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Comment by kposehn | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of criticism of this product by referencing it as a telemarketing solution - it is not.

These are not cold calls: they are inbound leads that you have to source and have permission to call. If someone fills out a lead form on your site and checks the “contact by phone” option, this allows you to scale a bit more rapidly in high-volume top-of-funnel lead gen where you are trying to filter out unqualified or low-value leads.

Edit: sueders101 pointed out that they reference cold calls. With the TOS in mind I bet that’s a copy mistake as they require permission to call berg secured before making a call. Thy definitely could use some copy updates and calling out security/privacy more clearly.

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"These are not cold calls"

When you hover over the solutions options they literally say

"Prospecting: We cold call businesses and generate new leads for you."

Fair. I was referencing the demo and the ToS makes it clear you must have an Established Business Relationship, which means I’m this case it wouldn’t be truly cold as there is a lead and permission to call involved.

"you must have an Established Business Relationship"

They say on the prospecting page:

"UPLOAD YOUR LIST: Upload a list of target businesses to call. We can help you finding one too."

It doesn't sound like you need an Established Business Relationship.

Yeah, it’s not terribly consistent what they require. I do agree they need to call it out more clearly :)

No, they say you need an EBR or other reason. In many jurisdictions, for B2B calls "it can be imagined that they might be interested in our product" is a valid legal reason to cold-call someone.

> they are inbound leads that you have to source and have permission to call.

How does Upcall verify this? Does their employee UI have a big red button that they have to hit every time the person picking up the phone says "Sorry, I've never heard of CLIENT_X", and after a certain number of "cold call alarms", the account is terminated?

That’s an excellent question and one I would expect and answer for posted pretty clearly on the site. Probably a similar process, and I would also expect some sort of stats around rejected calls akin to spam stats in email platforms like MailChimp.

They might offer that too, but they also fairly clearly advertise telemarketing approaches.

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