www.donotcall.gov

“the national no call list website just went up this morning...have fun..and tell telemarketers in the mean time that you support the national no call list and that you offer resume writing classes!!”

“http://www.donotcall.gov/

I believe they're kinda SWAMPED at the moment, though.”

“yea i put up 3 numbers and haven't gotten the e-mails yet..”

“I got the main page to load (third try), but that's as far as I could get.”

“I like it when the telmarketers call my home...I get so few calls at my house and I have no local friends, that when the phone rings at night, it might be my only chance to interact with another person.

Plus...I use telemarketing in my business...government should keeps its hands out of other peoples business and run its own. F_ _k the government. They can't even run their own business, how are they going to run someonelses? If a customer wants off a telemarketing list, all they would have to do is ask us, and we would set up a privacy code on their account and then they would be excluded from telemarketing.”

“Stikmon, with all due respect, the people have spoken and want Govt. to do something about the invasion of their privacy. They've been screaming to their representatives to do something about it for years. I'm so sick of telemarketers I don't even want to spend the time talking with them to get off their list.”

“the government is gonna mess this up, just like they do everything else.”

“Maybe they could contract it out to Enron.”

“This is the greatest thing since microwaved bacon!

If anyone wants to receive calls, they don't have to do anything to keep receiving them stikmon.

I won't ever buy anything that way so opting out just saves the telemarketing industry wasted time (=money) and spares me the aggravation of dropping everything to answer a call I don't want.”

“Yeah, I'm really gonna miss dashing from the toilet to answer the phone only to be greeted with, "Hello Mr. (mis-pronouncing my name), how are you this evening?"”

“yeah, i love when they mispronounce my name (which is every time). that means i can say, "you have the wrong number," and it's true! but now i only have a cell phone, so i don't get any of those calls. ha!”

“Let the monkeys answer the phone. That'll fix their wagons!”

“no way, they'd order a million of whatever the caller was selling! they don't get out much, so i bet they're dying to shop!”

“I getting telemarketing calls... being retarded, amputee, a woman (using regular deep voice)...so many ways to practice the arts.”

“Oh Oh, better keep them away from the credit cards!”

“REGISTRATION COMPLETE

This registration will be effective until 6/29/2008.”

“I always tell em' to get a real job and hang up. But no its not freedom of speech. It cost me money to pay for the services of my phone so theres no free involved. You are right i couldnt get on the site either yet... thank god i now got cable modem”

“How did this sneak by me?

I don't want my tax dollars spent to limit commerce.

How hard is it to hang up the phone?”

“if my 4 year old is around I let him talk to them (he loves talking on the phone). If he's not there, I tell them to hold on, I'm changing a diaper, then check back in 10 minutes, then I have to stir dinner, etc. One guy actually made it about half an hour.”

“this worked for me once by accident and i was amazed at how it worked that i used it from then on. I told the sales lady from at&t that I was allready indebted to her company and if they would let me use them again i would too. her response: ok thank you for your time: click......”

“I registered, but it will only be a finger in the dike. Marketing will find a way.

My son worked for a telemarketer at one time. He said that it was great when somebody made them hold a long time. As long at there was a telephone connection, they got credit.”

“Wow, Pathmans son called Webyrd?
Cool.”

“Better watch out there, Pathman, the dike might slap ya...”

“I'm gonna miss telling em that I'll be right back, then going away from the phone for 15 min.”

“To think I actually helped someone get paid.....I feel all warm and fuzzy now....”

“I registered, but it will only be a finger in the dike. Marketing will find a way.

My son worked for a telemarketer at one time. He said that it was great when somebody made them hold a long time. As long at there was a telephone connection, they got credit."
Pathman
09:02:54 AM
06/28/03

Pathman. We did this here in PA a good year ago and I gotta tell ya it works great! The only calls we get are political solicitations which are exempt from this plan....go figure right?”

“I agree with Pete (yikes! where did that bolt of lightning come from?). Before the Pa no-call, I'd come home and typically see 10-20 unknown calls on my caller ID. Then I'd get several calls while at home. Now, I see on average 1 unknown call a day and maybe a few calls per week while at home. Dang good program!”

“Sheeze...

If the telemarketeers did not call, my phone would never ring.”

“why doesn't that surprise me..........?”

“"I don't want my tax dollars spent to limit commerce.

How hard is it to hang up the phone?"

i couldnt agree more. its an annoyance, but not an invasion of privacy. theyre either dialing your number at random, or they got your name and number from some public domain like the telephone book. dont forget, those are ppl on the other end of the line who are trying to make ends meet, feed their kids, ya know, regular ppl. if youre in the bathroom, DONT rush out, let the machine or voicemail get it. dont even pretend that you guys dont screen your calls. like nancy reagan, just say "no" and hang up.”

“The web site reportedly recieved 1,000 hits a minute or some such thing the other day. I got in no problem today.

Come on October!!!”

“How hard is it to hang up the phone?

Not hard at all, I do it regularly. I have no compunction about talking over the telemarketer to politely tell them to remove me from their calling list and then hang up on them as they're still trying their sales pitch.

But to get to that point I have answer the phone first. And the issue there is having to drop what I'm doing and run to the phone before I can hang up on them.

As for letting the answering machine get it, then I have to walk downstairs or come upstairs from the basement to find out who called and why. Oh, wait until I'm already going by to check? I suppose if you don't have a family you can do that, but when my wife or daughter or son are out of the house, I will answer the phone because you simply never know if it's them on the side of the road needing help or what.


those are ppl on the other end of the line who are trying to make ends meet, feed their kids, ya know, regular ppl

And that is why I try to remain civil to them as I hang up. :)

Will there be a shakeout in that industry? Probably so. Maybe those folks will then be able to move on to something more productive.”

“An unlisted phone number here is like 3 buck a month...”

“i did telemarketing for awhile as a part-time job. sold stupid little coupon booklets. they were actually worth the money. what was stupid, was my employers insisted that we stick precisely to the script, and threw a fit and made a big deal about it when we were ad-libbing, so we started sticking to the script, the damn things still didnt sell, so they laid off a bunch of us”

“MILLIONS OF CONSUMERS rushed the FTC’s ‘do-not-call’ Web site Friday, anxious to rid their homes of annoying night-time telephone solicitations.
Enrollment in the list is simple: Consumers visit a special Web site, fill out a simple form, then look in their inbox for an e-mail confirming the registration. But only after recipients click on a link in that e-mail are they enrolled in the database.
Many of those confirmation e-mails never made it to the registrants.
Harrington confirmed Monday that some of the FTC’s e-mails were misidentified as spam and automatically filtered by e-mail providers — an accident known as a “false positive” in the spam-filtering world. But she said the problem was fixed quickly, and only prevented about 100,000 registrants from completing the process.
But a number of other factors are contributing to the high rate of incomplete registrations, Harrington said. When traffic to the Web site is high, e-mail confirmations are delayed, in some cases as long as 24 hours, she said. Since some 7 million consumers registered on Friday, many confirmation e-mails didn’t go out until this weekend, and recipients didn’t immediately reply. Also, some recipients may be having trouble with the hypertext included in the e-mail, Harrington said.
Consumers who haven’t yet received their confirmation e-mails should be patient, she said. If the confirmation notes still haven’t arrived by the end of the week, the consumers should start over and re-register at the FTC’s Web site.


How to stop the calls


• Click here to add your name to the National Do Not Call Registry.
Consumers west of the Mississippi also can register by calling 1-888-382-1222 from the phone number they wish added to the list. Effective July 7, phone registration will be open nationwide.




Federal Communications Commission

The snafus leave the exact status of nearly one-quarter of the “do-not-call” registrants in limbo. Harrington said concerned consumers can visit the FTC’s Web site and check their status.
Eric Greenberg, chief technical officer for NetFrameworks Inc., said Yahoo filtered out many registry confirmation e-mails on Friday. NetFrameworks monitors spam filtering technology.
Mary Osako, director of communications at Yahoo, confirmed in an e-mail the company did filter out some of the FTC e-mails on Friday.
An MSNBC.com reporter who registered on Friday with a Yahoo.com address has still not received his confirmation e-mail.
But Yahoo was hardly the only company to filter the FTC note, Greenberg said.
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“It appears as though a good percentage of the very top providers at one time or another were ... filtering,” he said. ”(The FTC) really got bit by this pretty badly. The cost to the taxpayers is hard to estimate.”
In Yahoo’s case, Greenberg said, the firm’s software spotted a sudden surge in very similar e-mails, and automatically began filtering all notes with that message inside.
“The kind of filter they put in place flagged the content,” he said.
The spam filtering problem was not a total surprise. There were concerns from the third-party company contracted by the government to run the registry that the confirmation e-mails might trip spam filters.
In February, AT&T Government Solutions announced it had received a $3.5 million contract to develop the technology behind the Do No Call registry.
AT&T Government Solutions employee Richard M. Callahan sent an e-mail last Wednesday to a mailing list for network administrators predicting the problem.
“We are looking at the potential of MILLIONS OF EMAILS PER DAY beginning Friday. These will be from the same address and have the same subject line. I am worried about denial of service or blocking by spam filters if providers are not aware this is coming,” his note said. He was looking for help preventing the problem.
On Monday, Callahan directed phone calls to AT&T’s press office. An AT&T spokesperson said only the Federal Trade Commission could comment on the incident.
Friday’s registry launch was also marred by sluggishness at the FTC’s Web site, which at times could take up to 25 seconds to load, according to Internet traffic measurement firm Keynote Systems Inc. The e-mail filtering problem may have exacerbated the situation, Greenberg said.
“What did you do when you didn’t get the e-mail? You go back to the site and do it again,” he said. “Potentially, this caused the overload on the Web site.””

“...last night with a telemarketer. This is pretty much how it went, word for word!

TM: On behalf of Capital One, you being a cardholder, I want to take this opportunity to make a special offer to you today.
Me: Listen, you are obviously a telemarketer. I no longer accept calls from telemarketers.
TM: But, you don't know what i am going to offer you...
Me: Ma'am. I am signed up to not have telemarketers call my house anymore.
TM: But, that doesn't go into effect until...
Me: Correction. It is in effect as of now. Do you understand that?
TM: But, that list...
Me: I don't think you heard me. This is a yes or no answer to a simple question.
TM: But...
Me: Uh Uh! Yes or no.
TM: Uh, yes.
Me: Good. Now, I will be glad to talk to you if you just give me your home phone # and I will be happy to call you back during dinner time. What time do you eat?
TM: Sir, you can't call me...
Me: Uh uh! What is your home phone #
TM: ok, you can call 800...
Me: Oh no no no! You don't live at an 800 #. I want your home phone #.
TM: My home phone was disconnected. This is where you can get me.
Me: Nope. Deal's off. Home phone or you leave me alone. Understand?

Pretty much left it at that. I must give credit to Jerry Seinfeld for giving me the idea abut the home phone #. I more or less got the idea from an episode where he did that, except his dialogue came off a little different.”

“That's pretty cool, tb. If I didn't have an answering machine, I'd try that. Sounds like fun...”

“It was a very pleasurable moment, seizing control of one of those pains in the ass for once...”

“That's as good as the time I got the telemarketer to lose her cool by telling her I didn't know what a mortgage was.”

“Morty WHO???”

“lmao, Bit. That's great, man! Play dumb-as-a-stump. I love it...”

“Was bit playing?”

“lol....”

“mort·gage ( P ) Pronunciation Key (môrgj)
n.
A temporary, conditional pledge of property to a creditor as security for performance of an obligation or repayment of a debt.
A contract or deed specifying the terms of a mortgage.
The claim of a mortgagee upon mortgaged property.”

“The mortgage thing did make me think of acting like you don't know what a credit card is. Can't you hear that conversation..."You mean that you'll send me a small piece of plastic, I take it to a store, they look at it, and I get to take the card and stuff from the store home? B1tchin'"”

“I do that only usually when I answer the phone I'm on midnights and sleeping in the daytime, so I add that I'll call them back at 03:00 when they are dead asleep!

Good one treebeard!”

“lol

Wow, man. Will they give me some cash too? I'm a little short this week...”