Americans obsessed with preventing Cold Callers?

[mrjoe]

Why are people from the US so obsessed with trying to create innovative solutions to prevent Cold Callers, telemarketers & Scammers etc.  I was reading about someone who set up an Obi110 together with an Asterisk for the sole purpose of checking inbound calls online against lists of Telemarketers etc. and checking Cnames to filter out Companies offering services.
Is it really such a big problem there?

[JoeSchmoe007]

I wouldn't say obsessed but a lot of people are annoyed to a different degree, me included.
2 main reasons:

1) I don't want to be disturbed when I am at home unless a call is from someone I know. When you receive multiple calls during the day it gets annoying. Don't forget, all of these calls are dialed by computer that is programmed to hang unless human answers. So they really target A LOT of people and often ignore Do Not Call registry.

2) Because we don't like being scammed (does anyone? This is why your question seems so strange).

A lot of these calls are scams (you will find out you are overcharged or subscribed for some recurring charges that were never disclosed) or barely different from scams, because they want to buy what they are selling RIGHT NOW, which is made possible with popularity of credit cards as a mean of payment in USA. Problem is - even if what they sell is useful to you (which it isn't in 99% cases) you have no way to verify if what they are selling is what they say it is. There is no opportunity to research the product or find out if the price is reasonable.

It is much larger problem for businesses. The number of cold calls is much higher. Even if you have a receptionist or some other dedicated person in charge of the phone a lot of time is wasted for these cold calls. This is why it is important even for small businesses (or maybe especially for them, because a lot can't afford receptionist) to have some kind of telephone system - computer-dialed cold call will not press any buttons to reach somebody.

A bit off topic (for VOIP) but here in USA we also pay for incoming and outgoing calls on cell phones. As far as I know in all Europe only caller pays, not sure about other countries in the world. So it is especially annoying to receive these calls on cell phones.

[mrjoe]

Thanks for your response Joeschmoe007,

My question wasn't why do these calls bother people but that people go to such great length to block these calls, are there that many Cold Callers in the US.

In the UK it is usual to receive a call 3-4 times a month in the worst scenario.
My parents will receive a few times a year.

In Israel a Charity call will come in twice a month, Automated messages once a week.

I like getting calls from new people, the most I do is have a message announcing that I don't take calls from people who have withheld their number.

[JoeSchmoe007]

Then you just have no idea how it is here. In US several junk calls a day is pretty common for personal lines, even if registered in Do Not Call registry. If you donate to charity they often will give (or sell) you phone number to other charities and you will often be inundated with calls.

Even for small business it can easily be a dozen junk calls a day or more.

Now you probably understand why a lot of people are annoyed by these calls.

[CoalMinerRetired]

I'll jump in here to add obsessed may be too strong a description to describe the general population. But dislike with a passion is not over stating the problem.

Also take into account you are seeing a very narrow slice of that general population on here, people who like to tweak technology like the Obi devices, and adjust the intensity accordingly for those who frequent this website.

The tele-callers prey on peoples sympathies (usually elderly and the infirm) and they use loop holes in the consumer regulations setup to govern this. Example: My numbers are on the state and federal Do Not Call lists. Charities (and political calls) are exempt from the regulations. So every month or so I get multiple calls from someone who says "Hello Mr. CoalMiner, I'm calling for the ABC Township Policeman's Association fund...". The words up to "fund" are the exact words they use.  I live in ABC township.

Who doesn't want to help out the local police. But it isn't the actual police who are calling (I've asked them), it's some call center that has somehow contracted with the ABC Township Policeman's Association, scrupulously or otherwise (I'll suspect otherwise), and they'll give maybe 35% of what they take in to the ABC Policeman's Association, and the remainder goes to themselves.  Multiple this by The Sierra Club (relentless tele-charity, do not get on their call list), and in my case say ten other charities that I have no prior connection to, ... well, do the math.

It's now about to become 'get out the vote season', and I'll be turning on the Google Voice Audio Caller ID until after election day.

And one more point that just gets under the skin of anyone who knows about this whole sorry state of affairs. The local phone companies do nothing to stop this, and in fact they collect money from both ends: An incredibly high monthly fee for Caller ID and Caller Name (~$9.00 per month per landline, plus an additional monthly fee if you want to "subscribe" to anonymous call block) from me the subscriber, and on the other end from either the incoming call from a distant rate center, or from providing dial-tone if the call center is local (in the case of the police donation scheme, the call center is about 20 miles away). So the phone companies both promote this and charge fees to make it less intrusive/more user friendly. Fees that are outrageously high when compared to VoIP telephony. And the phone companies have been doing it for years and years. 

If the people who facilitated this "industry" were drawn, quartered and burned at the stake it would be too humane a way to treat them.

[Ostracus]

Amen to it all. And the nice thing for a change is that technology empowers the consumer to fight back against such abuses. It empowers them, why not us?

[pc44]

In the UK it is usual to receive a call 3-4 times a month in the worst scenario. [emphasis added]

Okay, well that helps explain things.  I know people who received between 12 to 20 telemarketing calls on a *daily* basis.  Granted, they had one telephone line that they used for both their home and their business, but that is still highly annoying!

In a moment, the rest of the story...

...and now, the rest of the story.

If you have a decent size family --and-- run your own business, you tend to be a busy person.  When you are a very busy person, you have days filled with important things to do and important phone calls to make or receive.  When you are a person in these situations, "annoying calls" are now causing you significant business and personal down time.  It can go a long way in hampering business efficiency/productivity.

We used to received probably 8 to 12 telemarketing calls on an average weekday.  Many times, these callers would call during the evenings when the chance of a person being at home was higher.  *Many* times, these calls came in during dinnertime.  Having to leave your meal only to be greeted by someone telling you about some great new sales product is not so nice on a repeating basis.  Now with more modern approaches, such as GV, the OBi, and others, this is not as much a problem.  Our daily telemarketing calls plummeted when we the U.S. released its Do Not Call Registry.  After that law was passed, signing up on that national Do Not Call Registry made a *huge* difference.

Bottom line... if you are a truly busy person, anywhere from 8 to 20 daily spammers can cause significant loss of time and business productivity.

pc44, Good day!

[mrjoe]

Yes, we'll uh, I see it is quite a serious issue in the US.

I would imagine the only way an individual could fight this is by using Google Voice to work together to block nuisance callers.

Gmail's pooling system is highly affective in battling Spam email.

I offer my utmost sympathies to those affected by this, It is extremely annoying.

[JoeSchmoe007]

I've never used Google voice - I use Anveo. They offer a lot of ways to set up your worklfow to help with this. If someone has it really bad you can use "Contact Check" control. You can set up Contact Groups and everyone in "Family" and "Friends" groups can be considered whitelisted and transferred to SIP device and then to voice mail. Same control can reject anonymous calls and anyone in "Black List" group. Everybody else can be forwarded directly to a voicemail or to a message "Please press 1 to connect your call, press 2 to leave a message". Robocalls will never get past a message and most likely will hangup on voicemail. In addition to this there is "Business hours" control that allows different logic during different days or time of the day.

[Lavarock7]

Let me add my 2 cents worth.

I bought a house which was rented previously. I believe the renter did not pay some of her debts. When collection agencies noticed the phone number was no longer valid, they did a criss-cross check and found another number at that same address. MY NEW NUMBER. They started calling me and asking for this woman. Although I told them I did not know her, they continued to call. They said that this number was the one she had given out. I told them they were lying as this was a new prefix which the phone company had just enabled in our area.

Then our little street got a name and my home address changed. The calls still came and the collection agencies now see this new number associated with a new address and say she gave them this address years ago, which didn't happen because the street name was never used before (we had t ocheck before naming it).

These collection agencies have been calling this number sometimes daily but at least every month for 12 years!

Telemarketers have called and I have reported them to the DO NOT CALL list of which I was registered thbe day it started. The number is in Hawaii but I get calls at all ties of the day and night. SOme use profanity and refuse to stop calling. When you look up their number in Google you see that hundreds of people have the same issues with these companies and they will not honor the DNC list or stop calling.

I get robo calls and because I listed that number on my internet domain registration, I get calls from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) scammers and people impersonating Google and Microsoft and so on.

! I finally dropped that phone number last week.

I changed all of my domain registrations to a Google number which goes directly to a recording that states "Due to the hurricane in the area you are calling, we are unable to complete your call as dialed". The call then goes to voicemail and I get a transcription of any message left via email.

I am unable to port numbers in Hawaii to Google (to go blacklisting) because Google does not support the 808 area code. My previous provide did not offer an easy way to block large numbers of phone numbers.

I am contemplating adding a "company name" to the publically visable domain registration so their mailings also state "I am junk mail". Then I can just throw that junk mail out.

So for those who wonder why some of us are so adament about blocking telemarketers and collection agencies and so on, I wouuld be happy t otell you the complete story. This was only the short version!

[JoeSchmoe007]

Lavarock7: you can use private Domain registration. Available with GoDaddy (my registrar), NameCHeap and other providers.

As far as spammer calls - if you want to do more about it look at what I described above about Anveo (one of my VOIP providers). My situation is nowhere near as bad as far as spam goes, so I don't use all these features but they do work.

[Ostracus]

12 years? That should be well beyond the statue of limitations.

[jimates]

12 years? That should be well beyond the statue of limitations.

That just means legally you don't have to pay. It doesn't mean they can't still try to collect.

They can even file suit, and the debtor will be burdens with having to get it thrown out because of the statute.

[Lavarock7]

Yes, it is beyond the statue of limitations but these bad debts get resold and these collectors are not the most honest people in the world. They hope that people will just pay if they harass them enough. They may have bought the debt for pennies on the dollar.

In any event, not my debt, not my number anymore and so, not my problem.

I also know about private domain registration, but I have 20 or so domain names and a business reselling domain hosting and e-commerce, etc. I refuse to pay to hide my telephone number. That is why I decided on a GV number that is published and correct and will email me a transcript, should these Bozos (note, Bozo is a registered trademark and yes, Willard Scott payed Bozo in Washing DC, but I digress), these idiots can leave a message if they want, but they probably won't.

You know, now that NerdVittles has a $35 PBX, perhaps I will get one of those and use it to host yet another "telemarketer torture phone queue" which is a dead end that does not have a call taker associated with it :-)

[Ostracus]

You know, now that NerdVittles has a $35 PBX, perhaps I will get one of those and use it to host yet another "telemarketer torture phone queue" which is a dead end that does not have a call taker associated with it :-)

Amazing what one can squeeze into a small package. We've come a long way.

[Rick]

The biggest issue is with the automated dialers and pre-recorded calls, with caller id not blocked but "spoofed" (displaying a false number), which offer to clean duct work or shampoo my rugs or ...  Even if the authorities go after them, they simply sprout up somewhere else.  And since they display a false number, it is hard to catch them.

RE: the charity that then rents your name out to other charities, you simply need to make sure that IF you donate to a charity you also indicate "DO NOT RENT MY NAME OR NUMBER TO ANY OTHER ORGANIZATION".  And make it clear that if they do you will never donate to them again.  

I tend to block any spoofed numbers once I realize what they are, figuring that someone may use it again and that the true holder of that number and I will never need to communicate. I also report every call via the FCC's complaint form.

If you have elderly relatives, you need to teach them what to do / say, and what not to do.  My father in-law insists that if he "pushes 1" as they instruct him to, he can tell them to not call again. I point out, in vain, that a) he's telling that they've got a potential live on to rent to others and b) that there is a very elderly gentleman living there (by his voice).  He fails to understand.

You can add elderly relatives to the DMA Choice as well as the DMA Deceased list to cut down on mailings which can prompt them to call someone and then start the cycle.  Getting callerid for them is a waste since they answer every call...  

[Fueler]

New OBI guy here.
This thread is an issue I have dealt with for a long time. I run a small business and it got to the point where I was getting 12 or more of "those" calls per day. It was getting to be where I didn't want to walk over and pick up the phone.
Step 1: Do not call list.  Might have worked a little for the first 6 months then it was back to full speed.
Step 2: Pay for caller ID.  Better but I still had to walk over and see who is calling. Not much of a time saver.

The #1 solution for me was a little program and modem.
http://www.imptec.com/callstation.htm

This deal turned out to be a god send. I could see caller ID, zap the caller, which added it to a "bad" list. Once on this list the caller never gets through again. software can be set up to give them a rude message, or a out of service message, or simply hang up. Either way I don't hear the ring and waste time walking over to see if I want to answer it.  I now have one heck of a list of bad guys. My own little DNA "do not answer" list.  It has lots of different ways to handle these things. Worth a look.

For those blocked IDs I have it play a recorded message that I made. "If you feel the need to hide your identity I don't need you as a client. Unblock it and call again please."

Here is another program I have been looking at that might be promising.
http://www.callclerk.com/

The #2 solution was to go VOIP and obi. In my case voip.ms.  This really cut it down to nothing.
The only issue was that I opted for a new number as I figured the bad guys would still not go away. It took some doing to get customers and family up to speed on the new number after so many years. Thanks to the internet that really only took a couple of hours and emails to accomplish.
I am sure that eventually the robo calls will find me but in the meantime it's pretty cool.

I eventually used the same equipment at home.

Dave