In article ,
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:



Now, some asshole is giving people my phone number, and I am getting
automated calls that he is late paying his bills. I tracked him down in
the county property records, and am thinking about going to his house in
the middle of the night to wake him up, then tell him to get his ****
together before I file a complaint. That, or email the IRS & FBI his
name & address, and tell them he is trying to hide something by giving
out false information.

Don't assume that the homeowner is at fault, or even knows.

I get dunning calls from time to time, and it's always in error. The
collection agencies check nothing out, instead expecting you to prove
that you don't owe. In a few cases, I've had to threaten a suit to get
them to stop calling. Objecting to the harassment also helps.

Joe Gwinn

Joseph Gwinn wrote:

In article ,
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:


Now, some asshole is giving people my phone number, and I am getting
automated calls that he is late paying his bills. I tracked him down in
the county property records, and am thinking about going to his house in
the middle of the night to wake him up, then tell him to get his ****
together before I file a complaint. That, or email the IRS & FBI his
name & address, and tell them he is trying to hide something by giving
out false information.

Don't assume that the homeowner is at fault, or even knows.

I get dunning calls from time to time, and it's always in error. The
collection agencies check nothing out, instead expecting you to prove
that you don't owe. In a few cases, I've had to threaten a suit to get
them to stop calling. Objecting to the harassment also helps.


Multiple comapnies are looking for him, and he has given some of them
my street address, as well.


--
http://improve-usenet.org/index.html

aioe.org, Goggle Groups, and Web TV users must request to be white
listed, or I will not see your messages.

If you have broadband, your ISP may have a NNTP news server included in
your account: http://www.usenettools.net/ISP.htm


There are two kinds of people on this earth:
The crazy, and the insane.
The first sign of insanity is denying that you're crazy.

In article ,
Larry Jaques wrote:

Engineman got off lucky. I might be taken by Everycontractor.com to
the tune of 3 grand, if, as expected next month, they fail to return
my funds. Their money back guarantee was for delivering a minimum of
fifteen times my contract fee worth of work during the year. They have
so far provided two leads, neither of which were within my listed
expertise or work areas. Caveat emptor.

Out of curiosity, how did you hear of them in the first place?

--
-Ed Falk,
http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:41:13 +0000 (UTC), with neither quill nor
qualm, (Edward A. Falk) quickly quoth:

In article ,
Larry Jaques wrote:

Engineman got off lucky. I might be taken by Everycontractor.com to
the tune of 3 grand, if, as expected next month, they fail to return
my funds. Their money back guarantee was for delivering a minimum of
fifteen times my contract fee worth of work during the year. They have
so far provided two leads, neither of which were within my listed
expertise or work areas. Caveat emptor.

Out of curiosity, how did you hear of them in the first place?

They called me. Dumb, huh?

--
Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without
hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.
-- George Sand

Joseph Gwinn writes:

I get dunning calls from time to time, and it's always in error. The
collection agencies check nothing out, instead expecting you to prove
that you don't owe.

They don't expect anything because they don't listen to you no matter
what the truth is or what you say. These are not collection agencies in
the old-fashioned sense of following up on slow payers. They're simply
suckers themselves in the business of extorting money by harassing
people en masse from a list of names they bought from somebody who
largely invented the list. For them to listen and analyze what you say
would be too expensive. Everybody gets the same treatment, whether or
not they've found the right person or the debt is valid, which in my
case is never true. Yet I still get multiple calls daily. The
harassment is minor enough that no one defends themselves forcefully
from it, and the collective nuisance is nobody's business to deal with.
They're literally beggaring for a living.

Machine calling was supposed to have been outlawed, but now they've even
gotten around that with some loophole. Truly sick. The guy who
innovated this should be in prison.

Why do people believe they should be paid for effort, as opposed to
creating value?

In article ,
Richard J Kinch wrote:

Joseph Gwinn writes:

I get dunning calls from time to time, and it's always in error. The
collection agencies check nothing out, instead expecting you to prove
that you don't owe.

They don't expect anything because they don't listen to you no matter
what the truth is or what you say. These are not collection agencies in
the old-fashioned sense of following up on slow payers. They're simply
suckers themselves in the business of extorting money by harassing
people en masse from a list of names they bought from somebody who
largely invented the list. For them to listen and analyze what you say
would be too expensive. Everybody gets the same treatment, whether or
not they've found the right person or the debt is valid, which in my
case is never true. Yet I still get multiple calls daily. The
harassment is minor enough that no one defends themselves forcefully
from it, and the collective nuisance is nobody's business to deal with.
They're literally beggaring for a living.

I've found that counter-threats of legal action work, or simply inviting
them to sue, where they will get to prove to a real Judge that I owe.
This usually convinces them that I will be more trouble that the debt is
worth.

And it steals their main threat, which very much changes the tone of the
conversation.

Joe Gwinn

Joseph Gwinn writes:

I've found that counter-threats of legal action work, or simply inviting
them to sue, where they will get to prove to a real Judge that I owe.

Assuming they're listening, which they're not. It's like talking to
spammers. And working yourself up into a lather about lawsuits over phone
calls is not wholesome.

In article ,
Richard J Kinch wrote:

Joseph Gwinn writes:

I've found that counter-threats of legal action work, or simply inviting
them to sue, where they will get to prove to a real Judge that I owe.

Assuming they're listening, which they're not. It's like talking to
spammers. And working yourself up into a lather about lawsuits over phone
calls is not wholesome.

Please don't confuse strategy with mouth-foaming.

Joe Gwinn

Joseph Gwinn writes:

Please don't confuse strategy with mouth-foaming.

My point is simply that the soliciting/bill-collection scum ringing my
phone oughta be horsewhipped, but it's not worth raising my heart rate to
so much as engage in a conversation with them, much less get
confrontational.

Yeah, I could threaten, or actually sue them for a $1K federal violation,
but life would be pretty grim doing that for a living. And no doubt they
are judgment-proof.

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:57:27 -0500, the infamous Richard J Kinch
scrolled the following:

Joseph Gwinn writes:

Please don't confuse strategy with mouth-foaming.

My point is simply that the soliciting/bill-collection scum ringing my
phone oughta be horsewhipped, but it's not worth raising my heart rate to
so much as engage in a conversation with them, much less get
confrontational.

This year, I'd been getting two or three calls a week from heavily
accented Philipinas in NYC. One company goes by the names of something
Contact or Contact somethingorother. After the tenth call, I finally
started asking them straight out "If you can't get something straight
with their stupid software like putting someone on their own Do Not
Call List, what POSSIBLE good could it do for me?" and hanging up. I
had to threaten (four times in one week) to complain to the Feds
before they finally stopped, and that was only after I actually did
feed their number into the Do Not Call List complaint form online at
https://www.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx

Yesterday, within ten minutes, I received two calls from the same
boiler-room company selling search engine optimization for my website.
I think they may have been Indian women, but their accents were
extremely heavy and phone system horrible. What I could hear was very
distant sounding. sigh

Now, when I hear an Indian accent, I immediately ask if this is a
sales call. When they inevitably say "Yes", I immediately say "Please
put me on your Do Not Call List" and hang up. Before that, they'd call
and offer to do my web programming for me at a wonderfully discounted
cost. When I said no, they'd ask why and I'd tell them that when I
have overflow proggin' to do, I give it to someone local, keeping
Americans at work. A few got really hostile at that and I chuckled
into the phone as I hung up on them. Now I don't waste the time. But
if another one calls, I'll use the "Can you hold on for a minute?"
trick and keep them on the phone as long as possible, letting them
hear me keying on the computer in the background. Sounds delicious!


Yeah, I could threaten, or actually sue them for a $1K federal violation,
but life would be pretty grim doing that for a living. And no doubt they
are judgment-proof.

Yeah, just like the fact that damned -political- calls are outside the
jurisdiction of the Do Not Call List regulations. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I'll kiss the person who invents a way to deliver a load of rocksalt
(or a computer virus) to the asshole solicitors on the other side of
all these bloody phone calls.

--
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous
delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
--e e cummings

In article ,
Larry Jaques wrote:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:57:27 -0500, the infamous Richard J Kinch
scrolled the following:

Joseph Gwinn writes:

Please don't confuse strategy with mouth-foaming.

My point is simply that the soliciting/bill-collection scum ringing my
phone oughta be horsewhipped, but it's not worth raising my heart rate to
so much as engage in a conversation with them, much less get
confrontational.

This year, I'd been getting two or three calls a week from heavily
accented Philipinas in NYC. One company goes by the names of something
Contact or Contact somethingorother. After the tenth call, I finally
started asking them straight out "If you can't get something straight
with their stupid software like putting someone on their own Do Not
Call List, what POSSIBLE good could it do for me?" and hanging up. I
had to threaten (four times in one week) to complain to the Feds
before they finally stopped, and that was only after I actually did
feed their number into the Do Not Call List complaint form online at
https://www.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx

Yesterday, within ten minutes, I received two calls from the same
boiler-room company selling search engine optimization for my website.
I think they may have been Indian women, but their accents were
extremely heavy and phone system horrible. What I could hear was very
distant sounding. sigh

Now, when I hear an Indian accent, I immediately ask if this is a
sales call. When they inevitably say "Yes", I immediately say "Please
put me on your Do Not Call List" and hang up. Before that, they'd call
and offer to do my web programming for me at a wonderfully discounted
cost. When I said no, they'd ask why and I'd tell them that when I
have overflow proggin' to do, I give it to someone local, keeping
Americans at work. A few got really hostile at that and I chuckled
into the phone as I hung up on them. Now I don't waste the time. But
if another one calls, I'll use the "Can you hold on for a minute?"
trick and keep them on the phone as long as possible, letting them
hear me keying on the computer in the background. Sounds delicious!


Yeah, I could threaten, or actually sue them for a $1K federal violation,
but life would be pretty grim doing that for a living. And no doubt they
are judgment-proof.

We use caller ID to filter calls at home -- if we don't recognize the
caller, we don't answer, and let the answering machine handle it.
Boiler rooms leave no messages.


Yeah, just like the fact that damned -political- calls are outside the
jurisdiction of the Do Not Call List regulations. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

One or two unrecognized numbers kept coming up on caller ID, so out of
curiosity I answered.

One turned out to be the American Cancer Society, looking for a
donation. I told them that we are on the Do Not Call list, and they
replied that nonprofits were exempt. I answered that we would not be
giving, and please take us off their lists. My tone of voice was not
friendly. They agreed; we'll see.

Actually, our policy is to never buy anything or give money for any
reason to anyone who cold calls. Or sends us junk mail for that matter.

Aside from not wanting to reward people for being annoying, a good
fraction of such offers are fraudulent in some degree, and there is no
way to tell good from bad from a phone call.


I'll kiss the person who invents a way to deliver a load of rocksalt
(or a computer virus) to the asshole solicitors on the other side of
all these bloody phone calls.

I'd prefer to bankrupt them.

Then there are no human-interest stories in the media rattling on about
what a terrible end it was, the poor devil being buried under a ton of
salt, and who could have been so cruel to have done such a thing.

Joe Gwinn

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:15:04 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:

In article ,
Larry Jaques wrote:
snip

I'll kiss the person who invents a way to deliver a load of rocksalt
(or a computer virus) to the asshole solicitors on the other side of
all these bloody phone calls.

I'd prefer to bankrupt them.

Then there are no human-interest stories in the media rattling on about
what a terrible end it was, the poor devil being buried under a ton of
salt, and who could have been so cruel to have done such a thing.

Joe Gwinn

My interpretation was that the human-interest story would be about the
"poor devil" having to pick bits of rock salt out of his ass.

Joe

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:57:27 -0500, Richard J Kinch
wrote:

Joseph Gwinn writes:

Please don't confuse strategy with mouth-foaming.

My point is simply that the soliciting/bill-collection scum ringing my
phone oughta be horsewhipped, but it's not worth raising my heart rate to
so much as engage in a conversation with them, much less get
confrontational.

Yeah, I could threaten, or actually sue them for a $1K federal violation,
but life would be pretty grim doing that for a living. And no doubt they
are judgment-proof.
The one that really get to me are the ones that ring the doorbell
despite the "no soliciting" sign, then argue that they are not
soliciting. At this point I demonstrate that I AM capable of throwing
them across the property line onto the city road allowance. Had one
come back a couple hours latter to continue the discussion with second
son who has a shorter fuse that the old man.
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada

Joseph Gwinn writes:

We use caller ID to filter calls at home -- if we don't recognize the
caller, we don't answer, and let the answering machine handle it.

Still, it's a nuisance, having the interruption of a phone ring from
someone you don't want to hear from. If it were an occasional wrong number
or other "honest" mistake then it wouldn't matter, but multiple calls per
day from phony collection agents I'll never tolerate.

We use caller ID as well. All it does it pre-advise that an annoyance call
is disturbing your concentration.

Gerald Miller writes:

The one that really get to me are the ones that ring the doorbell
despite the "no soliciting" sign, then argue that they are not
soliciting.

It gets to me that anyone would think not having a "no soliciting" sign
would default to a "solicit all you like" sign.

Still, I find them somewhat more tolerable, like junk postal mail, because
it costs some time and effort for them to be there. Unlike machine phone
call spammers.

Myself, I've gotten into a calm routine that I recite to them as grey-
haired advice about how they should find honest work creating value instead
of hustling. Otherwise I am tempted to get rude with the ladies, but no
doubt there's nothing to shock or frighten them if they've been calling
strangers for any length of time with a feminine voice.

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:15:04 -0400, the infamous Joseph Gwinn
scrolled the following:

We use caller ID to filter calls at home -- if we don't recognize the
caller, we don't answer, and let the answering machine handle it.
Boiler rooms leave no messages.

Yeah, I don't answer calls from 062 area codes, out of area, etc.
but usually answer if I can see the number.


Yeah, just like the fact that damned -political- calls are outside the
jurisdiction of the Do Not Call List regulations. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

One or two unrecognized numbers kept coming up on caller ID, so out of
curiosity I answered.

One turned out to be the American Cancer Society, looking for a
donation. I told them that we are on the Do Not Call list, and they
replied that nonprofits were exempt. I answered that we would not be
giving, and please take us off their lists. My tone of voice was not
friendly. They agreed; we'll see.

I put up the Cystic Fibrosis callers/mailers/spammers for three
****ing years before I finally went to their website and sent a
nastygram to every bigwig listed. It must have singed some fur there,
because a nice lady called me the a few days later and told me that
I'd never get another call, letter, or spam from them. I haven't.
That's a fluke, I'm sure.


Actually, our policy is to never buy anything or give money for any
reason to anyone who cold calls. Or sends us junk mail for that matter.

I usually do the same thing and still can't believe that I got
suckered for the =big= one with everycontractor. Crikey!


Aside from not wanting to reward people for being annoying, a good
fraction of such offers are fraudulent in some degree, and there is no
way to tell good from bad from a phone call.

That's too true.


I'll kiss the person who invents a way to deliver a load of rocksalt
(or a computer virus) to the asshole solicitors on the other side of
all these bloody phone calls.

I'd prefer to bankrupt them.

Then there are no human-interest stories in the media rattling on about
what a terrible end it was, the poor devil being buried under a ton of
salt, and who could have been so cruel to have done such a thing.

Point taken.

--
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous
delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
--e e cummings

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:16:08 -0400, the infamous Joe
scrolled the following:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:15:04 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:

In article ,
Larry Jaques wrote:
snip

I'll kiss the person who invents a way to deliver a load of rocksalt
(or a computer virus) to the asshole solicitors on the other side of
all these bloody phone calls.

I'd prefer to bankrupt them.

Then there are no human-interest stories in the media rattling on about
what a terrible end it was, the poor devil being buried under a ton of
salt, and who could have been so cruel to have done such a thing.

Joe Gwinn

My interpretation was that the human-interest story would be about the
"poor devil" having to pick bits of rock salt out of his ass.

Spammers are much like potato chips. Betcha can't send just one!

--
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous
delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
--e e cummings

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:26:07 -0400, the infamous Gerald Miller
scrolled the following:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:57:27 -0500, Richard J Kinch
wrote:

Joseph Gwinn writes:

Please don't confuse strategy with mouth-foaming.

My point is simply that the soliciting/bill-collection scum ringing my
phone oughta be horsewhipped, but it's not worth raising my heart rate to
so much as engage in a conversation with them, much less get
confrontational.

Yeah, I could threaten, or actually sue them for a $1K federal violation,
but life would be pretty grim doing that for a living. And no doubt they
are judgment-proof.
The one that really get to me are the ones that ring the doorbell
despite the "no soliciting" sign, then argue that they are not
soliciting. At this point I demonstrate that I AM capable of throwing
them across the property line onto the city road allowance. Had one
come back a couple hours latter to continue the discussion with second
son who has a shorter fuse that the old man.

I need to set up a sprinkler which hoses down the front porch when I
press the button, though it'd be a real shame to get all those
Watchtower magazines and bibles wet, wouldn't it?

--
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous
delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
--e e cummings

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:40:39 -0500, Richard J Kinch
wrote:

Gerald Miller writes:

The one that really get to me are the ones that ring the doorbell
despite the "no soliciting" sign, then argue that they are not
soliciting.

It gets to me that anyone would think not having a "no soliciting" sign
would default to a "solicit all you like" sign.

I had one occasion when I was standing near the door and a candidate
in the municipal election looked at the sign and said "I guess that
means me, may I leave my flyer?" He got my vote for having shown that
he could think!
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada