At 08:47 AM 5/23/2003 -0500, gumbie tygress wrote: 

>> There's always something else.  I'd rather dig ditches or take in 
>> laundry than be a telemarketing drone.  No, thanks.
 
>that's YOUR choice -- but these days you have to be able to run a 
>backhoe to dig ditches, and very, very few do other folks laundry.

I was speaking figuratively.  There are other drone jobs I'd be more
willing to do (I can say "do you want fries with that" with the best of
'em, and in fact did at one point, many many years ago) than be an
outcalling telemarketer.  Inbound I would be able to do without as much
impact on my self-respect, for one thing.  Marti worked for American
TransTech but told them that she would do inbound only.  Not a problem,
they were happy to have her.  And I did inbound taking classified ads for
the newspaper, too, around the same time as my "want fries with that"
adventure.  

> Besides, sending business reply envelopes doesn't go to 
>telemarketers, 

Well, yeah, I know that.  It is to me all the same junk, though.
Botheration and waste.


>Some people find junk mail a zit on the face of existence, but it's not
the same as the boil that is telemarketing.

Hey, Fang!  That looks like one for the Encyclopedia Michael Nellis!  


>> Especially their latest trick -- a machine calls   you up
>> and a recorded message tells you to hold!  
 
>It is, indeed odious.
>Because of the sins of the past owner of my fax machine number, 
>I get automated messages from attorneys/collection agencies.

Charming.  Reminds me of my adventure with some Swiss outfit who has a
website with directory information on it for all sorts of organizations --
which they steal from legitimate publications, like Gale's directories
(which give listings for free to the organizations listed).  This
blankety-blank bunch of thieves put a listing for a fan group I was
running, on that website, without my knowledge or permission then started
dunning me NINE HUNDRED AND FORTY SIX DOLLARS for the listing!  Per year!
I never had that much money in the group's treasury, and why would I pay
that much for a listing when I can get plenty of more accessible and
legitimate listings for free or for less than five or ten bucks?  I took
the first such notice to the post office, assuming fraud.  I don't know if
they ever did anything about it, or could, since the outfit turned out to
be in Switzerland, as I said.  Subsequent notices I ignored, and with
impunity, since there was a clause on the reverse of the notice saying that
it was valid only if the recipient signed it and sent it back.  So, no
signature, no contract, no liability.


When I checked out the listing, it was word-for-word and line-for-line
right out of the Gale's directory that I had a free listing in, except that
they'd made a typo in the name of the group.  Damn thieves!  Damn stupid
ignorant thieves!

Even after I disbanded the group because of my health, I kept getting those
notices.  I got really annoyed.  We were also getting midnight fax calls,
which disturbed our sleep.  One of the damn calls came in at something like
1 a.m.  We went though a roundelay with the phone company over that,
requiring us to keep a log, and that came to nothing (a whole nother story
and a whole nother burr under my saddle).  But I blame that listing,
because after it was eventualy dropped (see below), those calls stopped.  

In later years, these Swiss thieves dropped the clause about needing a
signature to be valid.  I guess they figured out that if they tried to make
it look like a legitimate invoice for services requested and rendered, they
could get away with trying to get the money out of people.  Only problem
is, there never was a "request" for their "services."  

I sent this bunch of Swiss bozos nasty e-mails demanding that they cease
and desist from listing the group which by that time no longer existed.
First time, got no reply at all.  The next year, some namby pamby answer
that went nowhere.  Finally I had to (a) threaten to go to the Swiss
Embassy in Washington and (b) call them outright stupid, and they finally
sent back a response that they would remove the listing.

Sheesh.  Some people.  They were nothing but a bunch of thieves.  On the
one end, they stole the information they were using from open, legitimate
sources and on the other end, they were trying to extort money from the
involuntary listees for a listing that was, in my case and probably in many
other cases, put up without the knowledge or permission of the head of
whatever group they were trying to victimize.

Argh.  They deserve to rot along with the spammers, as far as I'm concerned.

> but it still peeves me that they don't thoroughly check their info first.

And that's just pure damned laziness.  What are they teaching in schools
today?  Certainly not the basic scholarship tenet of "check your sources".

>Ah well! Life in this mechanized age, I suppose. Better 'n dealing with 
>locusts in the fields, or cholera season -- though you may not agree.

No, I don't.  I wouldn't say it's "better than," but rather "on a par
with."  
 
>We should be able to opt out of all this more easily, and that's a fact.

Abso-damn-lutely.


 
>> The telemarketer has to realize that he is in essence forcing his 
>> way into
>> an individual's home.  Being contemptuous of the time and busy-ness 
>> of the
>> homeowner is NOT going to win them points, even if they are only 
>> doing a  continuously thankless job.
 
>yes well, our culture in general has to re-learn the basics of customer
service.

What they need to re-learn is the basics of common courtesy, which is all
too uncommon these days.


>> >Ah well -- at least when I dispose of things, I know they're 
>> > getting recycled, not just landfilled.
> 
>> Yeah, but an awful lot of trees are dying needlessly.  I'd rather be 
 
>especially when you can make marvellous paper from water 
>hyacinth, the kudzu of the Western waterways.....

Oh, not just Western!  Water hyacinths clog Jacksonville's St. Johns River
and its many tributaries, big time, in many places.  It's been a major
battle in Florida.

> Florida does, too, and so does the federal government.  I'm sure you 
> know about the "do not call" list.  
 
>Not on the Federal Level.

Under FTC rules, telemarketers are required to maintain a "do not call"
list, and if you tell one to put you on that list, they are required to do
so, and if they call you again, it's a violation of Federal law.

See http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/tsr.htm#prohibits and
scroll down until you see "the 'do not call' provision" which gives the
information.  That's being revised somewhat with the new national do not
call registry.  Information about that is available through a button on the
Federal Trade Commission main page (www.ftc.gov).


>The Marketing Association (I'm forgetting the alphabits -- I want to say
AMA, 
>but that doesn't seem correct) has one -- but it's a net with some fairly
large holes.

DMMA  -- Direct Mail Marketing Association.

>> I've sicced the Federal Trade   Commission on
>> one bunch that kept calling after we had told them repeatedly to put 
>> us on the do not call list.  It was the newspaper over in Jacksonville.  I 
>
>Good Lord.
>How stupid can you be?
>For starters, why waste money trying to sell to a hostile market? 

Basically.
 
>Of course, Russ had one of those so-called Police Charities 
>(which are NOT associated with your police department, btw), 
>which were already under Atty General investigation for 

>agressive marketing (and borderline scam), 

Yeah, they're under the same in Florida for making actual threats to people
they call.  I just tell 'em, I don't do anything over the telephone but if
they want to mail me some information, that'd be fine.  I NEVER receive
anything in the mail from these folks.  I wonder why?   NOT!  I KNOW why.
heeheehee

>call him back after a "no." Twice. He told the orifice 
>that he was going to call the Police, and that stopped that.
>But, goddamn, how DUMB is DUMB?

As the late Florida folk comedian Gamble Rogers would say:  Sorry is as
sorry does.
 
>Well, I suppose the dolphins need all the wits they can get.

Man!  Them dolphins is all smart now!  
 
 
>> FINALLY the calls from the newspaper's marketing company stopped.  
>> If they  ever do start up again, you can bet I'm going straight to the FTC 
>> once more.
 
>Sure.

Yup.  Next time they piss me off is going to cost them a few thousand
dollars, being a documented repeat violation.

>I finally got really hostile with one, and used the "harassment" word.
>While the person on the other end protested that this was the first 
>time they'd called us (every Security System subcontractor must get 
>the list), I do admit those solicitations stopped.

Oh, I had not only the telephone company but also the State Attorney (what
a District Attorney is called in Florida) after one outfit.  They called
every three weeks or so -- some idiot outfit selling cheap-ass vinyl siding
(not nearly the quality we have on our house now, which was installed by a
legitimate contractor whom I investigated six ways from Sunday).  Finally,
I called the company and got some vice-president (probably the only guy
there, wearing several hats including Head Scammer), who flatly denied that
they called that frequently, that they only called about every six months
at the most.  He shut up his smugness when I retorted that we had been
keeping a log with date and time of call and the name given by the person
calling.  The State Attorney, an earnest and fine fellow named E. McRae
"Mac" Mathis, said he couldn't do anything officially but he would give the
so-called vice-president a call and explain to him the legal definition of
the word "harrassment."  I'm glad he did that, because the telephone
company, as usual, did nothing.  And no, we never got any more calls from
those bozos.  This was in the days before the do not call lists, but is
exactly the kind of abuse that led to them in the first place.



>=chuckle=
>Mom & Dad's is one digit off from a doctor's office -- but she figured
that out and was pretty nice about setting poor aged >sick people straight.
>Even had it on her message machine for a while.


Yup.  Sometimes that's what ya gotta do.  We kinda had a good time with the
taxidermy calls, which of course stopped after the next telephone book came
out.
 
>We had a surreal couple of weeks: Some poor Asian fellow 
>(a Mr. Lee) had apparently given out the wrong number.
>It's very bizarre answering the phone to a string of Cantonese 
>(or Mandarin, I can't tell the difference). 
>But his callers were set straight in short order.

  Reminds me of another one:  Back in the 1980s, when we lived in
our very nice house in the Ridgecrest subdivision of Orange Park (would
like to have that house on our present lot!), we started, out of the blue,
getting calls from people ordering pizzas.  I had no clue what was going
on, but these people apparently thought we were Godfather's.  Nothing in
the telephone book, no misprint like the taxidermist.  A day or two later,
we're out and about, and coming home up Blanding Blvd., just across from
the Orange Park Mall, and there is a newly-opened Godfather's Pizza with
OUR telephone number on their sign!  

When we got home, I called and pointed out to the person on the phone, the
manager, what had happened.  He was pretty lackadaisacal about it, but
kinda sharpened up when I told him that unless he went out RIGHT NOW and
corrected that sign, I'd start telling people that "we don't take phone
orders."  (Which, he was too stupid to figure out, he wasn't getting
because he had the wrong telephone number on the sign!!!)  Argh.

 
>Here, got this reply from my friend Louis, which you should like:
 
>This reminds me of a story I read back in the days of the Vietnam War
draft..... 

>Some guy, acting on the understanding that his draft board was 
>required to file everything he sent them, sent changes of address
>  - one on a 50 lb. rock and the other on the belly of a dead fish.... 

Heeheehee!

Veloci--opt me out, thanks--raptor


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