Cranky Customer

Some years back, I had a prolonged experience with a crooked telemarketer selling home improvements. They would not take "no" for an answer and refused to put me on their "do not call" list. After several dozen calls I decided to send a complaint to the FCC. When I tried to locate the contact info, I discovered that NONE of their phone numbers were valid. Somehow they were able to fake it for caller ID. FCC replied that I had to locate the company information before they would accept my complaint. I spent days calling telephone company people and law enforcement entities all over the state before I gave up. Didn't stop them from calling me though.

One day after they called me something like 5 times a man with a logo on his shirt, a clipboard and their company ID showed up at my front door and insisted I'd made an appointment for replacement windows. He declared he was going to come in and actually started to barge in. I lost my temper and told him that my dogs (still barking like maniacs) would keep him busy long enough to get a gun. He stammered (apparently amazed) "you'd really shoot me?" and I yelled "hell yes!" His response was "that's not very nice of you!" He actually had my screen door open about an inch when he changed his mind and left in a hurry.

I called the police and then I resubmitted my FCC complaint with a police report. I included dates and times I hit call trace. You'd think they'd be interested in putting a sleeziod telemarketer out of business but nooooo. It seems the complainer has to come up with that information, no exceptions and I couldn't get the call trace info without a court order. Annoying phone calls don't constitute an actutal crime and the salesman did not enter my house, ergo, no crime. If I really wanted to pursue it, I'd have had to retain a lawyer. Puhleeze!

No, the telemarketer didn't stop calling and no, they wouldn't give me contact information over the phone either. They wanted to send a sales rep and I didn't want another personal encounter. I went out and bought the loudest whistles I could find. Put one next to each phone and blew it everytime they called me. Repeated, non-verbal exposure finally convinced them to leave me alone. Or maybe they ran out of telemarketer weenies who'd dare call my number.

Moral of the story is: the FCC is about as useful as hooters on a boar hog. Although most telemarketers honor the do not call list, I've found a whistle discourages recidivism when "please don't call me" fails to do the trick.

Politicians aren't the only ones with a loophole. The mortgage lenders have found the "survey" loophole useful in and of itself. When the stuttering inept says he's taking a survey and asks if your home loan rate is below 3.48%, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to anticipate what's coming next. I did the polite thing and just hung up.

Previous posters have mentioned if you send BRM back stuffed with garbage, the junk mailer does not have to pay for it. I did some checking at that does not appear to be true.

Reference this: http://pe.usps.com/text/CSR/PS-086.htm

Basically it says if the BRM is attatched to a brick, the post office eats it. But just because the envelope has junk in it, or nothing at all, the junk mailer still has to pay the post office. It just can't be attatched to a brick or a two by four.

However, I still would think it is pointless to request in the envelope to be removed from the mailing list. But I still get some glee knowing they have to pay for me to send it back to them.

Years ago I worked as a telemarketer (this was before the DNC list existed). Oftentimes, if a customer was very rude, I would see my fellow workers blatantly ignore the customer's request to be taken off the list, and actually put them back in the queue to be called again. They would even laugh about it. I guess it was a way of "getting back" at a rude person. Screaming at a low paid telemarketer isn't really effective. They have no vested interest in the company and don't really care if you're upset. I am on the DNC list, but when I do get a call, I politely request to be removed from their internal list, and so far it's worked every time.

When telemarketers call me I tap the mouthpiece with my fingernail then say (in a friendly, voice-over-announcer type voice that sounds like a pre-recorded message) "Kill yourself now; Kill yourself now; Kill yourself now".......they hang up on me soon and they don't call again.

Your experience with Hello Direct doesn't sound like them at all. I'm inclined to go with your phrase "or a company purporting to be them."

I'm in phone sales, and bought a headset from HD in 1997, which I still have. Ten years later it continues to work beautifully, cutsomer service is always wonderful at helping my solve the few problems I've had, and they've replaced parts immediately when something has become worn out.

I've NEVER received a marketing call from them, and since my experience with them has continually demonstrated their professionalism, I'd be surprised to learn your telemarketers were actually HD.

But that's just my experience and opinion!

What part of "...it may take approximately 30 days for your name to be removed from telemarketing lists" did you not understand, Matty?

Oh yeah, that's right - you weren't listening, were you? You were most likely too busy screeching with righteous indignation, or lamenting about being "tortured" by phone calls answered (that's right ANSWERED, NOT DIALED) by an underpaid, undertrained and exploited "TSR", calling "with" or "on behalf of" Hello Direct. Or perhaps you hung up before the previous Irene's could inform you that it does indeed take up to 30 days to to remove your name and the number dialed from their list.

As for Irene's response to your moo's about already being on the national do-not-call list, either you misheard her "I'm already on the DNC list" response, which is provided by client and read verbatum, or Irene's remembrances of the 20 minutes of training on the Hello Direct campaign, and/or reading skills was skewed a bit by dealing with your tantrum.

In this case, I'm betting it's your listening skills. But either way, the point is: save your complaints for client.

Client hires telemarketers because they make an incredible amount of money for client. Client (and state/federal law, of course) sets guidelines for the TSR's on what they can and cannot say and do. For instance, TSR cannot leave messages on your voice mail and answering machine. Also, guidelines are set for how many times a number can be dialed, how many rebuttals MUST be made, what is said to you when you ask to be taken off list; claim you're already on the dnc list, what's said to you at the end of the call, etc. ALLLLL client and various regulations.

Not Irene.

Irene's job is to sell you something, or offer you a "free trial" on Hello Direct's newest "must have" for those who make more money in a day than Irene makes all month. Irene's job is to sell a lot of it, or Irene will soon find herself out of a job. Irene must make the sales quoto that client sets for her and then somehow convince the people on the list client provides for her to take that extra special HD offer! ;) And she must do so while being as vague as she possibly can about the shortcomings of various products --- all the while, attempting to maintain the charade that she is actually a "communications specialist" with HD, not their sales monkey.

And why? Because that's what client wants, expects and demands. So Irene sells 10-12 $300 items a day for client and earns roughly $60-$70 for doing so. And as an added bonus, she gets the joy of dealing with hysterical cry-babies like Matty, who should have taken his complaints to the proper dumping ground. Or better yet, he could have acted like a sane, reasonable adult with better things to do than belly-ache about marketing calls and simply said: "NOT INTERESTED" and then hung up the phone.

Irene moves on to Hello Direct's next potential sucker.

I agree that Irene is a victim, too, but I have had a company repeatedly call me up to 20 times a week for weeks. I repeatedly said that I was not interested. It took calling the company and talking to someone in charge. It was a nightmare until we got the phone calls stopped.

We need to go after these companies that exploit telemarketers like Irene and violate the sanctuary of our homes.