Bruce Draney wrote in message ...
Mike Murray wrote:

On 25 Sep 2003 11:34:18 -0500, Bruce Draney wrote:

What most people haven't realized is that the government cannot afford
to prosecute no-call list violations by telemarketers which are certain
to occur.

Maybe they can't afford to prosecute *all* of them. But they can go
after the big ones -- the guys who have assets -- the fines are big
enough that these cases will pay for themselves.

I think I said that they would set a couple of examples and hope that
everyone else follows along. Do you suppose they'll be some loopholes
that telemarketers will find here? I just have a sneaking suspicion
they might, like calling from Canada or Mexico, or just off the coast of
the U.S..


Hmmm, but that might be a tad more expensive for telemarketers, if
they have to call from outside the US. On the other hand, perhaps
that's the trend: they can hire telemarketers from Pakistan, and pay
the callers pennies on the dollar. Halfway across the globe, the
callers would have to work the graveyard shift, but big deal.

Besides, in some way, I suspect that it would be easier to enforce
a ban against telemarketers from outside of the US. The phone
companies could simply trace the call, and block all further incoming
phone calls from that phone number.


How many federal prosecutors do you suppose the Bush
administration is going to put on prosecuting an accidental (or a
deliberate) no call list member being bothered?

How many prosecutors has he assigned to go after small pot growers?
They obviously won't do it on a onesie-twosie basis -- they'll go
after the egregious violators -- a thousand calls at ten grand a pop
-- pretty soon you're talking real money.

We'll just have to wait and see how much enforcement there really is.
I'm betting there will very little money or resource devoted to it. In
typical the federal government will pay lip service to the idea and gut
the funding for it for the most part. Judging by the present
administration's Education plan, which has virtually no funding to back
up its vast promises, I'd expect about the same level of financial and
personnel or less to be involved in this concept.


And how many telemarketers *pretend* to be market researchers? And
how many calls which appear to be "market research" really build
sucker lists of prequalified prospects that the telemarketers will
later zero in on?

This is a definite concern and one that bears watching.



Market researchers are not much different than telemarketers. They
use *my* private facilities, at *their* time and convenience, to
conduct activities for their own financial gain. If market research
really is a loophole, it's one that ought to be closed.

It won't be, because in many cases market research is essential for the
Federal government itself, for the political process and for the
economy.


Let private enterprise solve this. People who *want* to participate
in market research can enter their rates in a central database, and
the market researcher automagically gets billed when the call is made.

Not going to happen.


there are in fact many reputable telemarketing companies that
will comply with the law,

Good for them. They have access to the do-not-call list. They should
have no problem staying out of trouble.

There are also a lot of disreputable ones who won't follow it and will
never get caught or prosecuted.


while the swindlers and thieves will find ways to break or
circumvent the laws and stay one step ahead of the authorities who will
never have the money to prosecute them.

This is a problem of laws, swindlers and thieves in general.






Yes, there are all kinds of hoops though which we can jump, all kinds
of ways we can inconvenience ourselves, to save the telemarketer the
hassle of looking at a do-not-call list.

You jump through hoops all of the time for almost every other aspect of
your life as well, but if you want to rant at t-marketers feel free. If
they're the greatest of your worries, you're in pretty good shape.


One of the cheapest and easiest ways is the caller ID.

Caller ID costs about 5 bucks a month, and is often offered only as
part of a more expensive package. Why should an individual buy this,
if that individual has no other use for it?

Is this a serious question? $5.00 a month? Wow. Stop the presses,
$5.00 a month, how outrageous. Let's see I could stop most
telemarketing calls bothering my family for $5.00 a month, or I could
get the government to prosecute and fine all telemarketers calling me
for billions a year. Which is the better deal?

It wouldn't cost anything close to "billions a year".
And you can do the math: if 50,000,000 eventually want to get put on a
Do Not Call list, and they have to pay $60/year, that also works out
to Billions of dollars a year, just to "stop" "most" telemarketing
calls with Caller ID.

Of course, Caller ID only gives you the information on whether to
answer the call: you still have your phone ring.

Interestingly, almost ALL telemarketers block Caller ID
information, rather than identify the name of the company, and the
number from where they are calling.



So you're jumping through hoops on *every* phone call, peering at the
caller-id, waiting until the caller starts leaving a message before
picking up the phone. Incidentally, doesn't this constrain the type
of answering machine you can use? Maybe not every family wants to
leave a speaker phone on all the time. Maybe some people prefer to
use the central office answering facility, in which case, you'd have
to retrieve the call when it was done and maybe return it on *your*
nickel if was important.

Not at all. I'm not so anal, that I have to answer a ringing phone
just to see if it's an annoying telemarketer.


All this for calls you'd normally just answer. Jesus.

I have seen counter people waiting on me in person, tell me to hold on
while they answer the telephone so it doesn't ring more than three
times. Tell me about how anal-retentive Americans are about being a
telephone slave.


Because of time constraints, telemarketers and market researchers rely
upon the "McDonalds, drive thru" behavior of most Americans in the 21st
century. The corporate "secret" is that the phone is almost always
answered by the 5th ring if someone is home. Therefore most
telemarketing companies set their dialing systems to ring no more than 5
times before moving on to the next "customer". Time is money even for
telemarketers.

Wrong! There's no cost to them at all. The marketeer isn't just
sitting there waiting for you to answer. Most telemarketers use
predictive dialers. These machines dial several numbers concurrently
and pass control to the marketeer only when the phone is answered (or
some set number of rings have occurred). Get a lot of those calls
where no one is on the other end? That's probably a predictive dialer
where some other sucker answered just before you did, and the machine
gave *him* to the marketeer and discarded you.

Bzzzzt!!!!! Thanks for playing. What has he won Johnny? Telemarketers
are paid by the hour. They aren't sitting waiting for you to answer
your phone after it's rung 5 times. Whether they're dialing three
numbers or 100 numbers at once, they aren't letting yours ring for more
than 3-5 times I can guarantee you, unless they're dialing manually.



I can't believe you're serious. You're at your desk. The phone
rings, and you sit there like a gork watching it until it rings five
times, annoying everybody else in the house. And you lack the virtue
of patience if you fail to do this? I don't think so.

It sounds to me that you've conditioned yourself to be a phone slave,
which is why you and other Americans like you continually get ****ed off
at telemarketers. If you're sitting at your desk and picking up the
phone on the first ring, no wonder you want the government to protect
you from telemarketers. Good luck by the way.



Is it because a ringing phone is annoying? Is it because you can't
continue reading your paper or writing your document or whatever until
it's finished ringing?

Is it because you have conditioned yourself to be a slave to a ringing
phone? Ask yourself why if you don't want to be disturbed by a ringing
phone you don't read your paper in a room where there is no phone, or
why you don't turn off the phone until your paper reading is done?


Relax while the phone is ringing? Sure. Besides, if enough people
do this, won't they just set their predictive dialers to ring a while
longer?

Time and money are the two biggest reasons. Plus, they know that
people like you cannot let a phone ring more than 3 times before picking
it up, regardless of whether it's a meaningless or important call.


Nor do laws against theft protect against thieves. Or laws against
assault protect against bullies. But they kinda inhibit 'em from
getting on a good roll.

So your view is that the government must make your phone management
skills more efficient and that anything you, yourself might do to
prevent you from being harrassed by unwanted phone calls is jumping
through hoops.

Best Regards,

Bruce