Clampdown on cold call companies unveiled by government | Hacker News Reader

Clampdown on cold call companies unveiled by government

bbc.co.uk

26 pointsedward48 comments

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My method is as follows:

- I don't have a landline phone

- If someone calls my mobile and they aren't in my address book, I just don't answer.

- If that number is withheld I especially don't answer

- If they leave a message I will listen to it and respond if necessary

- If the number is not whitheld but not in my phone book, I google it, and if it is a legitimate business, it will usually show a match on the company website. If I need to I'll call them back e.g. today I had the estate agent ring, but I didn't have their number saved so I didn't answer. I rang them back once I had googled their number

Lot of people get a lot of calls from abroad which come up as private number etc. Depends on your incoming call profile.

Same here. I love the Android feature that will display the company name (if it can find it/it's linked to a Google business listing) of whichever number is calling. Saves me Googling at least half the time.

This is my method, too. The only problem I have is that it seems about half the companies who cold call sales leads use some software that spoofs a local exchange, and I do generally answer the phone -- even when it's not one of my known contacts -- when it originates from my home area code. Not doing so risks missing calls from contractors, schools, kids' friends, my friends, etc.

The US Do Not Call list seemed pretty good at cutting the number of cold calls substantially. The remaining cold calls are clearly illegal (in the US). This situation seems vaguely like the Tragedy of the Commons to me. I've decided to listen all the way through the recording speech - these evil psychos can only have a finite number of interactive response units, so monopolizing one of the for as long as possible cuts down on the number of calls they can make. I also attempt to engage the human operators for as long as possible. The evil psychos making these calls clearly have a smallish number of human operators. Wasting their time is even more important. I've actually been able to transport my cell phone to the restroom and flush the toilet in a human operato's ear several time.

No, I don't think that the human operators deserve civility, manners or any kind of polite treatment. They know that what they do is at best marginally legal, and very probably illegal, yet the keep doing it. They've violated the social contract, not me. They can suffer through whatever they can tolerate.

I have been there, but I decided that the human operators were still human. So now rather than turning rage-monster at them, I take up their time trying to persuade them that they deserve a better job, that they don't have to waste their lives working as a criminal who lies to people for a living.

They're still human, but they also resist all attempts at my communicating anything other than "I'm a dope, and I'm falling for your scam." I've tried asking to be put on no-call lists, asking to be referred to supervisors, and telling them to quit before they're indicted. I mostly got instant hang ups. A few times, I got laughter. Now, I waste their time. I keep an expired Visa-brand gift card in my wallet so I can give them a credit card number that passes cursory checks.

Everyone should be wasting "Anne from Cardholder Services" time. The victim of the tragedy should be their commons, not ours. They are the lawbreakers, they are the deliberate bad actors.

ring ring

"Hello?"

[recording plays:] "Due to a change to the rules introduced by the government, you may be entitled to compensation for nuisance calls"

(stolen from https://twitter.com/rablivingstone/status/570496682829451264)

I had a call from someone claiming to be investigating nuisance calls, as we get a lot of nuisance calls I was quite happy to chat to them - then I realised they were actually selling a service that claims to cut down on nuisance calls... so I gave up at that point.

The Do Not Call database in the US has never been effective because the type of company making these spammy calls doesn't care if they are breaking the law. There is no enforcement effort to track them down.

It's exactly the same situation with the Telephone Preference Service in the UK in my experience. The only way I've managed to get these calls to stop is to get withheld numbers (ie callers with no or blocked Call ID) blocked at the phone company level - which usually incurs a monthly fee, of course...

Do you remember what things were like before the Do Not Call database? We would get one or more marketing calls a day on our home phone (landline). These days, maybe once a month.

I've been on it for years as well as the DNC database for caregivers of elderly patients with diminished capacity and I receive more than 5 calls per day.

It stopped the vast majority of cold calls from legitimate companies. So all that's left is people running scams who don't care about the law.

It seems as though at least for smart phones this could be easily solved through technological means similar to those used for screening email, something along the lines of a spam classification system.

I envision my phone having a white list of known good numbers, which would be allowed to cause my phone to ring like it does now; a black list of known bad numbers, which would be immediately dropped; and a catch-all handler for all other numbers, which would send the call to voice mail for easy manual classification into either of the other categories.

Why go for the technical option is the legal one is far more effective?

In my country hospitals (and so on call) from an "unknown" number. So blocking that is a bit dangerous. There's a general "do not cold call" list and if you get a cold call while being on that the company behind it can get a hefty fine per call that they make.

There's an government organization which checks if companies abide to this (and a few other things). They seem to enjoy going after companies and fining them. Which is probably why I don't get any cold calls.

Note: Obviously there are all kinds of rules, etc. E.g. once you add yourself to the cold call list, there's 6 week grace period (as companies are allowed to only update their do-not-call list every so often). Though at the same time, even if you're not on the country's do not call list you can still ask to be put on the list for the company calling you. It is mandatory for a company to do that. Else the company will get a fine. There's different rules for companies which have or had a business relationship with you.

While this will vary from country to country, at least here in the US there are several situations where the legal means are not more effective. The main one is scammers who just don't care, either because they're running a "hit and run" type of operation or because they're operating from overseas. Then there are classes of phone calls which are (again, at least in the US) exempt from the legal "do not call" rules: politicians making campaign calls, and survey firms, which the politicians use to determine who to bother calling. It's a nice loophole that they've constructed for themselves. Luckily it's only a problem for a few month every other year.

The US regulators are working hard at it, but it's a challenging problem. The robocalls I all get now are very good at masking where they are from; the humans you talk to know not to give away the name or location of the company.

For those interested in learning more, the FTC had a robocall summit a few years back and they recorded the webcast: http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/2012/10/roboc...

There was a lot of good technical detail on why it's now hard to track these people down.

I use Mr Number Blocker for this on android. You can whitelist / blacklist specific numbers, and set it to hang up or go to voicemail. There's also a crowdsourcing aspect, where after a certain number of people flag a number as spam, it shows up as "likely spam" when the phone rings. I believe you can have those go straight to voicemail as well.

You don't need an app. Just add a contact called "SPAM", and set it to go straight to voicemail. Then any spam numbers who call you, just add their number to your SPAM contact.

This article does not mention the Telephone Preference Service. It's a useful step to take.

The article doesn't mention the fact that most mobile providers in the UK have free numbers that you can forward spam texts to.

There's also a problem with a gap in the law that allows "genuine market researcher" to contact you to -- this loophole is used by some companies as lead generation.

I belong to the TPS, and I still get a dozen cold calls a day. When I ask where they got my details from they simply say it came up on their system. When I ask for their details they hang up. When I call 1471 it's an unlisted number.

Currently there is no viable way to prevent these calls, or to get off their lists.

Block withheld numbers?

Most of my family have withheld numbers to avoid giving them away to the people they legitimately telephone, so no, that won't work either.

That's what I did. Went from 1-2 nuisance calls per day (I mainly work from home) to none at all. It's just a shame BT charge money for this service.

Even if they don't hang up it's usually something like "your details were passed on from xyz corp and that's all we know". xyz corp is never anyone I've heard of, I'm assuming fictitious or xyz corp acquired my details from someone else.

I've seen plenty of reports suggesting that being on the TPS can actually increase the volume of nuisance calls you get (though so far never with solid, public data to support the claim).

I do know for a fact that although adding a number to the TPS is supposed to be permanent, I have reregistered the same number multiple times after being told that it was not currently registered.

Given that the phone companies seem remarkably inept at cracking down on this problem in any practically useful way and to accept no responsibility for it, we are looking at other solutions. For example, there's a device called trueCall that we've been thinking of buying -- the irony being that while it looks quite promising, we wanted to ask a couple of questions about the different models before spending that much money, and no-one answered their phone. :-)

trueCall seems to work well for me. I let all mobile calls straight through, and those from my local phone area and those where the people who ring me most live.

Everyone else gets asked to press '3' (say) to get through. I can imagine some issues - e.g. those automated calls that say your credit card's been used in Outer Mongolia, and I'm a bit concerned that the extra hurdle could be a problem in an emergency situation, but I haven't had a cold-call (on my landline) for 3 years.

Thanks for sharing. I hadn't realised it could do things like permitting all callers from a certain area.

For what it's worth, I've had the occasional issues with both business and personal cards being used abroad -- usually when someone forgot to tell the computer about the foreign travel they had been duly informed about weeks in advance -- but I have never had anything but a real person call and then, if I wasn't able to answer, leave a real message. I guess some places might use auto-diallers for this, but it doesn't seem to be the norm in the UK if my experience is representative.

Actually, an absurd proportion of these people call, and then if I am there to answer, the caller starts by announcing that they're from my bank/card provider and then immediately dives into "Before I can talk to you about this, I just need to ask you some security questions to confirm your identity...", but that's another story. :-)

You ask them for their business name. You then report them to TPS.

They won't give it until you're a long way through their script. They always try to deflect questions like that by telling you how wonderful they are, or what they're going to do for you. They know the risks of giving their business name too early, and craft the script accordingly.

There's also a problem with a gap in the law that allows "genuine market researcher" to contact you to -- this loophole is used by some companies as lead generation.

It's funny how political parties always seem to wind up exempt in election season, too.

The article actually mentions the TPS in the case study:

"But it was after he [Martin Shelley] registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) – a list of people who have indicated they do not wish to receive sales and marketing calls – that the number of unwanted calls increased."

Apparently it's not working as expected ...

Is the only real solution to only accept calls from a phone number whitelist?

The regulatory problem I can't work out how to solve is that of foreign companies attempting to scam people, e.g. the variations on "I'm calling from Microsoft, your computer has a virus..."

If you can only take action against companies based in your country, what's the next step?

So when does a "customer development call" become a cold call? As a small startup trying to talk to potential customers how does this affect me? All these books on startups talk about picking up the phone and talking to people.

Did you have a prior relationship with these people? Did they somehow indicate they would be involved in your marketing actions?

No? Then it's probably a cold call and you're just annoying people.

No? Then it's probably a cold call and you're just annoying people.

Sorry but this is naiive. Cold calling works, and not because you are bugging people. You know that "prior relationship" you mention? Well it has to start somewhere and a call is as good as any.

The problem is not that cold calling doesn't work, it's that I do not want you to cold call me.

If your definition of "works" is "is rewarding for the perp", then sure all sorts of things "work". Theft, fraud, and extortion, for example, all work wonderfully well -- for the mafia. Our laws are mainly about things that "work", because if they didn't work, people wouldn't do them enough to matter.

Your mistake is not accounting for the negative externalities. Cold calling and spam both can "work" for the sending party because it lets them find the very small proportion of people who they can sucker into whatever they're pushing. But they impose costs upon other people too, and for them spamming and cold calling definitely doesn't work. Which is why we took the time to outlaw both of them in the US.

sucker into whatever they're pushing

This is the same "If you build it they will come" logic that doom so many startups. The reality is that even if you have a perfect solution to someone's problem you still have to go sell it to them. Uber started with cold calls, so did many other successful startups. It's the lowest barrier to entry there is.

Lets also differentiate between b2b cold calls which is what I have in mind mostly, and b2c cold calling. I think the latter is probably magnitudes less effective and more "sleazy" than the former and there are better ways of targeting advertising at individual consumers at this point.

It is the same logic only if you believe there is no possible way to sell people other than cold calls. Otherwise it is different logic. But hey, nice straw man. Maybe you'll feel better if you attack it some more?

Your point that cold calling works is repetitive, and was previously addressed.

And of course you believe that the thing you did/want to do is less sleazy. All people doing sleazy things believe that whatever they're doing is in fact ok, or at least justifiable. That's what we humans are really good at: justifying our own particular bullshit.

Lots of things work, but not all things are legal or ethical. You don't have an automatic right to inflict yourself on others, or to take up the time of others. Learn to live with that and find something that works and is consistent with it.

If your call starts:

"Hello Mr Smith and how are you today?" or "...just a quick call" or "...just a courtesy call"

You are annoying people and should stop doing it.

What if it starts with something like?:

"Hi I am the founder of a company in your area which has a service that I think might fit your needs..."

"I sent you an email recently and wanted to see if you had a chance to look at it..." (assuming you sent them an email)

I feel like there is a way to cold call effectively by picking groups of people who you think would be more receptive and then approaching them as yourself. Aside from that I can't tell you how many first customers I have heard say something like: "they just kept bugging us, so eventually I just had to listen to what they had to say...and we loved it!"

Even if that is 1/50 it's still a huge win.

Well avoiding the opening lines that nearly all cold callers seem to use is going to be a plus. You might still annoy people but you may also get further through your pitch before the phone is slammed down at the other end.

Not sure where you got the idea that customer development calls should be cold calls.

When I teach this stuff, I encourage people to start with their social network and industry events so they can meet people in their target market. Then after you do a solid interview with them, it's pretty easy to say, "Who else in [target market description] should I talk to learn more? Will you introduce us?"

Customer development interviews go way better with an intro from a trusted source who has already vetted you.

(And for those not familiar with Lean Startup jargon, "customer development" is the process by which you figure out both who your market really is and what product will serve them. It is not a synonym for sales.)

We don't have a legitimate direct marketing industry. We just have a direct marketing lobby, hence the verbiage appeasing them.

Is it election time already?

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