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Author Topic: Telemarketers Strike Back Paul G. Thompson The Weenie Man Posts: 4718 From: Mount Vernon WA USA Registered: Nov 2000 posted 07-06-2003 01:21 PM                     Since the start of the US Government's "do not call list" (which also contains all three of my phone numbers now) the telemarkerters vowed to use the internet and mass mailing to contact people. AOL is not very happy. So far, AOL has blocked 6,211,130,922 hunks of SPAM since the start of this month. AOL has a Spam-O-Meter posted that is in a run-away status. AOL is aggressively after the spammers, and I understand Microsoft is very agressive, too. On the Spam-O-Meter page, AOL has provisions for its members to sign a petition to join the fight of reducing or eliminating spam. Just thought you would like to know the numbers.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 07-06-2003 01:40 PM                     In terms of the threats telemarketers are making about mass mailings, I really believe many cities should band together and file a very punative and preemptive class-action lawsuit against the companies. Why do I say this? Anyone who follows the news of this country's budget problems knows many states and city governments are choking on lots of debt. Many have waste disposal issues, like land fills reaching capacity and being forced to close. It is getting more and more expensive to deal with waste. Snail mail spam takes up lots of space in land fills. Many such advertisements are printed on glossy paper stock that is not easy or cheap at all to recycle. I think if telemarketers are going to stuff our mailboxes, they damned sure ought to pay the price for me taking from my mailbox and straight to my trashcan.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-06-2003 02:03 PM                     Was it you, Bobby, who said that money derived from bulk mail advertising pays a good portion of the bills for the USPS and keeps our postage rates down? If that's the case then wouldn't that extend to e-mail spam and telemarketing too? Create the equivalent of a "bulk mail permit" for e-mail and telemarketing. If advertising would pay part of my internet bills and/or my phone bill I would be more willing to put up with a certain amount of it. Oh! One more thing: My township's recycling office publishes a calendar for recycling events and things. It tells when lawn/leaf pick up days are. It tells when/where the Haz-Mat amnesty stations are in operation. Also, on each page are tips about recycling and conservation. One neat tip was to take all of those stupid ad leaflets that come with your phone bill, stuff them into your payment envelope and mail them back! If enough people do that the phone company (and the electric company and the cable company, etc, etc...) will get the message that they are paying the bill TWICE for their advertising. Once to print and mail it. A second time to sort and dispose of it!  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-06-2003 02:14 PM                     What irks me is the spammed faxes Some days I have dome in and missed an important fax because the machine ran out of paper during the night You call there removal number and get almost twice as much I have often wondered what the results of suing one of these companys because of the loss of business when an important fax didn't make it because they "stole all the paper in the machine"  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 07-06-2003 02:33 PM                        Gordon: Ditto  |  IP: Logged Jon Miller Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 973 From: San Diego, CA, USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 07-06-2003 03:33 PM                     In the United States, fax spam is supposed to be illegal, thanks to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). I say "supposed to be" because there are lowlifes still happily fax-spamming away, knowing that for most people it's difficult or not worth the effort to ferret them out and haul their rumps into court!  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 07-06-2003 03:41 PM                        In Germany a lot of people put stickers on their mailboxes when they want no advertisements in the mail. I think it is somehow illegal if people throw it in anyway. So if you put the sticker on your mailbox you are spam free. I almost never got marketing phone calls. I think they are illegal in some way too, but I am not sure either. If you ever get any calls they are usually disguised as polls or lotteries informing you that "you have won the lottery"... I think telemarketers there have understood that they won`t sell anything to irate customers anyway, so they have let off and looked for other advertising opportunitites.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 07-06-2003 04:01 PM                        quote: I say "supposed to be" because there are lowlifes still happily fax-spamming away, knowing that for most people it's difficult or not worth the effort to ferret them out and haul their rumps into court! I spent some time, tracking a group out of Atlanta that was telemarketing by powerdialing 800 numbers. I was getting spammed, and paying for the calls! The calls eventually stopped, but I never did identify anyone. In almost all cases, the numbers they called from were only in service for 2 or 3 days, and were disconnected with no trail to successive numbers or accounts. You almost know you're about to get fax-spammed if you answer a call and immediately get hung-up on and your dial tone back. Curiously, we don't sound much like fax tones! Anti fax-spam laws notwithstanding, even these calls are technically illegal, since there's no identification.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 07-06-2003 04:06 PM                     How much longer until everyone has caller ID working in all areas of the country? You can have all "anonymous" calls blocked already. It would be wonderful if we could block all calls that don't show up on caller ID. No fax spammer would touch it. BTW Jack, the only success I've had in dealing with fax spammers was to call up the company they were advertising for and sound all happy and excited about their fabulous product, then tell the person on the phone how you have been searching for a good company to do advertising for you. Work your way up to a manager, schmoozing all the way until he gives you the name of the company doing their work. Then give him an ass chewing like he's never had before. If he hangs up, call him right back. Repeat as necessary until you achieve the desired results. Then wait a day or two until you are in an especially nasty and foul mood. This is the perfect time to call up that fax spamming company and let 'em have it. If you get another fax, call the fax company back up and give 'em more hell. Repeat until you achieve the desired result. It's also a great way to relieve the stress from stupid customers on deserving people. This has worked very well for me. I no longer receive spam faxes. Oh, and if you can get that company's fax number, do be sure to start sending them ridiculous amounts of faxes at midnight with a couple of black lines down the center of the page with a note "see how annoying this is?" written on it. A few hundred pages works great for getting the point across. (Some of your better fax machines have a 250 page auto-feeder!) Those old cheap fax machines were great for that because you could force-stop the page halfway through scanning and tape it down. The receipient would receive streaks until their roll ran out. Can't do it on plain paper faxes. Yes, I'm one of those "make the punishment fit the crime" kind of guys.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-06-2003 05:15 PM                     On those older thermal faxs make a loop of black paper and it will burn out there heater  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-06-2003 05:21 PM                     A piece of 8.5" wide black contruction paper taped in a loop should drain a fax machine's ink cartridge in about a minute! It is high time that litigation should be done against not just telemarketers but also email (which we pay for) or for "junk mail". Who has to pay for the discarded averts that we did not want? I say the US-Mail should be prohibited from delivering such crap to the mail box unless one approves of receiving it. Steve  |  IP: Logged Ken Layton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1452 From: Olympia, Wash. USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 07-06-2003 05:33 PM                     Spammers are evil. There should be a death penalty for spammers and telmarketers!  |  IP: Logged John Scott Master Film Handler Posts: 252 From: Oakdale, MN, USA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 07-06-2003 07:36 PM                     With Junk Mail, I go through every piece of it and look for Business Reply Letters. I then stuff the envelopes full of other types of junk mail and mail it back (without any of my id info on the pages). They can pay the postage for me sending them back their crap.  |  IP: Logged Barry Floyd Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1079 From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 07-06-2003 09:57 PM                        You could copy the text from any on-line government document regarding spam-faxing, and paste it to a word document. Change the entire documents text size to 72 point or higher, then fax it back to them via your computer's faxing program. Should waste alot of paper on the other end.  |  IP: Logged Bruce McGee Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1776 From: Asheville, NC USA... Nowhere in Particular. Registered: Aug 1999 posted 07-06-2003 11:10 PM                     My job until April 9th was with Protocol Inc. They ran a telemarketing service selling the Dean Martin Roast shows. (I used to duplicate the shows) I used to get calls from them trying to sell me the shows. I hate that. I just changed my answering machine message. It now says: Telemarketers Hang Up NOW!!! Then the message continues... I actually had a call from Direct TV that told me that I really needed to hear the message that they had to tell. It filled my answering machine too. Aaraugh. I hate telemarketers. I hate PROTOCOL Inc, too. TELEMARKETING= EVIL!  |  IP: Logged

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