I’ve been signed onto the National Do Not Call list for a while now.
in general I dislike people and am a disagreeable person so I’m doing telemarketers a favor!
I honestly can’t see that being on that list has done me any good at all.
I think that having the phone number unlisted was a far more effective solution. But like an idiot I believed that the do not call list would be all that I needed and therefore stopped paying Verzion the additional fees to keep the phone number unlisted.
Once the phone number was listed… there was no going back.
As a rather strange aside…
When I told the Verizon representative that I wanted to make the change allowing my phone number to be listed… They were obligated to tell me that my number wouldn’t appear in the phone book until the next printing. I clearly remember processing what the representative said… then my brain rebooted!
It was one of those moments when you wonder just how stupid people are. For Verizons script to have included this bit of nonsense they must have had people calling them asking why their phone number hadn’t magically appeared in the printed phone book!
I digress. I feel like I’m channeling Andy Rooney… Hey Ghost Hunters, exorcism on aisle 8…
Since registering on the Do Not Call system, I’ve seen absolutely no change in the volume of junk phone calls. What I have noticed is that most of the calls originate in India. There is even one persistent caller that is calling from a cell phone registered in India. Really? A Cell phone?
When I’m slightly bored I’ll go to the trouble of doing a reverse look up of these phone numbers…
(Hey, you can only masturbate just so many times in a day before it gets boring… Ok, THAT never gets boring… there’s always another melon or mango to violate…)
On the reverse lookup lists you find that a lot of people have very nasty things to say about the people calling from these phone numbers. Even more often people have nastier things to say about each other in addition to commenting on the marital status of the parents of the person making the call in the first place.
Some people answer these calls with air horns, whistles, screaming tirades, obscenities, or there’s one guy in MN that answers with the recorded sounds of sex.
Uhh… Somehow I don’t think that would make the calls less frequent. I rather think that the calls couldn’t come in because the switching station couldn’t handle the volume.
“We’re sorry, all circuits are busy please try your call again later“.
The guy in MN does get to have an uninterrupted nap, at least until the circuits clear.
My solution is a fax machine. Coincidentally that’s how I know who’s called and what I use to look up their phone numbers when the fruit drawer in my fridge is empty.
The calls start at 7:30 AM and continue until about 9:00 PM
These fall into a few general catergories.
Telemarketing
Scams
and
Bill Collectors.
The bill collectors are really funny. Sometimes when I’m really bored I’ll answer the phone. Their first question aggressively stated is “WHO ARE YOU?” My response is “Dude, you called me? don’t you know who you were trying to reach?” Inevitably they demand my social security number, I demand their credit card number.
“You’ve called StudMuffins R US This is Adam and you’l be billed $9.95 for the first 5 minutes of our sex chat. We’ll bill you $6.95 every 3 minutes thereafter. So what are you wearing?“
This usually messes the caller up. They try to recover but they’re a lot more contrite about it.
During one of these calls I discovered that a young lady in San Diego was scamming a ton of stores. She’d open credit cards max them out and then move on to the next store or cell phone company. She apparently pulled a phone number out of the air for all of the applications… that number was mine. To further complicate matters, her name is similar to mine. With those two data points, a lot of collection agencies call me thinking I know the bitch. I don’t… but I do know another bitch that really deserves to be hounded, and I’m sorely tempted to give the collection agencies her number.
Nationwide, bad debt is being sold to all kinds of low life, scum bag collection agencies. So about every 3 months a whole new flood of phone calls hits my poor fax machine because these collection agencies are trying to collect on debts that are deader than Tutankhamen.
Most of these agencies are in India and I honestly think that they’ve been scammed.
I’d like to shake the hand of the Scum bag bill collector that thought to sell un-collectable debt to India. I’d of course wear a glove while shaking his hand… I mean you really don’t want to get any of that kind of scum on you!
Think about it, American debt collectors have a pile of un-collectable bad debt. They in turn sell it to an Indian collection agency for a couple grand and then the Indians try to recoup their investment. It’s elegant and turns bad accounts into cash… Unless you’re the company in India. Go Capitalism!
Which brings us to the scammers and they are inexorably linked to the Telemarketers.
“Hello I’m calling on behalf of the one legged, limp wristed blond African fund, our records show that you donated to our worthy cause last year and we wanted to know if you were interested in contributing this year.”
“What? You didn’t want to donate money to the one legged, limp wristed blond African fund? Oh you meant to donate to the Republican party? Certainly I can correct this problem for you. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. I just need the credit card number that you originally used. OF course I’ll wait. Ok now let me enter the number… Ooops, I’m sorry that card number isn’t on file perhaps you used another card? Of course I’ll wait, you take your time.“
These folks are beyond scum. They prey on little old ladies from Pasadena. You just DON’T rip off old people… I’ve made the suggestion that a very special place hell be created for people that do. Tele-evangelists are included in this group.
Satan is running a focus group right now… (There were a bunch of engineers who were very bad people. They’re sitting in with the focus group… Hey it’s a twofer for Satan, and Hell for the engineers!)
If I’m unlucky enough to get a call from one of these people and figure ’em out early enough, I’ll start having imaginary sex and talk dirty to my imaginary partner or melon whichever is handier…
About the time I’m saying “Ohh baby, lick the head, SUCK IT yeah, yeah, let me see your hole, you like that? Daddys got more for you. I’m gonna rip you open and eat you up, Ohhh baby you’re a little cold, this will warm you up!”
The caller has become either so embarrassed that they’ve hung up or they’ve become a total pervert.
Either way… I win!
I’m not bored for a while and have a new project in the kitchen…
Fruit salad anyone?