Cold Calls - Research Surveys

Cold Caller: We only want your opinion. It doesn't cost you anything.
Me: Ok, here's my opinion: GO AWAY! 

I hate cold callers too, but they do it for a reason....it works. They expect rejection but they know SOME will bite even after initially rejecting.

Mesh
I don't have a land line and very rarely get these calls (if at all), but there is a National_Do_Not_Call_Registry giving you a choice of not receiving these calls.

Unfortunately I don't feel this registry is working as well as it should anymore. I have been registered for years (since it started). I recall when it was first enacted it actually felt like it did work and companies complied with it. Over time though, it is my feeling it is being ignored by many companies. Slowly we have been increasingly receiving more unsolicted calls. They may be small time companies, or just plain sleazeballs, and probably just create a new name if they are ever flagged. But I do acknowledge that it could be much worse without the registry. I feel it still has some merit but probably does not put the fear for compliance that it initially did.

My favorite are the ones who call you claiming to be "affiliated" with Google and promising to get your business ranked higher in search results. I get 2 or 3 of these every week and I always have fun asking them repeatedly if they are officially linked with Google. In the end they have to admit that no, they aren't - and I hang up. Hate liars.

In France there are many tele sales firms trying to sell photoelectric cells that you install on your roof that then generate electricity for the French network..

We have had these cells on our roof for the last 3 years and you would think that the EDF (Electricite de France) would keep their files updated and pass the info on to those trying to sell said installations.

Nope, they don't.

So every week we get one or two tele-marketing people call us. Depending on my current mood i either give them s"""" or explain the situation, or just hang up. My wife is more forgiving, but she's learning fast !!!

It really is getting exasperating.

Cheers,
Jerry

I get robocalls all the time, despite the fact that the entire state of NC is on the no call list for robocallers.
I changed my answering machine so that it doesn't answer until after 7 rings, so they usually hang up before then.
No more coming home from work with 3 or 4 prerecorded messages on the machine.

craigb

Mesh
I don't have a land line and very rarely get these calls (if at all), but there is a National_Do_Not_Call_Registry giving you a choice of not receiving these calls.

The ones doing surveys think that this registry doesn't apply to them since they're not trying to sell you anything, they simply want to annoy the living crap out of you.  Naturally, I don't see any difference at all. 

Technically it doesn't.  the Do Not Call list does not apply to Non and not for Profit surveys, official local, state or national political parties or businesses from which you have done business with in the past.
 
https://www.donotcall.gov/faq/faqbusiness.aspx#who

craigb
They wouldn't make it past page 1.
(And we all know page 43 has the most interest, ya?)

I thought page 43 was deleted due to violations of the TOS, let alone violations of human decency. 

Most of the time I'm gentle with those callers. There isn't a single one of them who's doing it by choice, and they work under des picable conditions for crap pay. I politely say "not today, thanks" and hang up.
 
The exception to my rule are the weasels selling penny stocks, diamonds, krugerands and such. These guys ARE doing it by choice and potentially making excellent money suckering people. When they call, the gloves come off.
 
They're depending on a very small percentage of suckers falling for their scam. The longer I can keep them on the phone, the fewer victims they'll claim that day. I've kept them on the line for over an hour. Tell me more, I'd say, then make a cup of tea or get on the forum while they entertained themselves with the sound of their own smug voices.
 

slartabartfast

Mesh
I don't have a land line and very rarely get these calls (if at all), but there is a National_Do_Not_Call_Registry giving you a choice of not receiving these calls.

I get these calls all the time and all my phones are registered with the Do Not Call Registry. The FTC has been largely ineffectual in stopping unwanted calls. After 10 years and 221 million registered numbers we are all getting dozens of these calls weekly. This link to a self-congratulatory PR piece brags that in that 10 years the FTC has initiated: " Law enforcement actions — more than 100 so far — have continued, resulting in orders against 291 individuals and corporations." One hundred law enforcement actions? Really? Gee...a hundred in 10 years.
 
http://www.business.ftc.gov/blog/2013/06/10-years-national-do-not-call-looking-back-and-looking-ahead
 

I still get them occassionally, too, but I nearly always report violators.  I also block all numbers (as long as they're published to my phone, which most of them seem to be).
 
I agree with you tho, that the number of "law enforcement actions" seems to be quite low for the length of time the registry has been in place.

Looks like I'm gonna have to find another way to reach out to my forum buddies.

Many of the phone "surveys" are push polls with questions like, "If you knew that candidate Skulduger had a standing Tuesday night appointment for anal sex with a boar, would that affect your intention to vote for him?" That would still probably qualify as a bonafide  political call and exempt it from the FTC jurisdiction. But product surveys etc. are in no way covered as a legitimate social research effort.
 
And of course we expect to get calls from "nonprofits" that are actually being made on their behalf by for profit solicitators that take 60% or more of the amount you contribute. That does not explain why people in the Caymans are so sucessful in offering to clean my carpets or vacuum my air ducts. 
 
I was flipping channels quite a few years ago, when I happened to hit C-Span just at the time that the house was voting on a law to exempt telephone solicitation companies from paying minimum wage to their callers. Would the brave elected members of our congress, stand up for the rights of the poor saps who could only find jobs making cold calls from their local bar or kitchen, and the overwhelming desire of their constituents to stop having their lives interrupted by drivel, and at least raise the cost to the schmucks who choose to enrich themselves by annoying them? The vote was not even close, and today thanks to our democracy the people who are calling are not even being paid in many cases unless they make a sale. Under those circumstances, I think it is a kindness to shut the call down in as few seconds as possible, so that the caller can move on to someone demented enough to order the thing he is pushing.