Get back at telemarketers!!!!

[videoholic]

American Teleservices Association: (877) 779-3974
Dave Barry Column Gives Telemarketers Headaches

POSTED: 10:28 a.m. EDT September 11, 2003

MIAMI -- Now it\'s the telemarketers who are refusing to answer their phones, thanks to a weekend column by Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry.

The American Teleservices Association was targeted by Barry in his Aug. 31 column. He urged readers to call the ATA and "tell them what you think" about telemarketers.

Thousands have done so, forcing the association to stop answering its phones. Callers now hear a recording, which says that because of "overwhelming positive response to recent media events, we are unable to take your call at this time."

ATA director Tim Searcy said the added calls will be costly to his group because of toll charges and staffing issues. Barry\'s only response is to sarcastically say he feels "just terrible, especially if they were eating or anything."

American Teleservices Association: (877) 779-3974


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Dave Barry\'s columns are great. Any of you read them?  He\'s a funny funny man.

Can us sexy Euro\'s phone them ?

I mean i would like to know what they would make of my Glaswegian accent.

oh so it IS\'NT a phone sex chat line :shy:

i remeer when we used to get the same company ring us all the time,and we had to tell them so many times there is no mr wilson here, as for some reason they always asked or him, pisses yu off after a while

[GmanJoe]

An update. (PLEASE LIC....I know this is an old thread that I\'m bringing back up which you will lock coz you said so in the last old thread I brought up....and I know how much you despise me coz I look better than you ....just don\'t delete this portion)

By Dave Barry
Sunday, October 12, 2003; Page W40

I\'ve been writing columns for a long time now, two or three centuries at
least. I\'ve written on topics that touched a nerve among you readers -- the
moronic-TV-commercials nerve, the loud-cell-phone-talkers nerve, and of
course the low-flow-toilet nerve. I even touched -- and I regret this
deeply -- the Barry Manilow nerve.


But I\'ve never touched a nerve like the one I touched when I wrote about
telemarketers.

To review: Recently, I wrote a column about the National Do Not Call
Registry, which allows you to go to an Internet site (http://www.donotcall.gov)
and register your phone number. The plan is that most telemarketers would
then be prohibited from calling you.

The Do Not Call Registry is wildly popular with the human public. More than
50 million households have signed up. This displeases the telemarketing
industry, which believes it has a constitutional right to call people who
do not want to be called. Several telemarketing groups have filed lawsuits
to block the registry.

So in my column, I printed the toll-free telephone number of one of these
groups, the American Teleservices Association. My thinking was:

Hey, if the ATA feels its members have a constitutional right to call you,
then surely the ATA feels that you have an equally constitutional right to
call the ATA.

Well.

It turned out that a lot of you were eager to call up the telemarketing
industry. Thousands and thousands of you called the ATA. I found out about
this when I saw an article in a direct-marketing newspaper, DM News, which
quoted the executive director of the ATA, Tim Searcy. Here\'s an excerpt
from the article:

"The ATA received no warning about the article from Barry or anyone
connected with him, Searcy said . . . The Barry column has had harmful
consequences for the ATA, Searcy said. An ATA staffer has spent about five
hours a day for the past six days monitoring the voice mail and clearing
out messages."

That\'s correct: The ATA received no warning that it was going to get
unwanted calls! Not only that, but these unwanted calls were an
inconvenience for the ATA, and wasted the ATA\'s time!

I just hope nobody interrupted the ATA\'s dinner.

Anyway, you can imagine how I felt. I would have called the ATA myself to
express my feelings, but the ATA finally had to disconnect its phone
number. Really.

I myself received approximately 7 billion phone calls, letters and e-mails
on this topic. About 99 percent came from consumers who are wildly
enthusiastic about the idea of calling telemarketers. Many of these
consumers wanted me to publish more telemarketers\' numbers, including
residential numbers. As one e-mailer put it: "I think we should call them
at home and try to sell them the idea of not calling people at home."

The other 1 percent of the response came from people in the telemarketing
industry, who pointed out that I am evil vermin scum, and -- even worse --
a member of the news media. Their main arguments are that (a) telemarketers
are hardworking people, and (b) if they\'re not allowed to call people who
don\'t want to be called, telemarketing jobs could be lost, and the U.S.
economy would suffer. Tim Searcy of the ATA was quoted in the Los Angeles
Times as saying that the impact of the Do Not Call Registry would be (I did
not make this quote up) "like an asteroid hitting the Earth." Yes. An
asteroid!

As I write these words, lawyers and politicians and lobbyists and judges
are swarming all over the telemarketing issue, so I don\'t know what the
legal status of the Do Not Call Registry will be when you read this column.
But it appears that the telemarketers plan to continue their efforts to
save the planet by fighting for the right to call people who do not want to
be called.

I realize that this makes many of you angry. I realize that many of you
would like to, once again, let the telemarketers know how you feel. And I
am, frankly, tempted to reveal to you here that the American Teleservices
Association (http://www.ataconnect.org/) seems to have a phone line working (at
least for now) at 317-816-9336.

But would it be right to reveal this? I mean, yes, you could call the ATA
again. But the ATA surely doesn\'t want you to call again. It\'s
inconvenient!

And to insist on calling somebody who doesn\'t want to be called, even if
you have the legal right to call . . . well, that\'s just plain rude.

So I am taking the high road.

Too bad that one isn\'t a toll-free number like the other one, though.  That\'s the easiest way to drive them out of business... cost them as much as they think they could make.

[videoholic]

But most people have nation wide cell phones, so it doesn\'t cost anything.  Oh the joy...

What\'s the big damn deal about telemarketers?  I feel bad for the poor bastards that work there.  At least they\'re working.  Yeah telemarketers are annoying - so are stop signs.  I don\'t need to be on a do-not-call list that will potentially leave thousands unemployed.  I have the balls to tell them no.

I dislike tellemarketers mostly because they are uninvited.  Basically they barge into your life without any care if you want to talk to them or not.  I\'ve had three rude ass people call me in the last week trying to sell me something, then when I say "no thank you" they get agrresive.  The hell with \'em I say.

We get 1-3 telemarketer calls a day.  Go through that and I garuantee you you won\'t answer any call that says out of area on your caller ID.  If that\'s what it says we let the machine pick it up.

I must admit I\'d get pretty freakin upset if I got that many telemarketer calls.

[videoholic]

Oh hell, try and stay home one week day.  It is BRUTAL.  I\'ve been home sick before and you get more rest at work. They call every freaking half hour.

IT\'S BRUTAL!!!!

I think we may get that call system so if you come in as unidentified a computer asks who you are and then rings me with who they are.  Then I can chose as to whether I want to talk to them or not.

I assume most of them would just hang up on that and I would never be bothered.

Originally posted by Sara
What\'s the big damn deal about telemarketers?  I feel bad for the poor bastards that work there.  At least they\'re working.  Yeah telemarketers are annoying - so are stop signs.  I don\'t need to be on a do-not-call list that will potentially leave thousands unemployed.  I have the balls to tell them no.

Yeah i feel this way a lot too. I mean, knowing that the next person you call is going to be an ass must suck. I guess the get used to it. Ive never had an agressive Telemarketer. They all sound so timid . I always know when a telemarketer calls, depending on either the time of the day or the unavailable on the caller id. They never have numbers.

[videoholic]

Originally posted by Sara
 I don\'t need to be on a do-not-call list that will potentially leave thousands unemployed.  I have the balls to tell them no.

Bah humbug.


They can come cut my lawn....  

^
Or shovel my driveway

real mature of these telemarketer\'s

[GmanJoe]

Originally posted by Sara
What\'s the big damn deal about telemarketers?  I feel bad for the poor bastards that work there.  At least they\'re working.  Yeah telemarketers are annoying - so are stop signs.  I don\'t need to be on a do-not-call list that will potentially leave thousands unemployed.  I have the balls to tell them no.

Three phone calls in 15 minutes, every night during dinner. I pick up, I say "Sorry, not interested."

Eventually, I had to purchase a caller ID. Yeah, I had to spend money on caller ID and a phone with the feature. Why? So I could screen my calls.

Screw\'em. Telemarketers weren\'t this bad before. They can get another job. Like.....wash my car or pick oranges or be medical guinnea pigs.