Comment by Vivtek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Vivtek | Hacker News Reader

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Ha, a couple of years ago I got one of those calls every day - finally I told them it was illegal, I was on the don't-call list at both the state and federal levels, and they should stop immediately.

The manager I talked to actually told me to get fucked, they'd keep calling if they wanted - and they did, too, sometimes three times a day. This went on for weeks; I'd dial 1 to connect to a person and lay the phone down, and finally they stopped (probably that particular guy got fired or something - I guarantee they have massive turnover).

This goes beyond just milking strangers for lots of money. This kind of racket attracts sociopaths who literally enjoy breaking the rules and knowing there's nothing you can do about it. I often have a hard time believing in the existence of actual scum, but then I just recall this episode. There are people in the world who do not buy into the narrative of working together for the common good.

It is music to my ears that the FTC has nailed some of them down enough to make them hurt. It has made me very happy.

I had a summer job in a telemarketing sweatshop and I learned that you should be polite to telemarketers.

At the time, at least, the company I worked for had two "call back later" lists. If the telemarketer didn't reach a human (because the phone was unanswered or went to voicemail), the phone number would go on a "call back next week" list. If the telemarketer reached a human who said "no thanks", the phone number went on a "call back in six months" list. However, if the telemarketer reached a rude human, their phone number would go on the "call back next week" list, just to spite the person. :\

Also, you should ask to be added to their "do not call" list. If you ask to be removed from their list, they may oblige, but they are likely to remove you from "that" list and conveniently not bother removing you from the master list.

Sure, you should be polite to the Mafia, too - that's an awful nice shop you have here. But in this case, I was polite.

I don't need to be added to their do not call list. Indiana and the United States have do not call lists that it is illegal to violate, and I was on both. They were breaking the law with utter impunity.

But the point I really wanted to make was they were breaking the law stupidly. It was obvious they'd never make a dime off me - so making me suffer at their own expense was stupid. I detest stupidity, which, arguably, makes me a very unhappy man most of the time.

> I had a summer job in a telemarketing sweatshop and I learned that you should be polite to telemarketers.

Well, polite and merciless. Anybody doing telemarketing today is a criminal, so they get zero mercy from me. My favorite approach is to let them stew for a bit and then ask, "Hey, does your family know you lie to people for money?" It almost never fails to get people upset. The truth: it stings.

Them putting me on the "call back again" list isn't a problem for me; it's an opportunity to make another parasite's day more difficult.

For the record, pretty much everybody who mentioned the topic at the FTC robocall summit believed that there is no such thing as an internal "do not call" list anymore.

After having a "sales" (read: 95% telemarketing, 5% Misc tasks) job this past summer I can agree with much of what your saying. I gave it a couple months, then I quit (for various reasons, not really worth listing).

The thing is, as much I as absolutely hate saying this completely over-used phrase: the economy is shit. I am personally familiar with 100% commission based telemarketing, which amounts to complete shit, for those of you keeping score at home. Though, supposedly some telemarketers get paid hourly. Either way, its a crappy job but one that people are going to line up to fill so long as its the only job in town.

That's my take.

So few people that I would actively wish ill on, but the people running this operation are on that very short list.

The problems you describe are the ones that have been solved over and over again where a frontier has been exploited by scammers: regulation and central control of the infrastructure. Something tells me that telemarketers weren't so much of a problem before AT&T was broken up in the early 80s.

That may also have had something to do with long distance charges that, in today's dollars, were roughly five thousand dollars a minute (to hear my parents talk about calling my friends in the next town, anyway).

Yes, deregulation had many market effects. Positive exceptions prove the rule no more often than negative ones, and (re)regulation of the telco industry on the telemarketing front does not return us to the price-setting ways of long-distance in the past.

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