Political survey telemarketers

[protege]

Anyone else getting calls from these people? It's some firm down in Florida, and they've called me *3* times in the past 2 days. About 9PM, my phone rings. I saw that it was "Central Research" on my caller ID. Told them I wasn't interested, and to take me off their list. Anyone want to guess who called *again* twice tonight? These people won't take a hint. When I say I'm not interested, and you continue to call... DON'T FUCKING CALL ME!

It's not like I can ignore the calls either--the people who owned my house before me, had some hearing issues, and wired some loud bells into the phone system. Loud as hell, and they drive the cats nuts. If I try, the phone rings and rings until they hang up. We're talking a dozen or so rings.

[LexiaFira]

had people from florida call about some flu thing or did we take this medicine that causes this problem at lawsuit at this time?

three times in three months and each time i told them please remove me from the list. the third time i was audibly angry, i held my tongue and was nice but the tone of my voice was frustrated and upset. and that why after two times already is this still happening. haven't gotten a call since but i am sorry they are pestering you.

ask to speak with a manger NOW? or supervisor? i say that only because when i asked that almost right off the bat the person on the other side balked. i did apologize but was quite angry

[HYHYBT]

Stupid question, but can you not remove the bells? I know that wouldn't fix the problem, and yes people should quit calling you if you tell them to... but it sounds like they're a nuisance anyway.

(And if one happens to ring in the pattern of a doorbell but with a different timbre, please send it to me!)

[bara]

If these people keep calling you should be able to report them. There is a time frame involved in order to get your number removed, but they must comply.

[telecom_goddess]

I've been getting those calls too....there's some special election coming up so yeah. Tired of it.

And what kind of wiring did they do for phones to ring that loud? Confused...

[blas87]

I'm waiting for the Anti-Walker people to come to my door.

Apparently, they've taken from going to their peaceful side of the road protests and places to get people to sign the petitions to recall, to going door to door.

Oh, hell no. You get the same treatment as the door-to-door fundies and the scamming money people. GTFO.

[MadMike]

Since to implementation of the state and federal Do Not Call lists, I don't get a whole lot of telemarketers anymore. It's usually just the scammers, the non-profits (or ones claiming to be non-profits), the survey companies, and of course the damn political calls. Gee, it sure was nice of those wonderful politicians to exempt themselves from the law they passed.

My son deal with this one survey company when he answered the house phone without looking at the Caller ID first. This company had been calling just about every day, and since their name showed up on Caller ID, I'd never answer it. I'd either let it ring until the machine picked up, or I'd pick it up and hang it up.

One day after work, I was taking a nap when the phone rang. My son answered it without looking, which he's done a time or two in the past. At first, I thought he was talking to someone he knew, until I heard him say, "We will not be participating", followed by a very stern, "no", right before hanging it up.

It turned out it was that same survey company. He had been napping as well, so when they asked him if he was 16 or older (at the time he had just turned 16), he unthinkingly told them yes. So then -- and this is another thing that annoys me -- they didn't ask him to take the survey, the told him he would be taking the survey. That's when he told them "we will not be participating." And of course, they didn't want to take no for an answer. They told him, "Oh, this will only take a minute." If there are 600 seconds in a minute, maybe. So he told them "no" and hung up on them.

[wolfie]

For survey companies that won't take "no" for an answer, there are always dirty tricks. Warn the peon (who's just acting under boss' orders) that since they didn't accept your previous refusals and kept calling, you're going to deliberately give wrong answers in order to ruin the value of the database that their employer is trying to build (just in case the call is recorded for training/quality purposes - if they don't disconnect, you're giving them rope to hang themselves).

Shouldn't take too many cases of "No, I won't support Ron Paul - he's too left-wing" to skew the survey results - and a survey company that generates results which are completely out-to-lunch compared to the actual election isn't likely to get much future business.

[Andara Bledin]

Warn the peon (who's just acting under boss' orders) that since they didn't accept your previous refusals and kept calling, you're going to deliberately give wrong answers in order to ruin the value of the database that their employer is trying to build (just in case the call is recorded for training/quality purposes - if they don't disconnect, you're giving them rope to hang themselves).

If they're anything like the company my brother was working for, it won't make a difference; they made up answers wholesale just to give the results they knew their clients were looking for. I think he called up a couple of said clients after they fired him.

^-.-^

[senor boogie woogie]

People still have landlines in the United States or wherever? I have not paid for a landline for over 10 years. Even if and when I move back to the USA, I would never get a landline phone, just a mobile. Back in the 90's when I was young and not making shit, I hated the phone company.

I miss telemarketers somewhat here in China. One time a woman called me on my mobile phone trying to sell me something, what I dont know. Everytime she stopped talking, I would say Dui! (meaning YES!) , haode (which means, OK or GOOD) , or (wo buzhidao, which means I DONT KNOW.) Had this person going for awhile when I told her that I was a foreigner and hung up. A minute later, her supervisor called me back and was cursing me in clipped English (Fucka-yu, yu-mutterfokker, shit, fokker, etc.)

Everybody hates telemarketers. That telemarketing law which mandates a "No Call List" was passed in Congress and was probably the only good thing Bush ever endorsed or signed. What was funny that the Senate unanimously endorsed this, like 98-0. Really, the law is not strong enough. It should be against the law to call anyone you do not know to sell or make contributions to anything. Calling my number is an invasion of privacy.

Another irksome thing from the old landline days was that the f'ing phone company would charge you a fee if you wanted a private number. Don't print my number in your phone book. I do not want to be in your database.

My parents would get these calls all the time, a big one was from Chemlawn, which pissed my father off (as in, he has a shitty lawn and Chemlawn can help.)

I actually did this work for about 4 hours and got fired. The manager guy was a real Peckerhead and knew from telephone number prefixes every phone number in the city. Most of us has general knowledge of numbers like that, but this idiot knew prefixes down to the street and immediate area. Peckerhead told me that he refused to hire women because their voices are not loud enough. He basically told me this because he was a dick. There was no other reason too.

We were selling tickets for a "50's Rock n' roll Review Show" starring fucking nobody for the Memphis Fire Department or something. Peckerhead gave me a column of a phone book, and I was to call each and every one of those numbers. Glancing at the list and the streets, I knew basically knew that the ghetto people and inner city blacks would have no interest in this and probably others might be Ok prospects. I was also to never have the receiver of the phone away from my ear. Because he was a dick.

I was fired, dunno why, since he and I sold the same amount of tickets. Funny thing, I was going to walk over and quit and he turned around and fired me.

[blas87]

Cell phones aren't protected against telemarketers if they can disguise themselves as non-profit or political stuff. Flat out scammers (like those people who call you to tell you that your vehicle warranty has expired) always seem to get through, no matter how often you keep up to date with staying on the DNC list.

And yet, cell phones were a major reason people dropped their landlines, so that unwelcomed strangers would quit calling them. And the madness still doesn't stop.

[protege]

People still have landlines in the United States or wherever? I have not paid for a landline for over 10 years. Even if and when I move back to the USA, I would never get a landline phone, just a mobile. Back in the 90's when I was young and not making shit, I hated the phone company.

The only reason I have a landline, is that I sometimes miss the occasional call on my cell. Plus, I cannot make calls when my cell is charging. What if I need to call the cops if someone is breaking into my place...and my cell is charging? Without the land line, I'd be SOL.

[HYHYBT]

There are reasons to keep a landline. It's useful, if more than one person lives in the home, to be able to call the *place* rather than a specific person (and so you don't have to get little kids their own phones.) It's useful if the only options you have for internet are dial-up and DSL, both of which require a phone line. It's useful if you have a burglar alarm and want it to be able actually to call someone when it goes off. It's useful if you lose your cell phone and need to make it ring (though I now use Gmail for that.) And... well, that's just about it, really.

[Andara Bledin]

Just a correction: DSL does not require an active phone line - it just needs a line connected to the house. However, some telcos will be dicks about running a dry loop DSL connection to a house without phone service. In my area, Verizon is particularly dickish, and AT&T is generally not.

I keep a land line for the superior 911 service based on physical lines over VOIP and cellular.

^-.-^

[HYHYBT]

Not a requirement technologically, but when the only available provider is also the only available phone *and* cable company, it might as well be.

If they paired the internet service with cable instead... but they don't offer that option here either. At least, they didn't last I checked. Perhaps Windstream has changed... but I doubt it.

(They're more than a little weird anyway. For instance, they let me add DSL service to the account without question, even though it was still in Grandma's name, but when I called back to get the password so I could actually USE it they said she had to be the one to call.)