list should suffice!). Just this week, I was the proud recipient of a call from Excalibur Energy (927-789-1000) and last week from Fusion Energy (214-389-6631). Since the 1st of February, 2008, these two companies have made a total of 9 calls to me. The ironic item here? Way back in February, they were both made aware that I;

a) am on the no call list, and

b) never requested any information from either of them, and

c) would start invoicing them for wasting my time with their calls.

At Fusion I spoke with someone who claimed to be Scott Court, the president of the company, and at Excalibur I spoke with Jesse Franco (or at least that’s what I was told)…again a person claiming to be the president of the company. They both promised that I would be taken off their lists and I would not be called again from their companies…like I said earlier, the hope of making a dollar or two is a powerful thing! And with that, the promises went right out the window…hmmm, maybe these guys are practicing to be politicians!

My statement and question to each of them, as it has been to every single one of these uninvited disturbances, was “I would rather cause problems for the list seller, than for you because I assume you buy these lists trusting that the “scrubbing” has already been done. Would you please provide me with the contact information for the list seller that my name came from?” Hasn’t happened yet, but maybe a subpoena will do the trick!

I really would rather get to the source of the problem, and not penalize someone who has purchased something in good faith. The problem here is that any good faith there may have been has been thrown out the window by these two lying to me and not keeping their promises!

In addition I informed both men that according to the Consumer Telephone Protection Act (I know I don’t have the correct official name) they had used up their “free” phone call, therefore each and every one from here on out would result in an invoice for $500.00 per call.

I’ll be creating their invoices and sending them out a little later this evening. I really don’t want to, but it certainly appears that if I don’t go on the offensive against them and others, that the phone calls will never cease. Their promise to take me off their “in-house” lists seems to be nothing but a lie and a hope that a different salesman on a different day will have better luck in getting my money into their pockets. I’m all for getting their money into my pockets! After all, it is My Privacy and My day they are interrupting, why shouldn’t they pay for that privilege?

I don’t mind calls from those I’m doing business with, when they are warranted, but these folks have no business calling me at all!

Well, that’s it for now. I hope you have a wonderful week and I hope you avoid those that are trying to mess with you this week!

Take care and we’ll talk soon.

Will

P.S. In another day or two, I’ll have a rant prepared about how our politicians conveniently exempted some of the worst offenders from the “No Call” list…stay tuned for that one. You’ll see that they really don’t care about your privacy at all and how it’s up to you to guard it!

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