So you think you’re safe. You’ve got your name on the FTC’s Do Not Call List and you’ve told the few rogue fundraisers to put your number on the Do Not Call List. So you should be safe from most of the crap the telemarks try to push.
Except there’s now a new scam - and it may be legal.
I’ve been getting A LOT of calls lately from auto-dialers. Those are the stupid machines that telemarks use to dial a number and play a recorded message when you pick up. Somewhere in the message you’re told to press 1 to continue where you’re transferred to a human. The telemarks are arguing that when you press that button to speak to a human you have taken a positive action to initiate contact with them and establish a business relationship with them. According to the law once you have a “business relationship” with the company in question, they don’t have to respect that you’re on the Do Not Call List and can pester and annoy you.
There’s an evil little Catch-22 here. The auto-dialer messages don’t give you enough information to find out who they are to report them which means you have to initiate contact with a human. Once you initiate contact with a human you’ve supposedly established your business relationship. BUT, if you press the operator to tell you what company they work for or try to get the information needed to report them - they hang up.
On the other hand if you just hang up on the autodialer without trying to collect that information then the autodialer will just pester you every few days.
Now I really wish I could keep it together long enough to try something like this…
