Fed Up With Telemarketers? (here's the solution) - Comments Page 1

i find a portable boat air horn works best...make sure you're wearing firearm ear protection or the like...

Oh Bob, I strongly urge caution here. Talking to telemarketers is a slippery slope, especially if you do so in the (remote) hopes of reaping a financial bonus. First of all, we all know that the National Do Not Call Registry is well-meaning but definitely not the answer, based on the number of calls that still get through. (And I don’t mean the exempted agencies; I mean scam artists.) The scam artists are getting smarter all the time, and if they have your phone number, it’s possible they have other information about you as well. Engaging them in conversation may only anger them enough that they retaliate in other ways, utilizing whatever other cyber information they may have about you. It can get very ugly and your life can get very disrupted. Unless you can positively identify the annoying caller up front, and know that you will be able to obtain the information required to file a complaint, one should be very cautious about engaging these low-lifes. P.S. NoMoRobo helps a lot, but does not catch all the robocalls due to the improved masking used by the bad guys.

I am fed up with daily calls/texts that appear to come from my current town to different states and even Canada. They use someone's name (always the same) at first to inform her they found a great rent to own property and, when that didn't work, that this person qualifies for a $1500 loan. Guess there is nothing I can do except keep blocking each number/text.

They don't hide the number, they link to a website--in other words, they avoid anything that they can be sued for. Meanwhile there is a new one every day. Must be a way to stop this.

We need to outlaw the ability for these people to alter their caller ID.

We need to outlaw the ability for these people to alter their caller ID.

In my 20's I received a call from someone who told me that I had "won" a free stereo system, which he described in great detail. All I needed to do was pay for the shipping($225). I stayed on the phone with him for quite a while, indicating my interest in this stereo, and how I couldn't wait to get it in my home. Casually I asked him what address the stereo would be shipping from, and it was somewhere in California. Then I asked him how long they were open every day, and he said, "Why?" I proceeded to tell him that I would be there in the morning to pick it up and save myself the shipping charges because I worked for a major airline and I could fly and ship items for free. He screamed at me for wasting his time, said some other interesting words, and I'm pretty sure he broke the receiver when he hung up.

I find that if you don't know the caller ID name and/or phone No. Don't answer it. If they hang up after 3 rings, it is most likely bogus. They are trying to avoid the answering machine.
If they don't leave a message, it can't be very valuable. Call blocking is OK but many of these allow a 25 call block limit, so have to fool around with that.

When my kids were young, aged 2-3, I would put them on the phone with telemarketers, and juss let them babble.

The calls stopped!

I have started getting telemarketing calls from someone who has a friend's telephone number listed in the ID field. It defiantly is not my friend who is an airplane pilot for Delta and would never risk his reputation with such a phone call.

Another technique I heard about recently is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to combat robocalls. One such AI is JollyRoger described at at http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/. The AI simulates a human and engages the robocaller so you don't have to.

I keep getting a robo call 3-4x / day with my area code and same first 3 digits the next 4 digits are random , I can not block since 10000 combinations
I never answer the call , any suggestions on how to block these calls?

I use Nomorobo and love not having to be bothered by those pesky telemarketers, and now Nomorobo can be used on mobile phones too, here's the link:
https://www.nomorobo.com/ Sorry to Business owners tho as Nomorobo don't have service with businesses...YET!! And it's FREE to use!! Your phone might ring once but Nomorobo grabs those calls and ZAPS them away!! I was having 10-50+ calls weekly, but no more and this service is Awesome so go check them out!!

Larry: Some phone services allow the use of wildcards in their blocking system. Let's say I keep getting calls from 215-555-1234. If I entered 215-555* into the blocker then that whole series will be blocked. Ooma VOIP is one of the services that allow this.

I like the idea of filing Small Claims Court actions against abusive telemarketers but this article doesn't discuss the issue of jurisdiction for filing the actions. I'm very familiar with filing small claims actions in California and know that the court requires you to prove that it has jurisdiction to hear the matter and that it also has juridiction over the party you are suing. This is known as "personal jurisdiction". Usually this means proving that the party you are suing has a presence or minimal contacts in the state, county or city where you file the action. I'm not an attorney but wonder how you would establish jurisdiction over a telemarketer calling you from outside the state or even country?? How would you determine where the action should be filed?? Is the fact that you received a phone call at the area where you live sufficient to establish jurisdiction over a non-resident of that area??

I've been on the Do Not Call Registry for several years, but I still get sales calls from various "companies" and "services" I've never heard of, both "live" and robocalls. My phone/internet service is through Cox, and doesn't work with NoMoRobo. I've tried reporting to the DoNotCall website (there's a form there), but it doesn't seem to resolve anything.

Does this apply to foreign based telemarketers? A lot of US companies outsource telemarketing to foreign countries. With the spoofing of legitimate customer names when calling could this result in someone being incorrectly identified as the source of the call and being sued? For example, a telemarketer uses someone's name to spoof caller ID and someone assumes the name on the caller ID is the actual source of the telemarketing call.

Back in the day I received many calls because of the last 4 numbers. Gas stations, pizza shops, car tow. First chance to unlisted number and let your answer do thing its. I was called to court 1000.00, next call looking fore this person late pay. All calls to unlisted numbers can only work once.

I get between 1 and 4 telemarketing calls each day (sometimes more) to what used to be my land line home phone. But I have now transferred that number to Google Voice, which functions as an answering machine. It also sends me an email for each call, along with a (pretty good quality) transcript of the message (if the caller leaves one).

The result is that I can simply ignore the 90% of calls in which the telemarketer hangs up rather than leave a message, along with another 5% of calls in which the telemarketer (usually a robo-call machine rather than a human) bothers to leave a message which the transcript indicates is a sales pitch. The remaining 5% of the the calls are valid (e.g., a doctor's office reminding me of an upcoming appointment) which I can tell from reading the transcript (and usually don't need to return the call).

This has worked quite well for several years now. Even though this number is in the National Do Not Call registry,I don't worry about the numerous violations because they don't significantly waste my time.

How about POTS landlines? Nomorobo seems to only work with voip landlines. Is there a service that works with the "old fashioned" landlines?

EDITOR'S NOTE: The best solution for landlines is to forward your number to a Google Voice number. GV will filter out most of the bogus calls.

There is a device called "Call Control" that is supposed to work on landlines. It works in conjunction with The "Call Control" app on your phone. Amazon sells one although Amazon claims it only works with iPhones. However, there is an android app now. All that said, I have one and have had trouble getting it to work. When I get the time I plan to spend some time with their customer support and see if I can get it to work properly.