How One Man Turns Annoying Cold Calls Into Cash 227
First time accepted submitter georgeaperkins writes "A man targeted by marketing companies is making money from cold calls with his own premium-rate phone number. So far he's made £300 profit following a £10+VAT initial investment. The premium rate regulator has 'strongly discouraged' the practice, as it violates the code of practice. Nevertheless, the novel idea is sure to resonate with everyone worn down by mindless cold calling!"
So Full Of Win! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is epic win.
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It's just a shame he could only make 7p/minute from it. What happened to £1/minute premium rate lines?
By the way, my free time is worth approximately £100/minute, in case anyone wanted to call me about PPI insurance.
Re:So Full Of Win! (Score:5, Informative)
It's just a shame he could only make 7p/minute from it. What happened to £1/minute premium rate lines?
This isn't a new trick to me since I work for a telco that provides the infrastructure for a lot of these cold callers, I've seen it before.
The premium rate 09 lines you are talking about are separately regulated and abuse is prosecuted. However the guy missed an opportunity here. He should have actually chosen an 070 number which is allocated by Ofcom for use of Personal Numbering Services, these can cost 50p - £1 to call. But since they start 07 most people think it's just another mobile number.
I think the rigged call in shows kill most of the (Score:2)
premium numbers.
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Fantastic, how do I sign up? £1 is only 1/100th my normal rate but still better than 7p.
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For my free time, yes it is. I consider cold calls to be my out-of-hours contract rate.
Definition of Abuse (Score:2)
The premium rate 09 lines you are talking about are separately regulated and abuse is prosecuted.
The only abuse here is the cold-calling (I am, of course, writing from an ethics point of view, which should not be confused with the legal or telco views.)
Re:Definition of Abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, as it says in TFA, the guy now "welcomes cold calls". I can see the point of slugging cold-callers with what is effectively a "fine", but once you go to the extreme of extending unsolicited calls just for the revenue, then that is just profiteering.
I am cool with that. If they do not want to pay him for his time they can choose to not call him.
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Re:So Full Of Win! (Score:5, Informative)
It's just a shame he could only make 7p/minute from it. What happened to £1/minute premium rate lines?
Actually, going for a cheaper rate is a smart move. A lot of companies block outgoing calls to >=£1/minute numbers, but something in the region of 10p/minute could slip through those filters....that allows him to get - and make money from - calls that he might not get if he'd gone for a more expensive line. And yes, I agree - epic win
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It's just a shame he could only make 7p/minute from it.
7p per minute is 60 x 7 = £4.20 an hour (US $6.52). That's only two-thirds of the UK national minimum wage of £6.19 and below even the lowest US minimum wage of $7.52.
Of course, if he could leave them hanging on the phone at that rate, or not bothering him, that'd be different.
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I often tell them I'm off to get whomever they claim to be calling, then get busy, back to doing whatever it was before the interruption. For that level of service, $6.5 is almost reasonable.
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You meant your answering machine's time, right? And with phone lines being digital nowadays, is there some reason you can't get, say, 1000 numbers all connecting to the same machine configured to pick up and slam immediately? Maybe something running on a Rasberry Pi...
Billing bill collectors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Code of practice? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Code of practice? (Score:5, Funny)
Comparing regulators to prostitutes is really unfair to prostitutes.
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taking pot-shots at the monumentally, epically difficult jobs of regulators is lazy comedy.
/ no, i am not a regulator, but I know what they do.
Re:Code of practice? (Score:5, Insightful)
taking pot-shots at the monumentally, epically difficult jobs of regulators is lazy comedy.
/ no, i am not a regulator, but I know what they do.
I would have more sympathy if the regulator's response to flagrant law-breaking wasn't always simply to write a "stongly worded" letter to the company responsible, reminding them of their legal obligations. I dunno, but if I personally broke the law, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get a letter reminding me that what I did was illegal and told not to do it again, especially if I'm doing the law breaking on a large and organised scale...
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They just haven't noticed he's a person not a business.
If you personally broke the law, you get bubba up inside you for five to twenty years.
If a business does it on a large and organized scale, bad, bad business. shouldn't do that. Feel bad. Feel bad? Good, we're done here, you can keep doing it now. Campaign contributions maybe? awww, so sweet, thank you.
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Easy, he can start a business named "Fuck You Cold Callers, Inc".
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taking pot-shots at the monumentally, epically difficult jobs of regulators is lazy comedy.
/ no, i am not a regulator, but I know what they do.
Presumably they regulate...
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What regulators do, is get captured.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture [wikipedia.org]
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We all know that government workers are shit. Sometimes they are government workers because they are shit and sometimes government work turns them into shit.
Either way you end up with really expensive and intrusive shit.
Sticking it to the little guy. (Score:3)
Personally I'm bothered that it bothers them. Obvisouly there is no rule yet that you can't use premium call services to get paid by telemarketeers because they are just people. The regulator seems to think that it's wrong that telemarketeers are compensating him for wasting his time. Why? They are a bunch of corporate sellouts thats why.
Conversation (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm calling because I'm selling this great new product that can save you time and money."
"Now that sounds very interesting! Could you hang on for a moment, I'll be back in a minute."
** leaves phone off hook **
Re:Conversation (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, premium rate phone number or not, if this is how ALL people treated markteers, then there would be no more cold calling.
Quite simple if you think about it.
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as TFA says, after implementing this the number of cold calls dropped from 30 per month to 13.
The regulator says you have to be transparent about the cost, so personally, I'd always make sure I read out a pre-written information sheet that informed the caller that he was being charged, and why, and what my policies about charging were, and how they didn't impact on the rights of the caller, and... well you get the idea :)
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That's what my dad does. He doesn't say "hang on a minute", when they start their spiel he puts the phone down and when it finally goes BEEP BEEP BEEP he hangs it up.
I don't have a landline so I get few of these. I just curse them in the vilest language for calling cell phones when it may cost the person they're calling. I never leave my cell # with any commercial entity, but leave my work # instead. Not sure what I'll do when I retire.
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Let them know that your number is 966-gay-pr0n (966-429-7726). You weren't looking for a cut of the fees were you?
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How does 0 translate to 2?
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Rounding!
cheers,
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If this became the norm the cold call lobby would influence their legislators to force the telcos to give them an exception.
Re:Conversation (Score:5, Funny)
I send back an email to confirm to the spammers that this is an active email account
FTFY
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Since the "From" address rarely is the true spammer's address, the answer mail will not inform the spammer about anything. If the mail address works, it will likely go to someone completely unrelated.
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Re:Conversation (Score:5, Funny)
I started doing this after getting a dozen Vodafone marketing calls. Except instead of just leaving the phone off-hook, I said "please hold while I transfer you" and then treated them to an endless random shuffle of Never Gonna Give you Up, Friday, Trololo, Caramelldansen, and Nyan Cat, played via a voice modem.
They stopped calling after they got that a couple of times.
Re:Conversation (Score:5, Interesting)
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I left the phone 'off the hook' once after I had said "no thanks, not interested" 3 times. Half an hour later I get a call from my mom saying this guy had called several people with the same last name because he thought something had happened to me.......
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We have some inbound call centers {customer service and tech support} and some of our people left when another company opened an outbound sales center in the area thinking they could make more on commission. After two or three months they all wanted to come back about half were told no.
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Yep. Because someone making minimum wage for 15 hours a week because they grew up in poverty and have no skill set doesn't deserve to be considered a human. Someone who can't find work anywhere but a temp agency and gets completely exploited as the company they're being contracted out to doesn't have to abide by the usual labor laws is most certainly not to be considered human.
When I order a burger from McDonalds, I'm ordering it from nigger-cattle. Apes. Certainly not humans.
Fuck off, ass hole.
Re:Conversation (Score:5, Insightful)
Some poor people become pot dealers, some become telemarketeers. The difference between those two is that there is an actual demand for the services of the first.
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are you talking about the military? law enforcement? prison guards? And those are just the obvious ones -- really there are a lot people in jobs where they get paid "for causing people harm".
The fact that this tripe got modded insightful is even worse than the post itself.
In the US, unless it is an illegal operation, odds are very good that the cold caller is a telco employee. For Sprint, et all, its just another service they offer: low paid "employees" who only keep the "job" until they can get something b
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Or transfer them to a recording of you saying, "Ok, I'm back!" followed by silence interspersed with an occasional "Ah" or "uh-huh" or "yes, I see...."
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You probably don't want a 'yes' in there unless you want them recording you agreeing to something.
and why not? (Score:3)
Anyone understand how this violates the 'code of practice' and if such a violation is just frowned upon or is actually illegal ?
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Premium numbers must always be accompanied by pricing information (consumer protection laws). This guy probably just puts his premium number into forms without giving pricing information.
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Re:and why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
the forms don't have a space for the prices. They don't care about the price.
Then it would be against the code of practice to put your premium number on such a form.
Still... if it wasn't _your_ number, then I guess you couldn't get into trouble. You wouldn't receive a cut, but the idea of them trying to sell something to the girl on the end of the "naughty nun spank hotline" might give you a smug sense of satisfaction.
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Re: and why not? (Score:2)
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the forms don't have a space for the prices. They don't care about the price.
Then it would be against the code of practice to put your premium number on such a form.
Still... if it wasn't _your_ number, then I guess you couldn't get into trouble. You wouldn't receive a cut, but the idea of them trying to sell something to the girl on the end of the "naughty nun spank hotline" might give you a smug sense of satisfaction.
So just pair up with a buddy. You put his number on forms, and he puts yours.
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So just pair up with a buddy. You put his number on forms, and he puts yours.
How does that fix anything? Your number is still getting dispersed into the wide, wide world of telemarketers. It's just your buddy doing it, instead of you.
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It could be argued that I don't have to tell you that you will be charged for calling a number that isn't mine.
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In most EU countries this information has to be provided when calling the number. When I call a 0900 number I always get a tape "this number costs X cents per minute plus possible airtime on your mobile". When you hang up when the tape plays you're not charged.
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then just put the pricing information on the form, anywhere you like, maybe on the back or in the margin.
If the company wants to transcribe that into a computer system and discard the pricing info, that's their choice. And if they want to sell on your number to other marketing companies, that's their lookout, not yours (best to include a disclaimer saying they cannot do this, then its a potential lawsuit too!)
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0844 is national rate, not premium. Our office number is one digit away from the Maplin number.
You can get a bit of revenue from an 0844, we don't from ours, but we get it for free as a SIP trunk and we get pretty much free outbound calling. We don't use phones much anyway really, nasty noisy things.
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Yes, because I RTFA. Try it.
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Where is my "+5 Underrated" mod when I need it?
Re:and why not? (Score:5, Interesting)
Businesses have often lobbied for codes of practice to be unenforceable so that nothing comes of them if they breach them so I doubt this is illegal, he'll just get a telling off from the regulator - as if he gives a shit.
It breaks the code of practice supposedly because you have to list pricing information alongside premium rate numbers and when he fills in the forms for his phone number etc. there is no form field to do this.
But I'm not convinced the code even applies, because the pricing information is meant for consumers and he's only giving these details to businesses who tend not to be covered by consumer protection laws (they're not protected by the sale of goods act for example).
I think this is more the regulator trying to avoid a headache than him actually doing anything wrong. I'd be surprised if any enforcement could actually be taken against him successfully which is presumably why the regulator has said "We advise against this" rather than "We're going to have a word with him and make him stop because he's breaching the code" - I suspect they're "advising" and not "acting" because there's actually fuck all else they can do about it but we'll probably find out before long.
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The summary is misleading. In the BBC article, the regulator is claiming anyone who does this will be liable IF they breach the code ("Premium rate numbers are not designed to be used in this way and we would strongly discourage any listeners from adopting this idea, as they will be liable under our code for any breaches and subsequent fines that result.").
I've done the same for years (Score:5, Interesting)
The only difference is that I don't get a cut of the call costs, I just wanted a way to give a telephone number on websites which comes through to my mobile phone but could easily be rerouted to voicemail off when the frequency of spam calls gets too high.
Family and friends all get my real number while all companies get the forwarding number so I know that sending everything from the forwarding number to voicemail isn't going to affect people I actually want to talk to.
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Clear something up? (Score:3, Interesting)
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"I don't know this number, fuck that!"
Re: Clear something up? (Score:2)
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Re:Clear something up? (Score:5, Informative)
For landline phones in the US, the recipient does not pay unless they have a toll-free number (e.g. a 1-800 number). There's no connection fees for receiving a call.
Mobile phone numbers in the US are no different than landline phones for the calling party: there's no extra fee or anything for calling a mobile number. Calling a mobile costs precisely the same amount as calling any other phone number in that area code. The person with the mobile phone will be charged on a per-minute basis (unless they have an unlimited calling plan or it's during the "free nights and weekends" time that many plans offer) regardless of whether they are making or receiving a call.
This is different from, say, Europe, where mobile phones are assigned numbers in special mobile-only prefixes. The person calling a mobile phone pays a slight premium, while the person receiving a call on their mobile pays nothing.
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This is different from, say, Europe, where mobile phones are assigned numbers in special mobile-only prefixes. The person calling a mobile phone pays a slight premium, while the person receiving a call on their mobile pays nothing.
Yes, but at least here in Norway it's only cheaper to call a landline from another landline as the cell phone operators only offer you one price per minute for both. This means there's no incentive to have a landline, you can't control how others can be reached (so people prefer the cell phone for convenience) and you pay nothing to recieve either way. Result: 5.7 million cell phones (113% coverage), a total of 1.5 million fixed lines of which 0.5 are broadband phones and 1.0 genuine landlines (PSTN/ISDN).
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"Yes, but at least here in Norway it's only cheaper to call a landline from another landline as the cell phone operators only offer you one price per minute for both."
I'm from Europe too I'm paying 49€ for unlimited data and calling to all operators and landlines. Ditto for SMS and MMS.
And the latest iPhone is included, since the family decided on a common phone OS against my wishes, but what can you do. (girls:-) At least we all got the TomTom application for the price of one that way. Since roaming i
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Wait what!?
Your mobile numbers have geographic area based prefixes?
They didn't used to. Formerly they would create new prefixes and hand those to cellular companies. But now we have number portability. You can take your land number to a cellphone, or maybe even go the other direction. I don't care enough to know because I don't consider the phone to be the best way to reach me.
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But this is not the reason why you are charged to receive a mobile call. You are charged to receive a mobile call (unless you have unlimited or in a free period) because you are using the mobile network. If you don't want to pay for that, do not answer the call.
Re:Clear something up? (Score:5, Informative)
Your mobile numbers have geographic area based prefixes?...what part of "mobile" did you guys not understand?
People in the US generally aren't getting charged for calling different area codes. I suppose some people still get "long distance charges", but most people are in a plan where they only get charged for calling a different country, and even then sometimes they can call Canada for free or something. To a large degree, the "area codes" are being used now just to allow for more numbers.
In fact, lots of younger people don't have landlines, and only have mobile phones, and they try to keep their number throughout their lives. If you live in a major city, a lot of people you meet will have phone numbers from all over the country. The "area code" is no longer a good indicator of where you actually live.
Re:Clear something up? (Score:4, Informative)
ObXKCD: http://xkcd.com/1129/ [xkcd.com]
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Re:Clear something up? (Score:4, Informative)
The FCC set aside areacodes for mobile phones, but somewhere along the line, they were discontinued as "prejudicial".
There was also a block of areacodes set aside for non-geographic personal numbers, but there was zero interest in them, because they gave you and your callers the worst of all worlds... you were charged for incoming calls as though it were a toll free number, and people calling you were charged as through they were making the most expensive domestic long-distance calls possible.
I remember that sometime around the mid-90s, there was a bug in the ESS switching software used by BellSouth (probably others too) that allowed you to create a chain of adhoc-forwarded numbers that began with a toll-free 800 number, and ended with a local premium-rate 976 number, because there was no control in place to stop you from doing it, and the 976 billing logic charged the originator of the call rather than the forwarder.As far as I know, the practice was never actually approved, and people who did it ended up getting the money taken away from them.
In the US, a leading '1' has ALWAYS signified your understanding that the number dialed isn't a local call, and might not necessarily be free. Back when areacodes always had 0 or 1 as the second digit, never as the first digit, and exchange codes (the 3 digits after the areacode) could not have 0 or 1 as the second digit, it worked something like this: Assume two Miami phones having numbers 305-222-2222 and 305-333-3333 and a Key West phone having number 305-444-4444:
Back when 7-digit dialing was allowed, 305-222-2222 could cal 305-333-3333 by simply dialing 333-3333. No 0 or 1 within the first 3 digits, so 305 areacode was implied, as well as its status as a free call. However, if 305-222-2222 called the Key west number, he had two choices: 1-444-4444 or 1-305-444-4444 (leading 1= non-free, no 0/1 second digit implies 305 areacode)
When 10-digit dialing was implemented to allow 786 areacode to be overlaid on Miami, 11-digit permissive dialing was enabled to avoid breaking compatibility with software and dialers that automatically added a leading '1' to any 10-digit phone number (yes, there were quite a few). So, 305-222-2222 could dial 305-333-3333 by dialing EITHER 305-333-3333 OR 1-305-333-33333. However, for calls to Key West, the 1 was absolutely required, so 305-222-2222 dialing 305-444-4444 would get a recording that the number was not local & required a 0 or 1 before dialing.
Cell phones threw a new monkey wrench into the equation, because they (usually) had much larger "local" calling zones. For example, if you were a Sprint customer, everything from Orlando south to Key West was classified as a "local" call, including numbers outside your area code. So 305-222-2222 could dial 407-934-7639 without the leading 1, since to a Sprint customer who was present within the switching area of the number being called, it WAS a local call. It technically incurred per-minute airtime charges, but didn't incur additional long-distance.
Where things got ugly was when you called people who were visiting with a mobile phone from another area. I don't think many people really understand what the billing logic was, because it wasn't a common scenario until the point when most mobile phones started to have the entire US as a local calling zone anyway. As I understand it, behind the scenes, if a Sprint customer in Miami called a Sprint customer from California who was in Orlando, Sprint's network would recognize that the caller and target were both handled by the Orlando switching center and complete it as a "local" call (even if the caller didn't have free long-distance anyway), but a landline phone (or non-Sprint mobile phone) in Miami would have gotten charged for the call to California, because their carrier would have terminated the call to Sprint's switching center in California, and Sprint itself would have transparently connected it to their Orlando switching center behind the scenes.
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The optional "1" at the start of a US phone number is the country code. It's generally written as "+1" outside the US, but we just slap a "1" onto the front of the number. It is no longer required when dialing from within the US for any reason. It used to be the "long distance" digit, and used to be required if you were calling outside your local area (as defined by your regional Baby Bell). Largely, the leading 1 is ignored.
The area code is a geographically allocated set of ten million phone numbers. It is
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Except there's no premium rate to call the cell phones. So that extra charge is just applied to the recipient of the call instead of to the dialer. It all roughly evens out.
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In the US, you pay for calls made and received (all part of your call allowance). In the UK, anyone calling you pays, after all, why should you pay for them to get in touch with you, you didn't ask them too. A far better way to handle it. Alas, in the US, you get charged both sides of the equation because... they can.
While that is true the reality is most consumers don't have to worry about charges because of all the "free minutes" exceptions. With free nights, in network and out of network calling not charged minutes, rollover minutes, etc. (depending on the carrier) most caller's calling patterns mean they probably don't use much of their base minutes and probably should check their usage and lower their plan tier.
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In the US, you pay for calls made and received (all part of your call allowance).
That depends on your carrier and plan. Some charge for all minutes used, some give you a number of "free" minutes. The one I'm on is a flat $40 per month, no limits on anything except I'm not allowed to tether..
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Don't answer the phone then.
I've never understood the concept of making other people pay because I want the convenience of a portable communication device.
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> A far better way to handle it.
15 years, I might have agreed with you. The upside of the American billing model is that it put direct competitive pressure on phone companies to make incoming calls (or at least their first minute) free, and to create calling plans with thousands of minutes, free nights/weekends, or outright unlimited airtime. The net result is that most Americans with normal mobile phone service never pay for airtime above and beyond what's included, but in Britain people are still force
Cold calls (Score:3)
If human, ask them how they got the number and if I had previous business relationship in the past. Most collections are illegal, they will hangup immediately never to call again, because these words mean trouble to them.
Robots: Reported to the FCC, everytime.
It could be worse for the telemarketers. (Score:3)
.
Cold/robo callers made me a jerk on the phone (Score:2)
I used to be pretty patient, but after getting hammered with them for the first 3-4 years after I bought my house, I developed terribly rude phone etiquette. Just this morning, I got probably the 20th call from a "doctor's group" trying to sell me chiropractic services after I've told them each time "no, please remove me from your calling list". I think that's the biggest annoyance. People I've never had business with, told 10 times "I'm not interested" will continue to call every month or two.
One trick
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"Every talent show *does* declare, however, with a "Calls from mobiles may cost *considerably* more". "
But they _tell_ you to call, while he does the contrary.
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Good requirement. When I'm paying a premium rate billed per minute, I really want to have to spend 20-30 seconds listening to a recorded message telling me how much I'm paying...
In the UK, the 0845, 0870 and 0871 prefixes all have fixed costs. The exact cost of calling them depends on your phone company - it does me absolutely no good to be told how much it would cost me to call the number from a BT landline, because I have never had a BT landline.
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Good requirement. When I'm paying a premium rate billed per minute, I really want to have to spend 20-30 seconds listening to a recorded message telling me how much I'm paying...
Might differ per country, but in my country, that message must be free by law, so you are only starting to pay after it has played.
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Thats a good thing isn't it?
Surely the point it to stop the marketing calls, the making money off them is just a side benefit.
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" I do get a few calls from companies"
You can never truly opt out of telemarketing calls. As you point out, they will call even if it is against the law, and they will find ways around the law. So, given that they are going to call you anyways, why not have them call a number that makes them pay you money?
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We Americans get to enjoy a fluke of the telephone system. Canada and the US are the same country, as far as the telephone system is concerned.
So when we sign up for the US equivalent of Telephone Preference Service, we still receive cold calls. The calls are routed through Canada, so they are outside US jurisdiction and "you are breaking the law" really doesn't work.
Canadians get the joy of cold calls routed through the US to bypass their equivalent of Telephone Preference Service.
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You are clearly not on the right lists. Believe me, once your number gets on one of those lists, and you're getting half a dozen calls a day from random companies, all intent on taking money off you and wasting your time, you'll think differently over what is "necessary".
You may even find your opinions on capital punishment suddenly become a whole lot more medieval.