An end to Anonymous calls?

For those who live in the U.S. and don't know, Starting October
1st, 2003. Most telemarketing companies will need to filter their
call lists with that of the goverments 'DO NOT CALL' list. To sign
up for this go to:
http://www.donotcall.gov

We saw this story on the Fox LA news on Friday night, and we have
received more than 60 anonymous calls since then, and it's just Tuesday.

We signed right up. I did answer a few of the calls and they were
just hang-ups, just testing that the line is a customer's I suppose.

I plan to hop right on board. Idiot telemarketing types are howling bloody murder about all the potential for lost jobs (something like 3 million they claim) and how it's not fair that their "right" to barge into our homes unannounced and uninvited is being "infringed". Frankly, I hate telemarketers and telemarketing companies with a passion and I'll be glad to get rid of (most) of them.

Cute how people can still pester you about election-related items like campaign solicitation, however... noooo.. there's no pork-barrel government loophole in THAT initiative that unfairly benefits the political fat cats... none at all... go back to your TVs and stop questioning us...

I used to work with a guy who had a unusual way of dealing with nuisance callers, he simply ignored the phone.

Anyone who wanted to call him had to ring up, let the phone ring twice, hang up and then call back, only then would he bother answering his phone.

I am really getting aggravated with this situation. We are getting
more than 15 unavailable calls a day.

Rather than buy the telezapper, I found the tones online and will
be letting my PC handle the calls from now on.

If anyone is interested, the link below has a brief and the tones:
http://www.brockmoore.com/Scams/Telezapper.htm

I have just had it. I want to rip these peoples throats out. I have
never seen it so bad.

I do that in the morning. I used to jump out of bed and race to the phone when it rang only to find out 3/4 times it was some g**d*** telemarketer - usually from the same place I'd just got done telling not to call back. Now, I only pick it up if it rings twice because I figure if they don't call right back: A) It was a tm or B) It wasn't that important

Some other amusing tricks, if I have the time:

Kept getting calls from some company trying to get me to give my personal info to be put in my graduating school's directory. Finally, after a year of this, I got pissed off and gave them my neighbor's life info, a fake address, and the 555-1212 phone number. They never questioned why the phone number I gave (which is information) is not the one they called to reach me at, the address, or why if I graduated HS in 1999, I was a 32 year old police officer with 8 years on the force (this was back about 2000 - 2001).

Discover kept calling and pestering me about their accountguard. Told them to a piss off a couple of times and then canceled my card. Then, they kept calling to try and get me to get a Discover card. Their favorite line was always: "Do you have anything better than 0%?" because it had a (temporary) 0% apr on balance transfers. One day I finally had enough of it and in the most serious tone I could muster: Yes, I do. That shut him up reeeeal quick, and they never called back.

Finally, one time some woman went into a diatribe about their product. I set the phone down and walked away. Came back about 4 minutes later and she was still going, but she started winding down. Then, she asked "So, what can I put you down for" to which I responded, "What are you selling?" which REALLY pissed her off and SHE hung up on ME. ;-)

Telemarketers can be fun if you have the time to play with them!

[edit]
Just signed up - amazingly painless. I've been holding out because I thought the site might be bogged down, but the whole process only took about a minute! Whoohoo!
[/edit]

You know, I might feel better if i can talk to someone to tell them
to piss off but the ones I am answering just keep hanging up on
me. I assume they are just testing their lists....

Question:
Do you think if I let off a fog horn in the phone, would the line normalize
the level or would it blow their earpiece?

Odd things are phones.. the phone lines only need to carry something like 8000 baud or whatever to work for voice, so I doubt you'd do much with a foghorn.

The hangups are probably form automated dialers. They dial a dozen or so numbers at once. The first pickup gets an irritating pitch, everyone else gets a hang up. It's one of the most irritating technological "advances" in history.

I have a similar story to Ctb's above but mine was me trying to call them! Ever had an AOL account you wanted to cancel?

Well I used to work for them so I happened to know the cancelation policies for the staff members, basically they have to do anything they can to try and talk you out of cancelling your account. So anyway, I quit working for them and about 6 months later decided there was no point keeping the account so I called them up, took 20 minutes just to actually get through to a real person, then they switched me through 2 more departments before they got it right. So I'm talking to this guy saying look, I don't want the account can you just cancel it. He starts off with his 'Oh is there a problem with the account, maybe I can help blah blah blah' to which I reply, 'No, look I used to work for AOL, don't waste your time, you ain't gonna change my mind' so he said, yes but as you used to work for us you know it's my job and I have to do it etc etc so he went into his speech about how they are better than this ISP and that ISP and how he'd give me 3 months free if I reconsidered blah blah blah.

About 15 minutes later he says 'So do I take your silence to mean you will keep the account open?' to which I say 'No' and then he says ok ok can I ask you a couple of questions before I cancel the account, sure.. 'What is your reason for cancelling the account?' to which I reply 'I'm moving to Brazil' and I just got this resounding dull 'Oh Ok'.

He then cancelled the account :-) Sorry I know it's a pretty lame story but you had to hear him to see the funny side of it. You could actually feel down the phone his anger and he must have been thinking you **** why didn't you just say that 15 minutes ago....

lmao.... I wonder how long someone has led a telemarketer on for.... just image one on the phone for an hour only for you to say no at the end

I actually had an old company call up who I used to use for my hosting needs, I switched away from them for various reasons, anyway the guy was quite friendly and we ended up talking quite a few times. Everytime he called it was like talking with an old friend, he must have been gutted that in the end I didn't switch back to his company the amount of time he actually put in with follow up calls etc.

The King of Telemarketing revenge is a guy named Jim Florentine.
If you can get any of his stuff, he really shows what to do with
telemarket calls.

I believe his plays Special Ed on Crank Yankers. "Bread makes me
poop lady, yeahhh!"

Is he the guy that would pretend he had various problems like Tourettes Syndrome? He'd go on like he couldn't control his outburts, but he'd pretend that he was also interested, so these telemarketers would be trying to sell him things, when he'd just all of a sudden burst out obsceneties and screech and go on.... there's actually a CD you can buy of him hassling telemarketers that I'd love to get hold of!

That is the guy. One of my favorites is when he pretends to drown
his grandfather in the tub while giving him a bath. All the while
the tm is still trying to pitch him.

http://www.jimflorentine.com/home.html