Cell Phones and the "do not call" list [TELECOM]

In NYC calls to land lines can cost the recipient. During recent NY Primary Obama people used abusive robot telemarketing telephone calls that cost the recipients money!! If telemarketing call goes to your Verizon Voice Mail Box you are billed for a forwarded call. If you call in to hear message you are billed for ANOTHER call. 22" total.

TRUE. _EXCEPT_ if they have the express permission of the paying party, that is.

That's _their_ problem.

(The law was passed before 'portability' was much of an issue.)

If they don't *know* it's not a cell phone they _are_ risking FCC penalties.

They *DO* have possible ways -- including buying access to the 'portability database' -- *all* it requires is _money_. Doing 'authoritative' checks may be more expensive that a marketer is willing to pay, but that does _not_ excuse them from liability for transgressions.

yup.

People calling strictly business listings are _not_ required to vet against the DNC list. "Inadvertent" errors are not actionable -- if one can show that one has made a sufficient 'good faith effort' to exclude numbers one should not call, penalties will not be accessed.

I think number portability is between cell phones only, not between a cell phone and a land line. I think all cell phones still remain in certain designated exchanges. Anyone know of examples where cellphones share an exchange with a conventional landline?

However, I've heard that they've managed to go smaller than an exchange, down to the next level of 1000s. That is, 311-555-2nnn would be assigned to one service, 311-555-3nnn would be assigned to a completely difference service, etc. Is that true now?

I did.

I did that too, but it didn't help. Business solicitors apparently don't bother checking the list before hand.

There are several serious unresolved problems with the 'do not call' lists:

1) Businesses simply ignore the rules: I've been solicited by businesses who falsely claimed they did work for me in the past, when in fact they did not. (Like a lawncare company seeking business calling me--when I don't have a lawn.) They also called my mother in the nursing home but nursing home calls are forbidden. They either didn't bother to check or didn't care. 2) Charity, surveys, and political calls are allowed. The volume of these calls is extremely high, particularly on election day. They're sloppy, too. I explicitly took my mother off the voting rolls after her passing, but they still repeatedly called for her to come in and vote. I am inundated with charity calls and survey calls. [As an aside, many 'charities' are in reality profit-making businesses, with only a small percentage of the take going to actual charity, the rest retained by the solicitor agent. It's a big business.] 3) No enforcement of violators: So someone gets an illegal solicitation call. People have lives, they don't have time to log the call or report it, many people don't have Caller-ID, and solicitors often send out "111-111-1111".

IMHO, the legislatures really let us down. It took way too long to get these laws and they're too weak, the telemarketing busienss is a big one and they have their powerful lobbyists.

***** Moderator's Note *****

Lisa,

The solution to the telemarketing problem is both simple and straightforward. All it takes is for _everyone_ to help each other.

If everybody who gets an unwanted call from a telemarketer just hangs up, the salesman is overjoyed: statistically, he knows that he's that much closer to a "hit", and all it cost him was about twenty seconds of time.

However, if we all took the time to _listen_ to the pitch, the industry would be bankrupt in a few months. Think about it: when the phone rings, you've *already* been bothered. Your quiet enjoyment of your free time has *already* been stolen from you. The best solution is to "Take one for the team", and listen to the entire pitch, asking polite questions about membership in the Better Business Bureau and refund policies, and then, after about five minutes, just say "I've decided I'm not interested. Please put my number on your "do not call" list".

Five minutes versus twenty seconds. See what I mean?

(BTW, please email me off list on an unrelated matter: cdt atsign timesucker period homelinux period org. TIA.)

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or I may never see it. Thanks!)

The TCPA law is precise in it's language, and call-forwarding costs are _NOT_ an actionable basis against an unwanted caller, under it.

Nope, number portability is required between landlines and cell phones now. I have a cell phone in my pocket right now that has the number from my now non-existent landline.

Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va.

I waste their time but not mine. When the telemarketer asks to speak to me, I say "Just a minute, please", set the phone down, and continue whatever I was doing while he sits there waiting for me to pick up the phone. Depending on how long it takes him to give up waiting, it might not waste quite as much of his time as if I listened to his pitch, but it costs me almost no time at all. Sometimes I turn on the speakerphone so I can hear his occasional "Hello?? Hello??"

***** Moderator's Note *****

That's not going to be as productive: no experienced phone droid will wait on a silent line for more than a few seconds. Remember, they _know_ what they're time is worth, and dumping one "silent" call is just another step toward a hit. Hang up or give them the silent treatment, either way they'll just move on and it's only a few seconds. But if you listen and ask questions ...

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or I may never see it. Thanks!)

WAS true. *ISN'T* now.

yup.

Yes, "True."

If they know they're calling a business, they don't have to scrub against the DNC list.

That first one is *definitely* worth a small-claims suit. A "slam-dunk" for $500 damages, probably trebled to $1500, because it was clearly a 'knowing and intentional' violation.

The 2nd one isn't quite as much of a sure-thing, but it is 'betting odds' winnable.

In Chicago, she probably _would_ have voted. *Several* times.

*cynic*mode*off*

So, just _how_ do you think it *SHOULD* be enforced?

Have the government listen in on _every_ call you get, to make sure it's not an illegal marketing call?

There are, however, various technical and tariff issues that often make the transfer from competing service types difficult.

(And, let's not forget, there are plenty of players who don't follow the rules or make things overly difficult).

The key issue is that of "rate center". In most cases, the new number has to be "homed" in the same rate center as the original one.

To use a simplified example: Let's say you grew up in Boston rooting for the White Sox, and had a landline up there. You dropped the wired phone and transferred the number to a cellular handset in the Boston Cell and Bar system.

You then snapped out of your delusionary obsession with the White Sox and moved to NYC to cheer the Brooklyn Dodgers.

You brought your cellphone with you and have been cheerfully using it with the Boston area code, but after a bit you figured you'd rather have that number on a landline.

Can you take that Boston area code number and place it on a wired phone in Brooklyn, NYC (as opposed to Brookline, Mass)?

Of course not. (Well, not of course, but the answer is still no).

In reality it gets even more confusing. Many area codes have multiple rate centers in them, even though all calls in that area might be considered "local". For example, NYC has, umm, something like 15 of them, so a phone number that's "homed" in South Brooklyn, for example, can NOT be transferred to an upper Manhattan location.

What's really confusing is that while you can kind-of figure out where a landline number is homed, you've got to have access to the double super secret internal charts to know the similar location for a cellular phone. Or, for that matter, a VOIP one.

Just try taking a VOIP number and moving it to a landline...

(It used to be worse, with the NNXs based on the actual central office, meaning there were dozens and dozens of discrete little pockets).

Exactly how do I _prove_ in court that the company did in fact call me? It's my word against theirs.

That is of course IF the guy shows up. He was out of state which makes it harder. Odds are this kind of guy knows the system pretty good and will have a lawyer ask for dismissal, ask for continuance, etc., all the while when I take off from work and waste an afternoon in court. And another afternoon. And another. I _might_ win, but I might not. And even IF I win, I still have to enforce the judgement. More fees, More aggravation. More time.

Actually I would think calling and disturbing a nursing home patient, which is strictly against the law, would not be looked upon very favorably by a judge. But once again, I would need proof.

For one thing, the telephone network should not accept calls without a valid caller-ID. Any carrier that submits calls to the network should be required to comply with strictly enforced standards, not the slop VOIP and others are dumping through.

For another, the govt should aggressively go after any violators, even small ones. They only go after major ones (as in other crimes as well, like postal inspectors).

How about those ROBots with a recorded message ending in "hit 9" to speak to a representative!? I doubt that tying up the robot for a couple of minutes is going to deter them !-)

I think there Outta Be A Law that telemarketers may NOT have their phone number hidden from Caller ID!

***** Moderator's Note *****

We're all finding out that privacy is the ultimate privilege: the ability to exclude unwelcome intruders from your life used to belong only to the rich, and can be given to ordinary people by electronics. As with most mechical solutions to social problems, it's an arms race: caller ID can be falsified, privacy-block "law enforecement" bybass codes can be purchased, and there's always the tried-and-true "ring the neighbor" trick so loved by bill collectors.

You can purchase "Automated attendent" systems which will answer your phone and demand an access code before they ring your actual telephone instrument. Other combinations of software and hardware will arrive as demand warrants.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or I may never see it. Thanks!)

"Phone droids", as distinguished from single-person operations, are almost always penalized for hanging up on a live call. If you play this game, you will sometimes hear them page a supervisor to *ask permission* to hang up. *

There is such a law, and it's an instant $22,000 per occurrence fine if they're caught breaking it, so only the shadiest operator will do it.

Altering or blocking caller ID was a common tactic before the DNC law was past, but it's almost completely died out. *

Annoyance call trace. Know the code, use it after a call, and have a lawyer go through the procedure to get an official copy. *

Caller ID is not ANI. ANI *must* be present and correct or the call won't work. Caller ID still can drop on the floor even now - half of the calls I get at work from distant offices return "out of area". *

I believe your generalities are not the whole story. Here's why: The underlying issue is more a question of what provider "owns" the original number and whether or not your New provider has an agreement (contract) with the original provider. In the network, if you will, of contracts the largest companies have the most agreements in place. It is these agreements, not the type of service, that govern whether a number can be "ported" at this particular time. Obviously new agreements are constantly being created, and new providers coming online as well.

That seems to be caused by the SS7 network not being able to dip into the callers LC data base to get the calling ID. My problem since getting the priv manager is now getting the state where the call is coming from instead of the name of the calling party, that is unless they are in my computers data base.

How exactly are they going to get caught if their number is hidden?

I get at least one of these per week. I get a call log of all incoming (and outgoing) calls with from ATT and "Unavailable" from AnyWho.

My personal experience (after a buy from someone in a newsgroup who didn't deliver the goods) is that postal inspectors will in fact go after small cases. That was a ~$100 item from some guy who cashed my check at a liquor store. I found a few other people he'd scammed, too. I sent the inspectors a summary, and a copy of the cancelled check with his thumbprint. I don't know what they did, but I got an email from the guy assuring me that the item was in the mail, and it arrived a few days later, having been mailed and insured at a post office.

Of course, that was Before Bush. Don't know if they bother following up these days, if your name isn't Halliburton.

Dave

Those recorded voice calls are, in and of themselves, a law violation. `

Well, for all the good it does, there _is_ such a requirement. It's not actual statute itself, but it _is_ part of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission 'Telemarketing rule' -- which has the force of law, as far as violating it goes.

But, but... how did they (the rule makers) imagine such a rule would be enforced? Do I have to get a court order to trace a call at a specific time of day?