This is topic Telemarketers Strike Back in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 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.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 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.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 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!
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 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"
 

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Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 07-06-2003, 02:33 PM:
 
Gordon: Ditto
 

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Posted by Jon Miller (Member # 163) on 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!
 

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Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 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.
 

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Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 07-06-2003, 04:01 PM:
 

quote:

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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!

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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.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 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.
 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 07-06-2003, 05:15 PM:
 
On those older thermal faxs make a loop of black paper and it will burn out there heater
 

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 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
 

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Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 07-06-2003, 05:33 PM:
 
Spammers are evil. There should be a death penalty for spammers and telmarketers!
 

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Posted by John Scott (Member # 520) on 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.
 

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Posted by Barry Floyd (Member # 385) on 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.
 

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Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 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!
 

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Posted by Jon Miller (Member # 163) on 07-07-2003, 12:19 AM:
 
Bruce wrote...

quote:

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Telemarketers Hang Up NOW!!! Then the message continues...

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If the telenuisance was prerecorded (another thing the TCPA was supposed to stop), it wouldn't work. I've lost track of how many times I've found pitches for Disney World vacations on my answering machine, all prerecorded because the first five seconds of the messages were cut off while the machine played the outgoing message. If I had easy access to a lawyer, I would have forwarded the 800 number to him so he could have a field day.

As far as junk mail, I don't think the US Postal Service will give it up as Standard Mail (formerly known as Third-Class Mail) is a cash cow for the Postal Service.
 

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Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 07-07-2003, 02:23 AM:
 
The best thing to do, if you can fax them back is to use a regular fax machine where the paper slides straight through. Take about 5 or 6 sheets of BLACK construction paper, tape them together and feed it into the machine when you send them your "fax"...

Then as the paper comes out, pull it up and tape it to the other end, making a nice continuous loop of black paper!!

Let that run for a few hours. If it's a thermal fax on the other end, it will overheat. Plain paper, it will run out of toner. Either or will run out of paper. If it's a computer taking the call, it will eventually run out of hard drive space..


=TMP=
 

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Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 07-07-2003, 02:52 AM:
 
funny how movie prices have to keep going up to keep the distributors in business, yet the bulk rate has to stay cheap to keep the usps in business. somebody's full of shit. the bulk rate should go up and either spam will decrease or the post office will have a windfall and decrease (er, more slowly increase) the first class rate. sounds good to me either way.

carl
 

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Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 07-07-2003, 03:18 AM:
 
I remember when some bulk mail had "return postage guaranteed" stamped on it. While I was on board ship, I received one of those junk mails. I went to the ship fitter's shop and had them cut me a hunk of steel 1/4-inch thick to the dimensions just big enough to fit in the envelope. I sealed it up, and deposited it in the mail box. It was heavy enough to go "Clunk" when it hit the bottom of the box. (probably put a dent in the bottom of it.)

...never heard from that company again....ever....
 

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Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 07-07-2003, 05:53 AM:
 
Loops? You can also send faxes from your computer (welcome to the 21st century). You can easily send 100 pages of pure black without even bothering to make the loop.
 

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Posted by Lionel Fouillen (Member # 1475) on 07-07-2003, 06:15 AM:
 
2 weeks ago, a telemarketer called me from Japan, indeed with an Asian accent, in English although we speak French/Dutch here, to propose financial investment with their stock exchange products. I forgot the company name but I mostly suspected it was one of these scams. She insisted when I said "no", so I said I never conducted business over the phone and she then stopped, all politely.

How the hell did they find me? Maybe through the Google world directory which somebody told me about this morning: I checked it and eevrything is just made available to the public: my address, phone number, well just everybody is in it!
 

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Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 07-07-2003, 06:19 AM:
 
They probably found you on the list of the world`s 100 richest people.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 07-07-2003, 09:23 AM:
 

quote:

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Paul: I remember when some bulk mail had "return postage guaranteed" stamped on it.

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I used to do the same thing except I would go out back to the creek that ran behind the house, bust a big ol' chunk of shale up from the stream bed and mail that.
 

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Posted by William T. Parr (Member # 677) on 07-07-2003, 12:26 PM:
 
Telemarketers suck. My Friend got one from Bank of America on his cell phone one day while he was trying to leave work. The stupid Biotch on the other end did not have the words No I am not intrested in her vocabulary. After listening to her rant for a couple of minutes my friend, and avid motorcycle rider fired his bike up, proceeded to put the phone near the exhaust output of the bike and rev the shit out of the engine. Pretty sure she does not understand anything but sign language now. That is what we would call the Paul D. Drew way of dealing with telemarketers.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-07-2003, 01:16 PM:
 
It's because these sales schools and training programs insist that you will get 4 "no" answers before you get the "yes" answer.
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 07-07-2003, 01:35 PM:
 
Concerning Junk Faxes, it is illegal to send unsolicited faxes according to federal law (doesn't matter what the state law is), and according to this guy (who runs a legal advice radio show), you are entitled to collect $500 from the offending party on the FIRST OFFENSE.

(I may set up a fax machine just for this purpose )

Read on...
 

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Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 07-07-2003, 02:08 PM:
 
The slobs are getting smart. Just had a telemarketer call. Automated voice with a "menu."

"If you want to scratch your balls, please press 1."
"If you want to scratch someone else's balls, please press 2."
"If you want someone else to scratch your balls, please press 3."
"If you want technical assistance, please press 4."

Jeeze......
 

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Posted by Steven Privett (Member # 718) on 07-07-2003, 11:08 PM:
 
I dislike telemarketers
 

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Posted by Lionel Fouillen (Member # 1475) on 07-09-2003, 06:11 AM:
 

quote:

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They probably found you on the list of the world`s 100 richest people.

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Michael, actually I found the site again: www.annuairemondial.com

but it seems you can't search for somebody from the home page. You must search Google then one links points to this website. Fortunately this is my older address. Only the phone number is the same. Now I will change and have the new one unavailable in official phone books.
 

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Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 07-11-2003, 12:23 PM:
 
We don't have that problem here in The Bahamas. Instead, we have a very serious problem with individuals (not companies) who send junk email (chain letters, jokes, etc) to 100's of people at a time. I have told all of my personal friends to exclude me from their mass mailing lists unless they want to get added to my Junk Mail filter.

Supposedly, the cable company had to force all subscribers to send outgoing email through a new server with SPAM filtering because the U.S.A. was threatening to somehow block email coming from The Bahamas unless corrective measures were taken!

I don't know if that's true -- sounds a bit extreme -- but it certainly is what I was told.
 

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Posted by Andrew Lee (Member # 1330) on 07-11-2003, 01:53 PM:
 
Gordon, I can't agree more about those idiots sending junk through the fax. A couple of weeks ago some company out of Toronto faxed my home office 5 pages of ads. That night, I called them and asked to have my number removed. The next day I received over 18 pages while I was out. My fax ran out of paper and ink and I almost lost a contract because my clients fax was stuffed in memory until I could get more paper and a new cartridge. I can't remember the last time I was that mad. Because I can't fire bomb the place, I may consider what can be done via legal means.
 

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Posted by Paul G. Thompson (Member # 655) on 07-11-2003, 09:27 PM:
 
Manny, the SPAM situation is getting so bad that many ISP's are getting overloaded with them and slows things down to a crawl. So far, I am aware of only two major ISP's are attacking SPAM head on....those two companies are Microsoft and AOL. I have not read or heard practically anything about other ISP's doing the same thing. I hope they are.

We have some very small ISP companies up here...and it appears they are doing little to nothing about combating the problem.
 

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Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 07-12-2003, 11:21 AM:
 
My ISP is. They're using the Postini service, and I now get maybe 2 spams a week.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-12-2003, 02:17 PM:
 
I'm getting really annoyed by e-mail and fax spam. As others have mentioned, the fax situation can be cause business-harming problems.

We have started insisting that customers either send us a their fax immediately after giving us a phone call, that way we can guarantee we'll get it or they'll otherwise have to use snail mail for the pages. Junk fax runs out too much paper and ink so real customers cannot send us their faxes at their leisure.

E-mail spammers have been doing more to dress up their notes like personal e-mails with real sounding user names to get by the spam filters of ISPs and on the machines of end users.
 

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Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 07-12-2003, 04:51 PM:
 

quote:

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E-mail spammers have been doing more to dress up their notes like personal e-mails with real sounding user names to get by the spam filters of ISPs and on the machines of end users.

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