
By virtue of my six-year quest to hunt down Rachel from Cardholder Services, I have become the go-to guy on the Web for anyone trying to escape her. My Sunday column (pasted below) was inspired by Frank Adler, a political philosophy professor at Macalester who needs peace and quiet in his home in St. Paul in order to do his scholarship. Adler called a few weeks ago to declare that the Do Not Call Registry was an abject failure. I'll let you decide if that's true, but I am ready to clear up some items readers brought up after the story.
Wayne Nelson pointed out that I neglected to put the phone number to call to register your number. That's 888 382-1222.
Mary Ann Thoma, who works in market research, informed me that the Do Not Call Registry allows calls from organizations solely doing research, such as public opinion surveys. People are welcome to ask to be put on these organizations' internal do-not-call lists, but federal law allows these calls.
Many people have shared their strategies, none of which I'm endorsing. Some people try to waste the telemarketers' time by playing along with the pitch, and then leaving the phone off the hook, or pursuing some pretend filibuster.
Then there's Nomorobo, a technology to block known robocallers that emerged from the FTC's Robocall Challenge. The FTC describes it "as a cloud-based solution that would use 'simultaneous ringing,' which allows incoming calls to be routed to a second telephone line. In the Nomorobo solution, this second line would identify and hang up on illegal robocalls before they could ring through to the user."
One reader, Steve Payne, says it works, and it's free so far. And Nomorobo says it has just expanded its service to do something reader Jenni Schnobrich wants: Blocking political calls, which are exempt from the Do Not Call Registry.
Here's the column:
People who put their phone numbers on the Do Not Call list reported a staggering 3.7 million violations last year. That doesn't include the zillions who never file complaints about the nightly interruptions by Rachel from Cardholder Services and her prerecorded cronies.