HOPE HOUSE and INSPIRE

Is there anyone else in the Atlanta metro area that is sick to death of receiving telemarketing calls from HOPE HOUSE and NSPIRE?

I have had my landline since July 2010 and have never once answered a call from either one and yet they have continued to call relentlessly (almost daily and sometimes 2 or 3 times a day) during the past 1 1/2 years I have had this number. I feel they will never stop calling me, ever.

Each company has many numbers they use to call people and I have programmed everyone of them into my phone and set them not to ring, the problem is that when their speed dialer or employee or whoever hears my answering machine, they hang up and I am left with an earsplitting dial tone that goes on for about 15 seconds.

I am fed up with their harrassing phone calls, is there no recourse to get it to stop?

} "I feel they will never stop calling me, ever."

There is no incentive to stop while you sit quietly for months making no demands of your callers. First thing to determine is if Nspire uses an in-house call center or farms out the job to a commercial fundraiser. Legally you'll have more leverage if the latter is true. Next, draft a brief cease-comm notice to the actual call source, requesting placement of whatever your numbers are on the internal no-call list. Also request a written copy of the entity's Do-Not-Call policy. Send this notice via USPS Certified with return card.

Below are linked some resources to help you learn your options. Meantime, I will set my stopwatch and see how long it takes for fake testimonials from weepy "clients" of Nspire to pile into this thread, as in these few examples:

https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-678-298-2073/10
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-678-405-9614/4
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-678-405-9646
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-704-441-8729/4

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Various laws in brief from the FCC
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/unwanted-telephone-marketing-calls

Electronic Privacy Information Center on telemarketing
http://epic.org/privacy/telemarketing/

Telemarketing Sales Rule
http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus27-complying-telemarketing-sales-rule

National Do Not Call Registry  (the rules YOU AGREED TO as a registrant!)
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt107.shtm

Telephone Consumer Protection Act
http://www.the-dma.org/guidelines/tcpa.shtml

Notes from a legendary consumer litigant
http://www.dianamey.com/anti-telemarketing-guide/

This charity really is helping the homeless. It is a testimonial, yes, but I am far from "weepy." I'm actually very pleased and thankful that such a charity exist. When no other outlets would give me a chance to create a better life for myself, nspire did. Please support this charity. The clothing you donate helps to make this possible. All they are asking is for you to take a few minutes to bag or box some of the things that you aren't using. They pick them up from your house for FREE.. AND it's tax deductible. What more could you ask for?

The homeless, the helpless and the needy should be taken care of but no one should take care of the frauds/criminals who pretend to be a charity, cause if you pay them, they'll keep all the money and the ones who truly need help wouldn't get any help. Even the homeless and the needy deserve a good job.

I'd rather see the needy work and get paid enough than suffer to make a living.

If they are truly disabled and unable to work, they need help through charity.

} What more could you ask for?

I am ever so glad you asked. I could ask for you and your shill pals to stop spamming 800Notes, and the other caller databases, and every freebie listing site you can find. I could ask you to drop your painfully obvious pretense that Nspire's steady streams of faux "testimonial" comments are all made by unique persons. I could ask you not to insult our intelligence with more of the same promotional tripe.

} Please support this charity.

Why should I? If Nspire really was a charity, you wouldn't be so determined to flood discussion boards with your obnoxious jamming.

} The clothing you donate helps to make this possible.

Nspire HQ is described as a crummy thrift store with a telemarketer nest in the back room. It's said what my donations "make possible" is either a retail markup or a quick flip for shredding into industrial rags. If it's money you wanted all along, come out with your tin cans up.

} They pick [donated items] up from your house for FREE

Yes, even if they are clearly labeled for a different charity to fetch, according to one report. Really now, you would have me assist in donation poaching?

Anyway, I don't live in Georgia, and neither do some 99.x% of the readers here. I do live three miles from a homeless shelter which manages to do great work AND is expanding its facilities without feeling compelled to carpet bomb the whole town with beggar phone calls. Their directors sure as hell don't think putting on sock puppet commentor shows for the internet will help them. They've quietly and simply become the example of a good neighbor you keep crowing Nspire is, and the public support has followed.

By the way, this place has a side program which puts aside the best donated clothing and gives it freely to job hunters in their care so they can look sharp as pins at their employer interviews, and eventually the positions they obtain. In theory I could visit a local business and see right in front of me the second life my donation got and the renewed living it helped. By contrast, to see where my Nspire donations go I might have to crawl my car over speed bumps on manicured residential roads in Atlanta and visit some McMansions.

We apparently could use more perspective on what Nspire (a/k/a "Hope House", a/k/a "Cure") is doing here in what I call persistent violations of the 800Notes service terms. As I've noted in many of their number threads, batches of soundalike "testimonials" come full of heart-tugging tales of rescued degenerates and gushing praise for Nspire Lord and CEO Kennard, trying so hard to justify the annoyance of multiple daily beggar calls that will not ever stop without a Certified mailed notice if not a lawsuit. This forum spamming has gone on for many months now, complaints of which have been waved away by the shills with cheap excuses about a perpetually faulty autodialer and petty attempts to shame detractors.  

This is the breakdown of the NSpire spam dump on this site from a few nights ago. Seven phone number threads were affected within 34 minutes.

format: timestamp | alias | thread

25 Aug 2012, 00:50 - helpers .............. https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-704-441-8729
25 Aug 2012, 00:53 - avel .................... https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-678-405-2982/7
25 Aug 2012, 00:54 - he ....................... https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-678-462-3335
25 Aug 2012, 00:55 - hawe ................. https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-770-807-3915
25 Aug 2012, 01:10 - HELPERS ........ https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-615-613-0713
25 Aug 2012, 01:21 - kaw ................... https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-704-831-6513
25 Aug 2012, 01:23 - wai .................... https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-678-405-9620

As an example of how their game works, let's pull the fourth comment from "hawe":

    "After I left from Alabama I wasn’t sure exactly which direction to choose.  I came to the Atlanta area with nothing but a Greyhound ticket and the clothes on my back.  After being in the city for a couple of months I heard about this program and interviewed.  Since then I was able to get my own apartment, get my drivers license back, and because my life was in order I was reacquainted with my daughter who I haven seen in two years."

So very touching, and typical of the Nspire house style, which I might add never once fulfills the primary mission of this site by discussing phone calls from their boiler room. More curious is the fact that submissions to other websites from supposedly different Nspire clients tell the same story, copied verbatim.

format: datestamp | alias / link

- 20 Aug 2012 - kj
http://www.findoutwhocalledyou.com/phone-number/8554776313
- 10 Jun 2012 - hal
http://whocallsmefromthisnumber.com/phone-number/8554506522
- 27 Feb 2012 - jb
https://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/7048316450/2
- 26 Dec 2011 - JB
https://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/6784059626
- 17 Dec 2011 - a web user
http://mrnumber.com/1-678-298-2073
- 30 Oct 2011 - James Brooks
http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Cure.C ... 073/review/list
- 16 Oct 2011 - JB
http://phoneowner.info/Number.aspx/6782982073/3


If you try dropping the following phrases into your search engine of choice you should see similar results indicating broadcast seeding of perfectly identical "testimonial" comments.

- "After I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease I thought that all hope was lost."
- "Not to toot my own horn but I might say that I was a talented blues musician."
- "I lived for many years focused on the street life. Selling drugs and gang life was all I knew."
- "After being released from jail, I wasn’t sure what options to take. When I heard about Nspire ..."
- "... have my own place, got my license, my probation fines are taken care of and I'm getting closer to getting my own car ..."

Nspire only further dents an already damaged credibility each time it abuses the privilege of using websites with low barriers of entry. Their specious comments need to be marked as such and Nspire shills need to go away and never come begging here again.

Checked their website "nspireatlanta.com."   The site is slick, but they talk a way better game than they apparently play.   Gregg Kennard, who lives on a very pleasant cull-de-sac  in Lawrenceville, GA, seems to run the clothing donation business as a church (non-profit status,) as well as a moving company and as a music producer, Noiz Records.   The site gives the impression of a large, mega-church providing numerous community services--or "intending to" in the future--but in fact is basically a storefront operation (1305 Lakes Pkwy, ste121, Lawrenceville, GA 30043-3674.)    Judging by the various posts pro and con, they split their time between highly aggressive telemarketing and cut-and-paste shill posting "success stories" all over the internet.   The BBB in Atlanta rates them an "F"  (http://www.bbb.org/atlanta/business-reviews/t ... lle-ga-27248740.)       Overall, Gregg Kennard, the "pastor" comes across as just another white hustler running a black church and doing ok for himself in the process.    Personally, I wouldn't donate a fart to these guys.

SHILL ALERT multiplied  5X. You do not fool anyone - since you work for them and are doing their bidding, please pass this message on to Nspireoutreach.org -  do NOT ever call me unless you fancy yourself having the cajones to explain to the judge why you hassle innocent people and cheat folks out of their hard earned money.

Resident47, Thank you for pointing them out. It was like opening a can of worms: I removed close to a hundred fake posts.

No ma'am, thank you for playing spam janitor for the umpteenth time. I can't recall if I've ever flagged those fake testimonies individually. As you found, it would be an all-day job, like crushing ants in the backyard.

In the three months since my last report, the Nspire/Hope House shills have continued apace with their spam campaign on this site, Who Calls Me, et al. Looks like a month ago they began dumping the very same spam posts on a caller database site serving the United Kingdom, which makes no sense to anyone but the spammers themselves.

I've not made as thorough an examination, but I find the shills are recycling the same old fake testimonials and offering a few I haven't seen which share the same writing style. They're still pushing the same promo video and insisting the House is a godsend, a distraction from the problems raised in non-shill forum comments.

affected threads found:
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-678-298-2073/13
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-678-462-3335
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-704-441-8729/6
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-704-831-6450/3
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-704-831-6513
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-770-807-3915/4
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-855-477-6313/2
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-901-791-9465

Just to be more grating, they've (or she or he has) often adopted cheeky user aliases:
[ help! / helpers gonna help / helpers helping / hope / Real Love / SUPPORT! / whhaat? / wow / yes! ]

What I find hilarious about all of this is that all of the aliases appear to be one person which is ridiculously obvious.

Legit charities do not behave in this manner.

Gregg Kinneard does more begging than the homeless people he claims to help.