Telemarketers on the ropes

CINCINNATI BUSINESS COURIER ^ | 8/11/2003 | Lance Williams

[xrp]

Popular do-not-call list bringing industry to its knees

Aug. 11 — In the past three months, the hallways at Groesbeck-based Tel-A-Sell Marketing Inc. have become a lot less crowded. CEO Edd O’Connor has been forced to trim his telemarketing staff from 72 to 18.

“I WAS RUNNING a full house earlier this year,” said O’Connor, who also serves as president of the American Teleservices Association’s Great Lakes Chapter, which covers Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Michigan.

One of the big reason for the cuts: the chilling effects of the National Do Not Call Registry and other similar efforts in statehouses across the country.

A month into the sign-ups for the federal Do Not Call list, nearly 30 million phone numbers across the United States have been registered for the list. That number could double by the time the list takes effect on Oct. 1.

The ATA, which is challenging the list in court, said the national list could eventually cause more than 2 million lost telemarketing jobs. The ATA estimated that telemarketers are responsible for $660 billion in sales. The combined effects of do-not-call lists and the movement of jobs overseas have left the industry ailing.

“It’s going to cause significant business problems for this industry,” said O’Connor, who said he expects a pickup in business in early fall. “We’ve got to step back and regroup.”

[Fledermaus]

That's an insane comparison. No need to even reply to such drivel.

[Fledermaus]

Telemarketers thay break the law to go around those controls should be prosecuted.

[Fledermaus]

Yawn. Boring argument. I could make the same for any business out there.

[Michael Barnes]

re#150

That was funny..

[discostu]

I know exactly what cold calls are, they're a method of using MY telephone service that I pay for to advertise products against MY wishes. They steal my service and trespass on my property.

No no see if you call me and give that spiel my answer is "why would anybody buy a product from a company too damn cheap lazy and stupid to look at the address along with the name a phone number and realize that any address that ends in a number is a freaking apartment; to compound that stupidity you've made this same damn call every wednesday of this year and gotten no response, at what point will you figure out that I'm not interested. This display of serial stupidity and gross incompitence on your part has convinced me that you probably run the worst roofing company in Tucson and if I ever find one of your obviously incompitent employees on my roof I'm going to charge them with vandalism because I'm sure whatever they're doing up there is doing more harm than good."

Ooh you grab your "definition" from England, yeah their version of English is so identical to ours. I prefer to look at the law which specifically exempts any form of telesales that aren't cold calls.

That's idiotic there's plenty of way to do telesales that aren't just order taking. Again I refer you to the Craftmatic bed, the prospective customer requests contact THEN they get a phone call describing the product and preping for the brochure. Telesales without cold calls, and NOT order taking. The harder you try to wiggle this the more blatantly you have to lie.

And again the problem isn't with cold calling across the board, it's with companies that won't stop bugging you. Companies that call you every damn wednesday with the same stupid call, companies that hangup on you when you try to get on their no call list, companies that won't take no for an answer. Cold call all you want but do it with a modicum of politeness, if you get no response from somebody for a month figure out that they're either dead or not interested, if a person requests to be on your do not call list don't give them a run around and make it take forever just put them on the GD list.

LIES AGAIN. The list doesn't outlaw the first call. It just means you can't call people that don't want you to. The current projections don't even put half the country on the list, you stil get to cold call half the country. You're desperate need to lie about what the list does shows you know you're wrong. STOP THE LIES.

The LAW says it's theft of service. Got a problem with that? Take it up with SCOTUS.

[steve-b]

We could apply the above to everything: "If gunowners would've just abided by the law, we wouldn't have to crack down on them." "If companies would've stopped polluting the environment, we wouldn't need laws to stop them."

People who use guns to assault people or dump poison into other people's water supply should be cracked down upon. So should people who arrogate the phone service I paid for to their use.

[steve-b]

If you paid the phone company for a "closed line" limited to only those callers you approved, and telemarketers somehow managed to circumvent the block and reach you

As has been REPEATEDLY EXPLAINED ON THIS VERY THREAD, the phone company offered precisely this service in the form of "Caller ID" and the telepests circumvented it.

Frankly, they should have been smacked down for that alone; it's equivalent to a burglar wearing a mask so that you think it's Aunt Ida when you look through the door peephole.

[steve-b]

Another idea would be to fine just those telemarketing companies who have overstepped the line by harrassing people.

Well, then, we are in complete agreement. My telephone number is on the Do Not Call list. If you're a telemarketer and you call me anyway, then you've harassed me and you will be fined out the wazoo. QED.

[steve-b]

[the TeleZapper is] only messing with their [robocalling] system; you're not telling them not to call

While we're on the subject, would you like to share your personal definitions of the words "alone", "sex", and "is"?

[steve-b]

The real issue should be: Have our rights been violated by receiving an unsolicited phone call after publicly posting an express Do Not Call prohibition?

Question corrected to address the real issue.

[steve-b]

You can repeat over and over again that "they are stealing our service." That does not mean that they are stealing your service.

The phone company certainly seems to be under the impression that it is my service, as evidenced by the fact that they send a bill for said service to me rather than to somebody else.

[steve-b]

Without that cold calling, instead sitting there waiting for customers to call us - it's unthinkable

That's too bad. Have you gone looking for a job with a company that produces a good or service that people actally want?

[Tired of Taxes]

Uh-huh. You can't find a source to back-up your claim that the basis of the law is "theft of service," can you? It's now obvious that you don't understand what "theft of service" means. And, apparently, you don't understand what "telemarketing" or "telesales" or "cold calling" are, even though I've tried to explain it to you as patiently as possible. It's also obvious that I'm talking to someone who either (a) isn't reading my posts or (b) has poor reading comprehension skills.

I'm hanging up on you now. Don't call again. :P

[steve-b]

Your service is a telephone number that anyone can call.

Your house is equipped with a door that anyone can enter. People who disguise themselves as Aunt Ida so that you'll admit them after looking through the peephole (equivalent to Caller ID spoofing) can come in. People with lockpicks (equivalent to TeleZapper spoofing) can come in.

Don't come whining to the goobermint and demanding statist laws against burglary.

[Tired of Taxes]

You don't offer intelligent replies to anything.

I'm hanging up on you, too.

[steve-b]

If someone isn't making "cold calls" at all, then he isn't really doing telesales. He's just "taking orders over the phone."

The former is theft of service. The latter is legitimate business. END OF DISCUSSION.

[discostu]

I didn't even look and I'm not going to. That's the basis for outlawing ALL unsolicited sales calls on cell phones.

Theft of service means I'm paying for a service and somebody else is using it without my permission.

Your "explanaition" was primarily LIES.

I read your posts, they read like a Stephen King book: overly wordy bad fiction from a somebody with a gigantic and entirely unearned ego

I wish I could believe you, but since that's the 5th time you've said you were done I'm sure that's just another lie.

[BigBobber]

The people who are on the list (including myself) are there because we DO NOT WANT to be bothered by telemarketers. By definition, we are people who wouldn't be buying anything from these pushy nimrods anyway! If anything, the telemarketers should be seeing IMPROVED returns because their call centers will be wasting less time on calls that wont result in sales! How is this costing two million jobs?!?!

Yes, you have absolutely NAILED the false premise of this article. I'm sure the 2M out of work figure is highly inflated, also.

[steve-b]

I'm sure the 2M out of work figure is highly inflated, also.

One of the standard telepest tricks is to lump together legitimate telephone salespeople (who take initial customer calls or follow up on other contacts initiated by customers) with telepests (who make random unwanted calls), thus producing an inflated figure for the economic and employment significance of the latter.

[bfree]

The ATA, which is challenging the list in court, said the national list could eventually cause more than 2 million lost telemarketing jobs. I flat don't believe this -- the number is overstated by 1,999,990 or so.

Even if the number is true, I could not care less. They are invading my privacy and if they are out of work because of the new law I say "too bad, so sad" take a hike.