The phone has been ringing a lot lately at This D*mn House. It’s a combination of telemarketers and wrong numbers.
The same lady who thought the mother was her sister called again. Poor thing. It seems she’s transposing the first three digits of the number so she keeps getting us instead. That’s mildly amusing. The telemarketers on the other hand … not so much.
It started out a month or so ago where someone claimed to be a “customer service” representative from some unnamed company and asked for me by name. Unfortunately, I was never home when these calls came. And they wouldn’t leave a number for me to call them back so I couldn’t call them and say, “STOP CALLING ME!” That went on for about a week.
After a day or so’s respite, you’d pick up the phone and here something like: “This is an important call. Hi! You, too, can make thousands of dollars at home every month. Just call xxx …” I hate those things. If the call is so damn important, why is it a taped message and not a live person?
Simple enough. You just hang up, right? Well, then they call multiple times a day. And then, the message starts getting left on the answering machine. Apparently, Hell hath no fury like a telemarketer scorned.
I let all that go. That was a mistake. I should’ve written the number down. Now that I want their number, they’ve shifted tactics yet again. There’s no longer any message.
The phone rings. You answer it. And nothing. Silence. We’re now part of someone’s daily/weekly call quota. And it’s annoying as hell. The mother says they start between 8:30 and 9 every morning. There’s usually another round between 4 and 7 p.m. A week or so ago, we even got one at 10:55 p.m.! That’s not only ridiculous, I’m pretty sure that it’s also against the law.
You can’t *69 them to get a number and the phone company is no help. We’ve been on a “do not call” list since they were initiated so I’m not sure that even did any good.
Suggestions anyone?
A non-professional,faux home improvement blog dedicated to the insane yet diligent do-it-yourselfer,thoroughly peppered with random views and thoughts from me
11 comments:
I'm on do not call also. I've had a couple of instances of clearly crooked companies calling and calling.
The first one used a bogus number by fooling callerid, which apparently is easy to do, according to the web. (If you get a number, try googling it, you will likely find many similarly steamed people complaining.) Telling the human who eventually comes on the line if you respond to not call you does no good.
The good news is that eventually the calls stop. Whether they actually give up or the feds get them, I dunno.
As I understand it, the silence is because they have auto dialing machines that guess how many calls to place. If the humans in the call center fall behind, the machine keeps dialing and anyone who picks up the phone for those calls is left with silence.
We have caller id and if the system can't register the number that's being called from - the call does not go through.
You may want to see if your do not call list has expired. We started to get calls again so J re-signed us up online. No calls anymore...
If you have caller id, write down the phone number and do a search on Google. Usually the company will pull up because there are entire websites devoted to people reporting telemarketers (I discovered this when my fax number made it's way on to some marketing list). Then send that info. in a quick email along with the time/date they called & assurance you are on the "do not call" list you to your Attorney General's office. The calls stop pretty quickly after that :-) It is very satisfying.
Uggh! I had a few of those come through for about a week on my CELL phone. VERY annoying. I hope you can stop it.
Tell them to hold on a minute then put the phone in a drawer and go watch TV.
How annoying! We get these on the non-emergency line at the fire department. For about a week we got one that began, "This is your captain calling..." and then had the sound of a ship's horn.
I'm glad Karen Anne explained the silent calls--I was wondering about those. Thanks!
Thanks for all the great suggestions, everyone! I found out that even though I very much registered us a few years back, we're apparently NOT registered. Took care of that again today.
It's good to know we're not alone!
Mark -- Sorry that Blogger is dealing you fits. Appreciate your patience and persistence as I'm obviously graced by your presence.
We dropped the land line all together and only have two cell phones. Not sure how the mother would feel about that though.
I had this problem last year, some doe-doe gave my number to an online credit approval company, and the calls never stopped. Blocking didn't stop them, because they called from a different number every time. Asking them nicely didn't stop them, not answering didn't stop them. Then when she was turned down for credit and the predatory lenders started calling, I changed numbers. That worked for a while, but now someone else has this number. It is really getting old...
Yep - chuck the land line. When we moved to AZ 3 years ago - we just never got a land line...and honestly, we really don't have a need for it. We have 2 cells, so we just never got the hard line. Love it.
Post a Comment