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INTRODUCTION
I’ve always tried to be polite to others. This includes taking telephone
calls. But the time has arrived when being polite is counterproductive. My land-line telephone calls
are now preponderately robocalls – probably around 90% of all my incoming calls. I've now taken to
being an embittered and nasty old man when responding to robocalls!
Sally calls me quite often to tell me that she represents Mastercard and
Visa and that I have been such a great customer by paying my credit card bills on time that she
wants to reward me with reduced or zero rate interest on my outstanding balances. Sally tells me to
hit the number 3 button on my phone if I am not interested or if I don’t want her recorded call to be
repeated. I’ve punched the #3 button - It does no good! She still calls me two, three or more times
just about every day. Sally also told me to hit the number 1 button to speak to a live person and
save myself a fortune in reduced interest costs on my credit cards. What I often do nowadays is to
hit the #1 button and keep the live Idiot who is now talking to me tied up for as
long as possible. The conversation goes something like this.
Idiot: “Is this mister so-and-so?”
Me: “Yes.”
Idiot: “Do you have a large balance on your credit cards?”
Me: “Yes.”
Idiot: “About how much?”
Me: “About $10,000.”
Idiot: “Do you know the interest rate you are being charged?”
Me: “I guess around 15%.”
Idiot: “Would you like to get your interest rate down to 10% or lower?”
Me: “Yes.”
Idiot: “Which credit card has the biggest balance?”
Me: “My Mastercard.”
Idiot: “Tell me your credit card number so I can you the lower interest rate.”
Me: “O.K. let me go get my wallet so I can get my Mastercard number for you.
Hang on.”
At that point, my part of the conversation ends. But the Idiot
continues.
Idiot: “Hello are there yet?”
After about 5 or 10 minutes I hang up the telephone. If Sally and Idiot
want to waste my time by continuing to call me, then I don’t mind wasting Idiot’s time. Maybe he
won’t have time to bother someone else! No more mister polite for me when it comes to these
annoying people. In my case, I have the time and the desire to spoof these telemarketers and
waste their time. But unfortunately not everyone else does and doing what I just described isn’t
an option for many people.
THE PROBLEM
Back in December of 2016, I complained about telemarketing
robocalls (Ref. 1). The problem hasn’t gone away and, here in
mid-2018, my experience is that the problem has grown exponentially! Back in 2016, I wrote:
“I long
ago signed up with the government’s Do Not Call Registry (DNC), but doing so did little
or nothing to stop the flood of telemarketing robocalls that come to my phone each and every
day. The ‘Do Not Call Registry’ established by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
in 2003 is not working. The number of complaints about telemarketers have climbed
in just about every year since 2003 and, as of 2012, reached a then all-time high of almost
4 million.[2]
“The FTC has been totally ineffective, either because of incompetency
or because they don’t have the legal weapons they need to get the job done. As of 2014,
‘the FTC {had} only taken action against 600 illegal telemarketers since the list’s
inception in 2003.’ [Emphasis mine] (Ref. 3)
“I recently re-listed my phones on the Do Not Call Registry.
Did that do any good? Absolutely not - I still get calls from parties that want to reduce my
credit card interest rate, sweep my non-existent chimney, clean my rugs, get me a free cruise,
get me an alarm in case I fall and can’t call anyone, etc., etc., etc.
“If you think you’re protected from telemarketers because you are using
your cell phone, you’re wrong. And what’s worse is that these unwanted calls use up time on
your ‘minutes’ package. You have to pay for overages on these plans.
“Why doesn’t the Do Not Call Registry prevent robocalling? Even though
it may be illegal for robocallers to contact someone who hasn’t given his or her express consent
to receive such calls, many robocallers simply ignore the Do Not Call (DNC) list, betting that
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and/or the FTC won’t come after them - and they are
right. Just a handful of robocall operators can cheaply make millions of calls.
“For example, back in 2012, the FTC offered up to $50,000 to anyone who
could help stop the infamous ‘Rachel from cardholder services’ robocalls. At the time, it appeared
they didn’t need that much help, as the agency filed complaints against five such operations
based in Arizona and Florida. ‘The FTC chairman thundered that, ‘Rachel from Cardholder Services
is public enemy number one. . . . We’re cracking down on illegal robocalls by bringing law
enforcement actions and pursuing technical solutions to the problem.’
(Ref. 4) In the 'Rachel From Cardholder Services' scam,
‘Rachel’ dangles lower interest rates to get you to reveal your credit-card number.
Today, some four years later 2016, I still typically receive several ‘Rachel From
Cardholder Services’ calls each week. So much for hoping that he FTC and the federal
government would stop these robocalls. We can send man to the moon; we can provide
technological wonders like virtual reality; we can have driverless automobiles and drones but
we appear powerless to get rid of unwanted telemarketers and robocalls. Isn’t there
something seriously wrong here?”
That was back in 2016, What has happened in the nearly two years since
I wrote all of that?
Today my phone doesn’t stop ringing with calls from prerecorded voices.
There’s Rachel from card services and someone claiming to be from Microsoft, saying my computer
is infected with a virus. Yet another purports to be an Internal Revenue Service rep, threatening
that I’ll be arrested if I don’t immediately pay up. Still one more tells me that the local police
are coming after me because there are four supposed crimes I have been charged with and I need to
call some number immediately to avoid arrest. I even received one call at 1:00 o’clock in the
morning telling me I was eligible to receive some medical device. Nothing seems to stop these
robocalls.
“These calls are a blight. The Federal Trade Commission reports consumers
lose $350 million annually by falling for these rip-offs. The IRS con alone cost consumers almost
$30 million, the Treasury Department reports.” (Ref. 5)
THE PROBLEM JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE
In 2015, “the FTC received more than 3 million complaints about telemarketers.
That’s more than triple the number in 2009. If current trends continue, there will be more than
5 million complaints by the end of 2016. The feds do what they can, but it’s an all but futile
battle. They’ve handed out more than $1.2 billion in fines. They’ve collected less than
10 percent of that sum. But it’s hard to chase people down in Russia. Or Bangladesh. Or India.
Or wherever that call about a free cruise (you’ve won!) really comes from.”
(Ref. 5)
In 2017, the plague of robocalls had continued to spread like
wildfire. “Consumers received more than 18 billion in 2017, a 75 percent increase from the
year before. They are the number one consumer complaint to the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC). . . .
- - -
“Those calls can be more than just a nuisance. One study found roughly
25 million Americans lost an estimated $9 billion to phone scams last year.”
(Ref. 6)
“Complaints to federal regulators are also increasing sharply. The
Federal Trade Commission, which oversees the Do Not Call Registry, said there were 4.5 million
complaints about robocalls in 2017, more than double the 2.18 million complaints logged in
2013.” (Ref. 7)
By April of this year (2018), the robocall volume had continued to
skyrocket, reaching an estimated 3.4 billion a month! That’s an increase of
almost 900 million a month, or more than 25%, compared with a year
ago.[7]
In addition to the hundreds of robocalls in English that I get
in the course of a year, recently I received a series of calls in Chinese with a New York
city area code. Being unable to understand Chinese, I hung up. I have subsequently found
out that the New York State attorney general had “warned consumers about a scheme targeting
people with Chinese last names, in which the caller purports to be from the Chinese Consulate
and demands money. Since December, the New York Police Department said, 21 Chinese immigrants
had lost a total of $2.5 million.” (Ref. 7) Apparently someone
thought my non-Chinese last name sounded Chinese.
ATTACKING THE PROBLEM
“The federal Do Not Call List, which is supposed to help consumers avoid
robocalls, instead resembles a tennis net trying to stop a flood. The list may prevent some (but
not all) legitimate companies from calling people on the list, but it does little to deter
fraudsters and marketers, some of them overseas, who are willing to take their chances and
flout the law.” (Ref. 7)
And still the unanswered question remains: what is our government, e.g.,
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) doing to once
and for all put an end to this telephone abuse? Absolutely nothing that is obvious to me and to
millions of other telephone users!
As I’ve already said, adding your phone number to the government’s
Do Not Call list has proven useless. I’ve done that – and I’ve done it more than
once. The government’s do not call list is a joke! Putting my telephone on the
list has had absolutely no effect. In fact, it seems that I got more frequent annoying
robocalls after I signed up than before. Filing a complaint with the FCC or the FTC is also
not likely to significantly improve the situation. On a few occasions, I’ve reported telephone
scams to my local police where the robocaller had warned me that the IRS or the police were
after me for tax liens or for outstanding arrest warrants. I never heard back and I doubt
that anything positive resulted from my reporting the scams.
One solution to ending these abuses rests in the hands of our legislators.
They need to stop their preening and posturing in front of the TV cameras and the microphones and
get serious about serving their constituencies. Let’s get our Senators and Representatives to do
their part in cleaning up this mess. They can pass and/or update federal laws that will put an
end to this gross misuse of our venerable telephone system. They can put teeth into the laws
that should be protecting us. Jail time and/or large financial penalties should be imposed for
those who choose to ignore the laws. They can fund watchdog agencies based upon performance,
i.e. end the abuses or lose funding. They can defund and terminate agencies that don’t do the
work they are tasked to do. If our government agencies aren’t up to meeting the challenge,
then farm the work out to the private sector. Again, fund these private enterprises on the
basis of performance. Financial incentives have historically worked wonders in America’s
free enterprise system.
I want those telemarketers who blatantly ignore the Do Not Call
Registry to face very significant fines and/or jail time. No law should be enacted
that cannot be or is not enforced! I don’t want to keep hearing about how hard it
is to catch and/or prosecute the miscreants who thumb their noses at the law, our lawmakers
and the federal agencies that are supposed to protect you and me from these
predators.
I don’t accept the excuse that the technology isn’t up to finding and stopping
the perpetrators of these abuses of our privacy. Don’t tell me that agencies like NSA, the FBI,
the CIA, and a multitude of other alphabet-soup agencies, either singly, or combined can’t find
and prosecute the perpetrators of these abuses. If our law enforcement and spook agencies can’t
locate these abusers and put an end to their predatory practices, then let’s hire people and
organizations that can and will get the job done.
But not all the blame should rest upon the shoulders of the U.S.
government. The telephone service providers should also be doing much more to put an end to
this massive waste of our time and resources. Our telecom giants could take more steps to
make life better for their customers - but they haven’t. At a minimum, the telephone companies
should be offering their customers free and easy access to robocall-blocking technology.
It is claimed that “it would be possible for phone companies to offer
their consumers easy access to services . . . which works on VoIP lines to block most robocalls.
Then there are apps that would make a serious dent in robocalls to cellphones—which is a good
thing, since the vast majority of automated calls to cellphones are illegal thanks to a 1991 law,
whether or not the number is listed on the Do Not Call registry.
“Traditional landlines are the most difficult to protect from robocalls,
but there’s still hope. In Canada, . . . there’s {a service}, which . . . works to block robocalls
on both traditional landline and broadband lines. The company {which offers the service} claims
almost 90 percent of its customers cite that as the No. 1 reason they stick with {them}; it
also claims the service would work in the United States.”
(Ref. 5)
Some of the things that we, as individuals, can try are the
following:
“• Ask your phone company to offer robocall-blocking technology for mobile lines. Most already
offer some form of protection, although a few charge a fee.
• Use a robocall-blocking app, and be sure to alert those apps when a number has slipped
through so they block those calls in the future.
• Don't answer a call from an unknown or suspicious number, since that tells scammers
they've reached a legit line they can sell to other telemarketers and scammers.
• File a complaint with the FCC or the FTC. The FCC can issue warning citations and
impose fines, but it doesn't award individual damages. The FTC can file lawsuits against
companies or individuals violating its rules.
• Forward spam text messages sent from a phone number to 7726 (or SPAM), a free text
exchange among wireless carriers.
“{But, the} bottom line: There's no single solution to slowing
down the flood of robocalls and spam texts. . .” (Ref. 8)
If your phone service has caller I.D., you may not want to answer
the phone if you don't recognize the number. If someone really needs to get ahold of you,
they will probably leave a message - telemarketers and scammers usually do not.
“As much of a hassle as it is, the best way to deal with unwanted
robocalls is to simply hang up on them. If you answer a robocall, try not to say anything
immediately. If you do say anything, just say hello. If it is a recorded message, the Better
Business Bureau suggests you just hang up. Do not press a key or number or ask to be removed
from a calling list. This only tells the spammer that they’ve reached a working number. The
BBB says that will result in you getting more phone calls from automated dialers.”
(Ref. 9)
In my case, I receive more than 10 times as many robocalls
on my land line as I do on my cell phone. As a result, I’m considering a more drastic
solution to my robocall problem. And that is to terminate my land line telephone service.
You could do the same, whether your service comes from a telecom or a cable provider.
If you do this, make sure to let the telephone service provider know why you are ending
its money-making service. Maybe, just maybe, they will then take action to do away with
the robocalls that are causing them to lose customers and revenue.
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References:
- Inundated With Commercials, Telemarketing Calls and Spam, David Burton,
Son of Eliyahu: Article 274,
8 December 2016.
- Fighting Telemarketers: When Do-Not-Call List Fails, These Strategies Work,
Alan Farnham, abc NEWS,
21 January 2014.
- Does It Feel Like The ‘Do Not Call’ List Isn’t Working? This May Be Why,
CBS San Francisco,
20 November 2014.
- FTC Declares Rachel From Cardholder Services 'Enemy Number 1'; Files Complaints Against
Five Scammy Robocollers, Mike Masnick, techdirt.com, 1 November 2012.
- Congratulations! You Lost., Helaine Olen, Slate, 24 May 2016.
- Robocalls are getting worse, and some cities are top targets, CBS News,
5 July 2018.
- Yes, It’s Bad. Robocalls, and Their Scams, Are Surging., Tara Siegel Bernard,
The New York Times, 6 May 2018.
- Will anything stop robocalls to our cellphones?, Marguerite Reardon,
CBS News, 11 November 2017.
- The best way to deal with robo calls, Jamey Tucker, WPSD Local 6, 11 May 2018.
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