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I sued a telemarketer and got $4,000

impactdialing.com

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

#141
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't matter in telemarketing. They're all working on the same autodialer and CRM.

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

#142
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another idea would be for banks to offer special credit card numbers, that get automatically flagged as bogus purchases. Any bank offering such a service? If I ever use the magic number, the transaction is perceived to go through, but it's actually tracked and no money is exchanged. Not sure if it's doable with respect to Visa and Mastercard networks. A credit card that allows you to make purchases but never transf…

Actually, why not... My bank knows me. I'm a good customer. 10+ years of banking with them, not one credit card issue. Thousands of dollars on my bank account. When i use this bogus credit card number for $20 to track a spammer, I think my bank could trust me that I'm not just trying to buy something for free.

Are there other use cases you can think of aside from tracking spammers that would incent your bank to invest in the overhead to maintain special/bogus card #s? (And what about bogus card #s used against legitimate vendors that get cheated out of money owed to them?)

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

#143
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.)

Oops, there was a bug in that code that I just fixed.

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In his post he links to the Code of Federal Regulations. It allows for mistakes to be made by the business. This is what I read: It says: you can't call someone that says "Don't call me" However, if you have a written policy to try your best and follow the law and generally your business follows the policy, then you are not liable for violating this rule if it was a simple mistake. So the case of David calling him ba…

I couldn't have said it better. I believe this business was not trying to follow the law, so I sued them for everything I could. I mentioned in another reply that there was another company who called me illegally, and I found out that they fired the person who set up the calls I got. I didn't sue them.

Well, you just turned this into a demonstration of a typical sue-happy american and their crappy juridical system (a prejudice that a lot of europeans have against america), you should have been thrown of court for that.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same as a mailing list at all. It was person-to-person contact between David and yourself. Although it appears that the law was violated when you were called by David, he was simply following up on your interest in his company's products. Honestly, I feel like you are totally abusing the law in this situation. At the first available opportunity, you should've asked to be placed on their DNC list without…

How do you suggest he find out who to sue without expressing interest in their product? It's really the company who is abusing the law by not disclosing who they are to avoid retaliation.

That's the thing -- the telemarketing company knew perfectly well they were breaking the law, and thus took pains to hide their own identifying info even when the person did seem interested.

Sure, the fact that the bad guys are "playing dirty" doesn't mean it's moral for the good guys to do the same.

But in this case, simply lying that "that sounds interesting" before telling them he wasn't interested any more doesn't seem too serious. It's certainly not illegal.

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

#146
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Corin. I asked to be on their internal DNC list, and several days later, they called me again. That's illegal. Don't you think companies should have to respect your requests to be put on their DNC lists? I mean, if you unsubscribed from an email list and kept getting emails, wouldn't you be upset?

My understanding of the law is that if they have established a business relationship with you (you express interest in their product), that "relationship" lasts for (I believe) 30 days, during which they can call you freely. Asking to be put on their DNC list should cut off your relationship, but I think had they gone to court they would have had a solid defense that you expressed interest in their product, and you w…

One probably-very-relevant thing you aren't addressing -- the "business relationship" started with a very clearly illegal cold call to a Do-Not-Call listed mobile phone number.

I also suspect that the company actively breaking the law as part of their business model must know something about the laws they're tangling with, and they settled with him for $4K rather than actually to go to small claims court over $7500.

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

#147
post #135
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.

pg is doubting if this story is true, and thinks it might be a nice "stick it to the man" story. Since it's linked here it might be a SEO attempt to get a higher Google ranking for words like "telemarketer".

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

#148
post #135
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.

[deleted]

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nice. I will try that next time :)

Do you answer twice a day? (I would think even scammers stop wasting time on people that are not likely customers)

No I do no answer and usually ignore. But they still keep calling. I think it could be an automated robo call ?

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you answer twice a day? (I would think even scammers stop wasting time on people that are not likely customers)

No I do no answer and usually ignore. But they still keep calling. I think it could be an automated robo call ?

I'm sure it is some sort of automated system. I'm wondering if answering a call and saying no would get your number out of the system.
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