Shopping for cars is always fun but receiving the annoying phone calls afterwards isn’t. My ex-wife asked me to be the bulldog during the purchasing process for her new car. While we were deciding the dealership to meet at I made a bunch of calls to find out current inventories of the particular model she’s interested in.
Immediately after hanging up with the first dealer I received a text message confirming an appointment I never set. Oddly, I never provided my phone number. The next morning I received two calls from the same dealership; one from their telemarketer and another from the salesman I talked to the day earlier.
Various dealerships had similar tactics, they pulled my number from caller ID and either called or sent unsolicited text messages. After the third annoying call I realized they were abusing technology to sell their wares. Technically the calls to my cell phone were unsolicited and the companies were dancing on a touchy legal gray line.
My personal phone numbers are all registered on the national Do Not Call list which is supposed to keep automated dialers and phone solicitors from contacting me. I’ve noticed that of late I’m receiving many more calls than before from companies. Most of the calls are either recorded messages or from people with horrible accents.
After investigating I figured out the auto dialers these companies are using have little discretion and are nearly impossible to trace. Automatic dialers make sense for solicitors because the computer simply dials a series of numbers and records those that successfully connect. After a call finalizes, the automatic dialer tries the next number and can repeat the process indefinitely.
We’ve all received calls from automatic dialers with prerecorded messages. Most of the ones targeted for businesses include information about Google Maps or increasing the business’ search engine rank. Residential customers receive calls about cruises, replacement windows or solar panels.
Most of these systems disregard Do Not Call registries and ignore the laws because they can spoof caller ID systems with fake numbers and hide their identity. Because I forward business calls to my cell phone I can’t simply disregard callers not on my contact list. I’ve become annoyed answering the phone at 10PM to hear a prerecorded message about installing windows or improving my Google rank.
Last week I opened my mail and read I was included in a class action lawsuit against Westlake Services, LLC and I will receive up to $150.00 due to unsolicited calls. The company apparently made telemarketing calls using automated dialers and settled out of court for $10,000,000.00. I won’t lie, I never bother listening to artificially voiced calls, but I’m going to take the money anyways.
In Massachusetts we’re fortunate enough to have laws restricting these types of calls, but many companies don’t necessarily follow these rules either. None of the calls I’ve received offer opt-out instructions at the beginning of the message and many of them call late at night. Although prerecorded messages are illegal, almost all of the telemarketing calls use this tactic. I can’t count the number of caller ID’s that are obfuscated.
Technology allows this type of solicitation to perpetuate because it’s cheap, easy and can be done from anywhere. Basically anyone with a microphone and computer can record a message and with cheap computer hardware and software can blast through many calls per day. Unfortunately there’s very little we can do except hang up the phone when these calls come through.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can call him at (978) 919-8059 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)