} Its really up to the individual to decide how to handle an unwanted call
I agree and extend the courtesy of keeping my nose out of everyone's beverage glass. You like orange, I like grape, someone else likes ginger ale. I am becoming very, very tired of these rounds of arguments for a blanket "right" and "wrong" way to react to ringing phones. I am ashamed of association with a core group which keeps dumping them on a few contributors with a valid minority opinion. You of all people should comprehend the unfair effects of broadstroke assumption. We still have a running problem with some disruptive cranks who want to characterize this website as a hostile environment. It would be awfully nice if we quit trying to prove them correct.
} a lot of boiler rooms have a lot more people in them than a "couple of dozen"
Yes, but not all. It took me a few months of questioning their reps, but I've triangulated on a little retail space in Florida which I am sure is the HQ of one of my roster of future TCPA defendants. I have map service images of its interior snapped when it was occupied by a previous tenant. I don't think you could fit more than twenty headset jockeys and their cuboid desks in there.
I have a case worth enough to pay all my living expenses for a decade, providing personal motivation to make it harder for one company to do bad business. It won't change the world and won't stop the same bums for long. But I'll sleep a little better knowing that I offered some resistance they never saw coming. It would not take much duplication of my effort to bankrupt the same players, putting some long needed fear into them of what consumer law exists for.
This I think is why the FDCPA and TCPA defense lawyers throw fits over "runaway litigation", which in reality represents a small fraction of all people with valid claims who mostly never pursue them. I lift my arm two feet upward, but if I draw a line outward a mile long I create a huge arc. Add a few more to stand with me and we make a half circle between horizons. That geometry graphs the influence of a little extra effort. We may not have to destroy the enemy ... the idea getting out that they are vulnerable is enough to scare them.
Indeed I do and its why I stuck around, to do my part in helping those I see who show a little negativity or don't understand. I have a different perspective and can see from both sides of the fence so to speak. Everyone has their own way of expressing themselves and its difficult at times to comprehend whats being said, since text does not translate emotions or expressions without a lot of details added.
Some people are naturally argumentative and don't understand why someone can't see from their perspective, so they persist until either the other person yields to their point or simply gives up trying. I prefer to tell them they are just wasting their time and then move on.
I am the type who doesn't mind discussing things, but not to the point of it becoming an argument or a pointless discussion. To me, discussions lead to understanding because over a period of time, you 'get to know' the other person and can see things from their perspective much clearer. It also reveals when someone is being deceptive, inconsistent and avoid certain points of the discussions. I like being helpful, but don't like the 'bully' types and is why I was so aggressive before. Now I can help to confront any bullying types that come here that try pushing people around, without an argument or fight, instead I would expose them and let others see what I see and decide for themselves. At least the issue of those 'cranks' spreading rumors on review sites is over and I am glad I played a part in that. Here, it is a different story, but I will keep watching for them and continue exposing them.
I myself would be incline to think that runaway litigation might be a good thing to happen against these phone terrorist and I might add to their phone service provider as co-conspirator might work.
Fair enough ... Your above-board activity postdates the arrival of "Tormenting". Over time he's done a pretty good job of making his case and defending it without once stooping to insults or ToS violations. I've never sensed argument for its own sake. Maybe if he sounds like a broken record it's because dissenters have ground down the stylus.
This I lob at no single person, just keeping this stump a moment. If everyone else is so certain of the futility of TT's approach, where are the data? Where are the disproving test results? Kids and folks, there will never be a Grand Unified Theory of battling fraud. We have to build and rebuild our toolkits instead. One phone creep gets my pliers and ratchet screwdriver, another gets my hammer and nail cutter. If there is something not in my bag which could be useful, I want it obtained and ready.
I've beat a certain drum in illegal debt collection a hundred-leven times, that it feeds best on our collective apathy. TT makes a compelling argument for the same being true of all nuisance call sources. The fraud operations are simply more efficient at finding and exploiting victims if we do nothing to interfere. He offers one way to disrupt their little conveyor belts; he's never said that everyone has to join the party or that everyone should. We could just leave it there, track some test cases, poll the pit bosses, and see if lasting dents are made. Can anyone find for me the unavoidable harm in this experiment?
Will bad actors retaliate? Hell, yes. They've been ignoring the law for so long they think our rights have dissolved for their personal benefit. This is war, not a child's tea party. Don't come to the front without a plan, a weapon, and a helmet. Weigh the risk of involvement against the risk of an unchecked escalation of abuse of our dignity, abuse which becomes more automated by the year. Then choose a side, not the infighting.
Risking repetition here, I recall a statistic about a junk debt portfolio dropping severely in value, getting near "untouchable", if more than around four percent of affected alleged debtors raised a previous dispute. That's "dispute", mind you, as in a letter or a documented complaint call, not a lawsuit. Buyers see that and apply the correct meaning of "a few bad apples", predicting that many more accounts will not perform because there is some flaw which attracts consumer resistance.
Consumer lawsuits are considered "under control" while they don't ask for more than insurers will cover and do not become too numerous. Pay some grandma a half million in a headline case or start bidding up eight figures in a class action and the defense bar cries doom and goes shopping for senators. Somewhere in that math is the power of the Small Victory when multiplied.
If I seemed too harsh, I apologize. While I may not agree with you on this particular matter, it doesn't mean I don't understand your point of view. I admire your enthusiasm and dedication towards how you deal with unwanted callers, I just don't share it. Maybe some future issue will have something for us to discuss that we do share the same ideas.
If I left you under the impression that I thought all of the call centers had many more people working at them, I am sorry, but that is not what I meant. I am sure there are small , medium and large call centers. The problem I have is the statements of fact that TT makes. He keeps saying that a small number of people can completely put these call centers out of business by simply tying the sales people up. That fact does not make sense when you are talking about dozens of call centers just in this country alone and thousands worldwide. In order to put a center out of business you would need to put a serious hurting on their revenue stream. This would mean a concerted effort to tie their people up day after day after day for weeks and more likely months. TT's story of how pressing 1 costs them money does not hold water either. He has no evidence of that save for one story that he read a while back that indicated that was happening. He also depends on information gleaned from people that lie for a living. Now granted, I have no doubt that at some point they make mistakes and let information out that isn't a lie. You yourself have admitted that it took several months to find that one in Florida, which means you must have talked to them a whole lot. The fact of the matter is that if they get no income, they make no money. The fact of the matter is that someone will always fall for the scam and give them money. I just don't see tying them up as being a viable alternative. You will at best hurt one phone jockey's income for the day, not the whole operation. If someone would give me some cold hard facts that make sense to talk to these goons and that it would put them out of business, I would go along with the theory. However no one has done that. I feel that suing them when possible is one of the best ways to put them in their place which should always be bankruptcy court. Other than that, I refuse to answer the phone, not because I am afraid, but simply because I choose not to. They get no money from me, that hurts their cash stream as well.
I wasn't misled by your statements and apologies are not needed. Maybe I have to clarify more. My recall of TT's position is not one of guaranteed outcomes from collective action. My recall could be faulty, and we don't have the six hours needed to explain why.
Speaking in absolutes gets us nowhere. I think that arranging a poor man's DDoS on a large BPO call center is as unrealistic as saying that "if no one answers no one pays the caller". I do think that hogging phone time can be scaled to smaller outfits and give them a headache. The sort of coordination needed to take that nuisance all the way to business closure is, I agree, nice to dream of but impractical. It is plausible that the extra time burned by live agents on eventual dead ends raises by degrees the cost of bad business. That's the same theory behind the "Jolly Roger" auto-soundboard and the pranksters who post their "pwned" videos. The fact that call center owners are so keen to do more with fewer and cheaper personnel should inform this argument. The human capital is all covert slavery and they increasingly run machines which do their talking for them to three recipients at a time.
For my part I conduct probes of my junk callers with a longer game in mind. Any disruption of a rep's day is secondary. The longer I engage the more material I gather which might be shaped into legal brief weapons. Five or ten others doing much the same thing could greatly amplify the effort.
I realize that Tormenting has asked for faith where facts are due, and has perhaps unreliable informants for lack of choice. That worries me, too. But then so much output here is anecdotal, and we lack the experience to support a largely untested theory of attack. We bust heads here every week by reading the truth between the lies. If TT has taken heavy "enemy" flak he may have buzzed a sensitive target.
} several months to find that one in Florida
Well now, I didn't say "several", and I had some help. Sprinkled on this site and some other places I found bread crumbs to add to my findings. Generally they came from people who did more than block and ignore. What I got from my primary informants made a lot more sense once I plugged in the external remarks. (It takes a village to raise a sore?)
The problem I have is the statements of fact that TT makes. He keeps saying that a small number of people can completely put these call centers out of business by simply tying the sales people up. That fact does not make sense when you are talking about dozens of call centers just in this country alone and thousands worldwide.
It's because their sales model is completely dependent upon using technology (autodialers + prerecorded messages) to filter out the no answers, voice mails, call blockers, and people who answer and hang up - leaving only the very few who are interested in their offer (i.e. the highest value sales leads) to reach an actual agent. This is a break in their model. They are doing everything they can to avoid dealing with an uninterested people. I suggest we break their sales model.
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Other than that, I refuse to answer the phone, not because I am afraid, but simply because I choose not to. They get no money from me, that hurts their cash stream as well.
Not really. They know that the vast majority of their calls will not result in a answered call, much less a sale. That much should be completely obvious to everyone. Since you were never going to give them money, this isn't really a "hurt", it's factored in a part of the current sales model. It's a numbers game, you are just one of the millions of other calls that never make it past the robocall to an actual agent. I want to break their sales model and reduce them (as much as reasonably possible) to effectively behave as they would without the autodialers and robocalls. Much like this:
Check out the Hoax Hotel channel on YouTube. He spends a lot of time keeping the scammers busy so they cannot steal from innocent victims. Sometimes the scammers even divulge their business model.
I have the number he called from its (876)5051409. He called me saying I won 25 million dollars and 2018 Mercedes benz. He wanted me to go to Walmart and pay like $900 and I would have my money and car in a few hours
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