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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

#41

Post by leephillips »

beeskneecaps wrote: post #36

"I believe that, done right, telemarketing is an effective, appreciated way to get people services they want, deliver important political messages, and raise money for non-profits" This make anyone else cringe?

Absolutely. There is no "right" way to perpetrate telemarketing. The only difference between this creep and the slime that he sued was that this guy is careful to adhere to the technical minutiae of laws that seem to have been partly written by the telemarketing industry themselves. This was just a sordid story of one antisocial jerk using the courts to extract money from a less savvy antisocial jerk.

I especially like his use of "appreciated". I'm sure I appreciate getting a recorded call telling me whom I should vote for.

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

#42

Post by michaelrkn »

lrs wrote: post #26
michaelrkn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Sentient. We actually mainly work with political campaigns, which are exempt from the regulations. I don't think we benefit from the uncertainty; it makes it difficult to explain to potential customers what is and isn't legal, and we turn away clients sometimes because they aren't familiar enough with the laws to know what's legal and what's not.

What sorts of policies and practices, if any, do you have in place to prevent your company or clients from engaging in the kind of behavior that you yourself found so personally objectionable that you sued for it?

Our Terms of Service require that customers be familiar with the relevant laws, abide by them, and take full responsibility for obeying them. Because we're a pretty small company, I also personally know all of our clients and talk with them about what they're doing. If it seems like they might be about to violate the law, we talk it through. This has only happened a couple times, but I have switched off somebody's account because I thought they were violating the law, despite the fact that they've taken full responsibility for compliance.

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

#43

Post by michaelrkn »

gwillen wrote: post #27

I'd really like to make this work if I could, but I suspect it's impossible in my specific case: all the robocalls I get are scam calls, trying to sell me credit-score services which presumably don't exist. Is it likely that I can get a company name out of them, or that there is even a company to sue? (And since they are criminals anyway, they have no incentive to settle with me, since even if I win I'd never be able…

There's actually a decent chance it's a real company. I once got a call for insurance that I was sure was a scam, but after playing them along for several calls, I found out it was a legit company. I talked to their CEO, who was very nice, found out their company name, and then explained to him that I could sue him for several thousand dollars. He apologized, said it was an outside firm that they had been working with, and said they had stopped working with that company because of complaints. I didn't sue them.

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

#44

Post by jay_m »

yashchandra wrote: post #5

Great. I am getting calls from one company every day twice. I called them and asked them to stop calling. They said sure done. But the calls have not stopped. I am inspired by your post.

I used to have this same problem. I'd get called twice a day by the same company, and if I picked up, they would just hang up the phone. Eventually I got tired of this so when I picked up one of their calls, I opened with "Hi, PizzaPizza here, may I take your order please?" After that they never called again.

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

#45

Post by corin_ »

DanBC wrote: post #33
corin_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was in the middle of legitimate conversations with you. You have a product yourself, if I contacted you and implied I was interested in becoming a customer, and we got to talking about it over the phone, would you look up your DNC list every single time before calling me just in case I had, since we last spoke, contacted a colleague of yours to be put on it?

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 asked by a customer to call them back (as happened in this case) would check a list before calling them back. It just wouldn't happen, ever. And frankly it shouldn't be expected to happen, the only time it would ever be useful to check a list is the very rare occurrence where the customer is trying to catch you out by telling you he's interested but he actually isn't.

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

#46

Post by yashchandra »

jay_m wrote: post #44
yashchandra wrote: post #5

Great. I am getting calls from one company every day twice. I called them and asked them to stop calling. They said sure done. But the calls have not stopped. I am inspired by your post.

I used to have this same problem. I'd get called twice a day by the same company, and if I picked up, they would just hang up the phone. Eventually I got tired of this so when I picked up one of their calls, I opened with "Hi, PizzaPizza here, may I take your order please?" After that they never called again.

nice. I will try that next time :)

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

#47

Post by jakejake »

Oh how I would love to do this. Unfortunately a place selling home security seems relatively easy to find who is calling. Not that it actually is easy - in fact it seems it required a good amount of social engineering.

The calls I have gotten are for credit reduction or other dubious services and the impression I get is that their whole operation is shady and secretive - and perhaps not even a legitimate business at all. When one of those wakes me up at 8am on a Sunday I thirst for their blood!

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