Apologies for being overly critical, but I think the boss or the company deserve much more wrath than the poorly-paid telemarketing person you actually talk to.
If we want spammy telemarketing to stop, we have to make it unprofitable. The way to make it unprofitable is to ensure it results in less sales. Decreasing call volume decreases sales. Etc.
There are legal avenues, but it's incredibly difficult to follow through. Literally every time I've asked who was calling me - the name of the company, anything - I've been hung up on, instantly.
No, I'm referring to the service the original post is about.
But if you're concerned about my actions, I don't yell or say mean things to telemarketers either. Depending on how much free time I have, I either keep them on the line, or I try to find out who's calling me so I can complain about them and hear the sound of them hanging up instantly
I'm not sure that "the boss deserves more wrath than the poor shmoe doing the calling". I've talked my way through a number of "Rachel, from Cardholder Services" calls. The human "service" reps ask for card number, expiration date, last 4 of social, billing ZIP code, and sometimes the CVV/CID/CSC. Those "service" reps must know that's enough info to start using the card. They certainly know it by the 3rd time they're told to soak their heads or pound sand or jump in a lake. When I've given an expired Visa gift card's CC number, I've gotten a very curt dismissal. I feel pretty certain that everyone involved in "Rachel from Cardholder Services" knows exactly what's going on, and that it's a scam and illegal.
Those poorly-paid "telemarketers" are part of the problem. They deserve all they get.
You're confusing telemarketers with phone scammers. Phone scammers try to call you to install malware or steal you CC info, etc. Telemarketers call you to try and sell you something or get you to donate to the police union.
Telemarketers are poor schmucks trying to work a job. Their companies generally will abide if you request the do not call list. Scammers probably will not.
Any call I get that starts with a robocall from "Ann" or "Rachel" or "Barbara" from Cardholder Services, or Account Services, or Microsoft Tech Support is basically fraudulent from the start . Robocalling is stricly controlled, and I use Linux. Next, we have Caller ID spoofing, some of the area codes are non-existent, and maybe the number is of the wrong format. After that, the failure to identify who they work for clearly is a big red flag, as is the use of names like "Edward" or "Candy" for people with South Asian accents.
Even before the no-call list became effective, there wasn't a lot of difference between a telemarketer and a scammer. For several years, I politely asked for a written copy of their no-call policy, every single telemarketing call. I got one. Telemarketing was a very shady grey area business long before the fraudsters made it legendary.
Sure, they are part of the problem, but are they responsible for creating the problem? If you remove every telemarketing caller, does the telemarketing industry disappear?
Do we blame Hitler or every person in Germany? The leaders bear the majority of the responsibility.
Why, yes, if we remove all the humans that do the scamming, then the scam industry disappears. Actually, all we have to do is make the work so unpleasant that very few people will do it, and then only at a high wage, which renders the whole scamming thing uneconomical. And then it disappears.
With respect to the 3rd Reich, the Allies didn't let people who pled that they were only following orders off the hook. Neither would most moral philosophers today. If you know you're scamming people, and the "service" reps for Cardholder Services certainly do know tht, then you're morally accountable.
If all (or the large plurality) of us would listen to the robocall, hit 1 or 5 or whatever to get to a human, and then waste the human's time, the telemarketers would end up out of business.
Of course, if the FCC did it's damn job, and enforced valid caller ID, the whole thing would go away, too. The fact that this hasn't happened is a crying shame, and indicative of some major failures in the US Federal government.
Well, yes. But that's a simplistic case. Evidence shows that no matter how terrible a job is, some one will do it. It's just that as jobs get worse, fewer and fewer are willing to do the job. The amount of scammers willing to do the unpleasant task of dealing with 419-eaters and Scambaiters at a particular wage goes down.
Free market economics tells us that as the supply of some good goes down, the price almost certainly rises, all things being equal.
When the supply of "service" reps/scammers goes down, we have 3 cases:
1. Demand for that labor stays the same. In this case labor rates go up. This will make scamming less economical, driving some scam factories out of business.
2. Demand for "service" reps goes up: Same as case (1), but worse for the scam factories. More of them go out of business.
3. Demand for "sevice" reps/scammers goes down: this is really a case of "all things don't stay the same", because in this case, scam factories employ fewer "service" reps. Maybe some scam factories leave the market, maybe all scam factories make fewer calls a day.
In any of the 3 cases, WE WIN! Not as many scams are perpetrated, and the amount of calls goes down. Of course, an ideological free market analysis almost always gets things either partially or wholly wrong. We also don't know what the relationship between wages and number of people willing to put up with hobbyist scambaiters is. It's possible that like freeways on a Saturday, even a small worsening of job conditions makes the number of people willing to work at scam factories go way down. Or not. Unknowable. I just think that jerking the "service" reps chains as hard as possible is the only rational response.
Sounds like an opportunity for a system that plays one round of Lenny (or similar) then comes clean, admitting that it's a recording and we hope the telemarketer sees the funny side of it, "now please put this number on your do not call list for this and all other companies that you make calls for"... Then maybe a little pep talk that encourages the telemarketer to tell their boss to "stick this poxy job" because life will be better when they move on..
The person you're actually speaking to has no control over actually calling you- they're just logged into their desk which their bosses at the company code up to an autodialer, so as soon as they log into their desk it starts calling you.
Just tell them, "please add me to your do not call list" (magic words!) and they can put you in their software as DNC.
