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I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

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Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#131

Post by smsm42 »

corin_ wrote: post #45
DanBC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That's the entire point of sanitising your lists. When someone asks you to stop calling them you remove their number and stop calling them.

You don't understand how salesmen work at all, and I'm not talking about them being shady, I'm just talking about general business practices. Lists of names/numbers are for cold-calling, and yes, cold-calling should check any opt-outs first. Once you are actually having conversations with a specific person about an actual sale, lists are no longer part of the equation. There's not a salesman in the world who, if aske…

They should. If the customer is no longer interested, and expressed it clearly by asking to be placed to DNC list, they should respect it. There's a lot of software out there that makes it as easy as clicking one button, or even easier - you open your CRM software and see big red "ASKED TO BE PLACED ON DNC" all over the record, and you know it didn't work out, time to move on. Of course, some salesmen may ignore that hoping they can persuade the client to reconsider, but then that's where $500 comes into play.

Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#132

Post by angry-hacker »

rdtsc wrote: post #124
jrockway wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could use a random number every time, but they don't. If they start doing that, I'll enable Google Voice's feature that requires an unknown caller to say their name before the phone call is accepted.

That's pretty cool. Actually my friend implemented a feature on his home phone (he is old school) that had a recording answering the phone and it said, if you are human press "8". If they did then the actual phone would ring, otherwise I guess I just hung up or just kept them on the line. So he screened all the pre-recorded crap.

I don't live in USA so the question might sound stupid. Are there 100% automated calls coming from marketers? What are they saying... do they just tell you about a product or..?

Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#133

Post by corin_ »

thatjoshguy wrote: post #126
corin_ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But once you get past cold calling and into actual back and forth, the conversations don't go through telesales lists or software. At that point you're no longer doing telesales, you're discussing options with a client, albeit a client who hss yet to make their first purchase.

If someone says 'don't call me', can't the salesperson then just delete their phone number?

He was waiting for a call back from one salesperson, and said "don't call me" to a different salesperson.

Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#134

Post by rytis »

alan_cx wrote: post #93

Profitable, commendable, and a fine example to us all, but BORING!!!!! Before I go on, yes, I do have way too much time on my hands, and a hugely immature area in my brain. I like to go for creative abuse. Immediately I start arguing and generally giving them a hard time, winding up to virtual verbal abuse until.... ...two things happen. They hang up, and never call back. Bonus: I feel better for getting some stuff o…

Not sure about verbal abuse... I try to stay polite however annoying they might be.

I've tried to countersell stuff, just for fun. "listen, glad you called, coincidentally I have this great 6 yr old laptop, which you might be interested in. It's only £239.99. What do you think? I accept paypal..."

Once I got transfered to a "team lead", who prommised to think about it and call back. He never did...

Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#135

Post by akanet »

pg wrote: post #128

Maybe this is true. But I'm glad HN has a feature that lets us mark a story so that it becomes a nofollow link no matter how many points it has.

Could you elaborate? I thought the story was somewhat in the hacker spirit in that it exploited the oft-overlooked option of retaliating against spammers.

Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#136

Post by gbrindisi »

I recorded a voice mail suited specifically for telemarketers. It's basically me faking a call and some interest to keep them busy ("Hello, yes... yes... ah-a.... umh...") and ending with "sorry mate you were talking to a voice mail, now would you like to leave a serious message?".

I did it because I gave up trying to opt-out of every company calling me. The point is to irk them by keeping them on the phone (they are paid mainly by commissions so every second wasted counts) to the point they will flag me as a 'time-waster' and not call anymore.

It works surprisingly well.

Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#137

Post by imurray »

pg wrote: post #128

Maybe this is true. But I'm glad HN has a feature that lets us mark a story so that it becomes a nofollow link no matter how many points it has.

I don't see a rel="nofollow" attribute on the link to the original post, or a meta tag in the page header(?). (Logged in or not.)

Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#138

Post by crumblan »

Zakharov wrote: post #119
glimcat wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I register my business phone number or a fax number? The National Do Not Call Registry is only for personal phone numbers. Business-to-business calls and faxes are not covered by the National Do Not Call Registry.

You could try a more complicated approach: sell consumers a device which records their calls locally, and sign them up to the do-not-call list. The device would have a spam button; when pressed it would send the caller id + recording of call to your company's servers. The company would use this to help the customer threaten or sue telemarketers, splitting settlement/lawsuit revenue.

This would be illegal in many states, but you could restrict it to states with one-person consent to record conversations.

Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#139

Post by crumblan »

readme wrote: post #117
readme wrote: post #116

What OP did sounds like entrapment to me. There's no way of knowing whether they would have continued to call him had he not egged them on, yet he can still sue for each count. I think that's unfair.

Downvote? Nice. I guess HNers don't realize that stealing from criminals is no more honorable than stealing from anyone else.

He only sued for the first few times (before he tried to get their information) and the last few times (after he asked not to be called again).

Re: I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

#140

Post by rdtsc »

angry-hacker wrote: post #132
rdtsc wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty cool. Actually my friend implemented a feature on his home phone (he is old school) that had a recording answering the phone and it said, if you are human press "8". If they did then the actual phone would ring, otherwise I guess I just hung up or just kept them on the line. So he screened all the pre-recorded crap.

I don't live in USA so the question might sound stupid. Are there 100% automated calls coming from marketers? What are they saying... do they just tell you about a product or..?

Yap.

"We are calling to talk about your car. Do you know that you can get a lower car insurance in your state. There is some new law that lets you blah...blah...blah. Press 1 if you would like to sign up."

Or

"Do you know Obama is from Mars. He has an Alien living inside of him and telling him what to do. Do not vote for Obama"

This is very common for political campaigns as those are also except from some laws that a design to stop these.

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