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Posted on 07/21/2009 7:18:28 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
An Ohio man, fed up with deceptive junk mail, made the mistake of losing his temper while on the phone with a St. Louis company pitching an extended auto-service contract. Now he finds himself behind bars, where he is charged with making a terrorist threat.
According to court documents, Charles W. Papenfus, 43, allegedly told a sales representative during a May 18 telephone call that he would burn down the building and kill the employees and their families. He was indicted for making a terrorist threat, a Class D felony; and he could be sentenced to up to four years in prison if convicted.
Papenfus' wife, Tracie, said she hasn't seen her husband since his arrest on June 27, when he was lured to a Fostoria, Ohio, police station with a false story about being suspected in a tavern fight there. Charles Papenfus, a self-employed mechanic who sometimes works on the department's police cruisers, dropped by the station to clear his name, she said.
Tracie Papenfus said she still can't understand why her husband is held 450 miles from home at the St. Louis workhouse on a $45,000 bond she can't afford to pay. (That amount could be lowered at bond-reduction hearing scheduled for Monday.)
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Caller ID is our friend. If I don’t know who it is, I don’t bother answering the phone.
It’s a crime to threaten a telemarketer? Strange world.
Note to anyone who ever thought of cussing out a call center agent: That disclaimer “Your call may be recorded for quality or training purposes” actually means your call WILL be recorded and MAY be used for whatever we want to use it for - including your prosecution. It’s too complicated to only record some calls so we record everything and throw out the uninteresting ones later.
Unless the dirtbags who operate this particular phone scam have a mechanism in place that can show that they are working conscientiously to protect their employees from “harassment” then depending on the race, gender or sexual orientation of the call center agent involved the company could face a civil suit for violation of their agent’s rights under Title 7 of the 1968 Civil Rights Act - even if someone else does the actual harassing.
For more information on call center recording systems see:
http://verint.com/corporate/
http://nice.com
Why should someone who is trying to run a business have to put up with these parasites? Should he really have to contend with 10 calls a day from telemarketers? I have seen that many calls come in while working at home.
There is no way in heck this guy should be charged with anything. The bottom feeding telemarketers should be the ones charged.
People should be mad when these calls come. Threatening to kill their families may be a bit much; but the world would probably be a better place if their building suffered major damage.
But as they start their spiel as soon as you answer, it's rude to interrupt. So just put the phone down and make a cup of coffee.
Also I've found that since they use some form of auto detect to tell when the mark has anwered, if you pick up the phone and quickly introduce yourself you can beat it and they don't hear you. Then you wait to see how long it takes them to venture an introduction.
My wife once said “They’re going to call the police on you” as she was listening to me scream at a PLANNED PARENTHOOD!!! lower-than-scum tele-solicitor, but I’m still a free man at this stage.
Hilarious.
I’ve worked in telemarketing before and what a lot of people don’t understand is that telemarketers just laugh when people get all crazy or try to give you some lecture. You hear the same stuff all the time and you don’t even remember the call after it’s over.
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs5-tmkt.htm
Except the person calling usually couldn't care less if the company gets fined, because it's not going to come out of their check.
An air horn also works.
“The guy should not have made those threats, of course.”
Wht not??
I cuss out telemarketers in as harsh a fashion that I can think of.
My favorite one is “CAN YOU HANG ON FOR A SECOND?” Put the phone down and walk off. Time to them is $$.”
When I use to be a telemarketer I loved it when people would do that. I could just sat there without working and read a book. It's an automated system that makes you take call after call, so it's always nice to have a break.
I know telemarketers can be very annoying, but most people who think they are doing something smart and clever aren't causing the telemarketer any problems. I always tried to string out calls like that, so I wouldn't have to take another call and have to actually try sell something.
Anyone who's ever done telemarketing, even for a short period of time, has seen it all and it has no effect on them. It's two strangers on the phone, so you can't be offended or hurt by anything they say.
Damn I’m lucky. I used to make worse threats than this all the time. I hate telemarketers. Finally got rid of my phone and got a cell phone and never give out the number to anyone.
I respond to telemarketers in the loudest voice I can muster, just to make sure they realize that maybe they don’t want to talk to me after all. Usually works. If it doesn’t, I’d never know it, because I just hang up anyway.
I work nights and stay up late. These a-holes would wake me up everyday. Asking them to stop didn’t work, not answering didn’t work, hanging up didn’t work.
One really bad day, I believe I threatened to kill them, their parents, their family and everyone they knew. Then I started in graphic detail how I would do it. They quit calling...I never considered it might be a crime.
If you want to hear creative ways of making telemarketers' lives miserable, Jim Florentine has a number of comedy CDs where he recorded conversations with them. My personal favorite is where a telemarketer trying to see pre-paid funeral arrangements calls someone on the verge of suicide... It's hilarious.
Mark
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