Sunday, December 22, 2024

User-Generated Telemarketer Butt-Kickin

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If the mob is good for anything, it’s kicking some tail. Sometimes it’s a righteous wave of derriere demolition, and others it’s an unfair and maniacal feeding frenzy. But if all that ire is directed toward an unknown caller clicking on your answering machine ten times a day, nobody’s going to care whether crowd-sourced, digital brutality is justified or not.

The Caller Complaints Community is a website channeling both the FTC’s Do Not Call List complaints and user reports of incessant (often automated) telemarketing phone numbers. Users can go to the site, research a phone number, or post their own angry story.

Over 125,000 complaints have been filed at Caller Complaints, and the community has grown to 350,000 strong since launching earlier this year. Numbers are marked as Telemarketer, Debt Collector, Political Call, Prank Caller, or Unknown.
User-Generated Telemarketer Butt-Kickin
And yes, they have a widget you can put on your website. Copying and pasting the widget presents a search box prompting a phone number search and the guiding refrain to the masses: STOP Telemarketers!

What happens after one complains about a specific caller? Well, that’s a harder question to answer, but one course of action is pretty brilliant, even if destined for abuse. As relayed by Ars Technica, call their toll free number from a pay phone, which will cost them at least 50 cents per call to reimburse the phone company. Enough of those kinds of fruitless leads and they may adjust their strategies.

Okay, so next question is: Have you even seen a pay phone in the past couple of years? Locating one of those in the age of cell phones is like finding a street corner mailbox in the age of email. At any rate, good luck with your vendetta, should you choose to accept it.  
 

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