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kate_schaeferI called someone scum the other day. I was probably wrong to do so; all I knew about him for sure was that he was a liar employed by scum to commit scams. Where is the scum-qualifying line drawn?
I am on the National Do Not Call Registry. I received a call with a recorded announcement saying that it was my account manager with a last notice to reduce my rate. Last notice! My account manager! Oh my gosherino!
No business name was given by the recording. I know that I have no accounts with businesses which do business in this manner, so I pressed the number 1 in order to speak to a person and register a complaint. When an operator answered, I asked to speak to a supervisor. The operator asked why, and I said that I was on the Do Not Call Registry. He said that they hadn't called me. Rather than pointing out that I hadn't made my phone ring myself and that the technicality that their robot called me rather than an individual dialing my number did not, in fact, make his statement true rather than a bald lie, I said, Why, you scum.
He hung up. I then dialed *69 to obtain the number, 352-357-4151. After that, I dialed the number and got the not-in-service recording. Maybe I misdialed; maybe the scum scammers are spoofing their number-of-origin. I didn't pursue my research further, but I did file a complaint with the Washington State attorney general's office. I know that they aren't likely to pursue the complaint either, but it will go into a gigando database, whence eventually some overworked functionary will pull a report with X number of complaints against a particular phone number, and then...
Most of the time, when I get robo-calls like this, I just hang up. Maybe one out of every ten, I go to the trouble of getting through to an operator and pointing out that we're on the Do Not Call Registry. Half the time that I get through, I threaten them with the Attorney General. The volume of calls goes down for a while after that.
The one time I waded through phone menus to get to a live person at the AG's office, she suggested this strategy to me. "We don't follow up on the complaints right now, but telling them you're complaining will probably keep that boiler-room from calling you again, and who knows? Maybe someday we'll start prosecuting. They don't know whether or when we will, and we could. We could."
I am on the National Do Not Call Registry. I received a call with a recorded announcement saying that it was my account manager with a last notice to reduce my rate. Last notice! My account manager! Oh my gosherino!
No business name was given by the recording. I know that I have no accounts with businesses which do business in this manner, so I pressed the number 1 in order to speak to a person and register a complaint. When an operator answered, I asked to speak to a supervisor. The operator asked why, and I said that I was on the Do Not Call Registry. He said that they hadn't called me. Rather than pointing out that I hadn't made my phone ring myself and that the technicality that their robot called me rather than an individual dialing my number did not, in fact, make his statement true rather than a bald lie, I said, Why, you scum.
He hung up. I then dialed *69 to obtain the number, 352-357-4151. After that, I dialed the number and got the not-in-service recording. Maybe I misdialed; maybe the scum scammers are spoofing their number-of-origin. I didn't pursue my research further, but I did file a complaint with the Washington State attorney general's office. I know that they aren't likely to pursue the complaint either, but it will go into a gigando database, whence eventually some overworked functionary will pull a report with X number of complaints against a particular phone number, and then...
Most of the time, when I get robo-calls like this, I just hang up. Maybe one out of every ten, I go to the trouble of getting through to an operator and pointing out that we're on the Do Not Call Registry. Half the time that I get through, I threaten them with the Attorney General. The volume of calls goes down for a while after that.
The one time I waded through phone menus to get to a live person at the AG's office, she suggested this strategy to me. "We don't follow up on the complaints right now, but telling them you're complaining will probably keep that boiler-room from calling you again, and who knows? Maybe someday we'll start prosecuting. They don't know whether or when we will, and we could. We could."
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-25 02:44 pm (UTC)