Argumentative discussion

[BrianShaw]

Now there's a great topic to get argumentative about!

 

[BrianShaw]

Great question, Michael... you should start a thread on that topic.

 

[Photo Engineer]

We in the AF and my Army and Marine buddies used Kiwi as I do to this day.

As for Carmen, we have gotten up to 4 calls a day and when I spoke to a rep by pressing the button, I told him to quit calling, as this was just sick, and he called me a disease. Then he went into a rant about me so I hung up. I tried a second time and the guy said go ahead and talk, while you talk I'm watching porn on my computer. Something has to be done about this! We also get calls from Carnival lines.

PE

 

[moose10101]

I was 1A. I don't know what "stand-by draft" was. All I knew is that the pullout was the 18th birthday present I was anxious for, for years. Not a minute too soon. I don't think burning a draft card can change a thing. If they wanted ya, that was it.
I was scared for years that I was going to die in Viet Nam pointlessly at a young age. That must have been a terrible place to die.
A year later, I went to the Marine Corp recruiting office, but the man took one look at the skinny kid with glasses and sent me home.

I turned 18 in April, 1974, so I was even more relieved than you, even though I had a lottery number in the 180's. And IIRC, we were classified 1-H, not 1-A, since no one was being drafted at that time.

And as mentioned earlier, registration is required now, and is a condition of receiving Federal student aid.

 

[MartinP]

We in the AF and my Army and Marine buddies used Kiwi as I do to this day.

In the British side of the Atlantic - at least until 1998 - the preferred choice was Kiwi "Parade Gloss", though I still couldn't produce a great result. The evil alternative was a particular high gloss floor polish with the contents of a black Bic pen in it. When discovered, that really did cause an argument, though I didn't see any point in risking it.

Happily, I missed the era when one had to bull the brown canvas plimsolls used for PT in the 'old days'.

 

[removed account4]

Somebody should start a thread so see who all suffers and miserably from the same affliction I do. The phone rings, but there's nobody there. Happens repeatedly every day, unless it's Bridgett or Carmen from Cardholder Services. But that only happens once a day (usually). The do not call list is totally worthless. In fact having a telephone at all is totally worthless.
I think somebody finally tracked down and killed Rachel. Now it's only Carmen and Bridgett.

I did, but there was no argument

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

When we repeatedly got calls with "no one there" many years ago (mid-1980s), it was a ring of thieves who later robbed our house, after figuring out when we were away from home. They waited for the first day of school. They were caught and some of our things were returned, and insurance covered my cameras and the major household items, but it was an unpleasant business.

 

[BrianShaw]

There's a special place in Hell reserved for telemarketers. I feel sorry for those who have such poor job skills that telemarketing is an attractive career choice.

 

[dtheld]

I am seriously considering getting an extremely loud whistle or air horn. When a telemarketer calls, deafen him (or her).

I had a very high draft number when the lottery was put in place. 345 I believe. Found out about it when I came off a patrol in RVN.

 

[CropDusterMan]

No, that's OK. I wouldn't want to get the Buzz Aldrin treatment.

What is the "Buzz Aldrin" treatment?

 

[removed account4]

These are serial-calling telemarketers. The deal is, the phone is set by a computer program to ring at 2 places--mine, and an answering service. If I pick up, but the scammer at the answering service is busy scamming somebody else, then they don't pick up and run their pitch on me. So I'm holding an empty phone. Happens every day, several times a day. Once in a while it will hit on a scammer that wasn't in the middle of running a pitch, and they are connected to me.
Here's the deal: if somebody is on the do-not-call list, then wouldn't you think it would be a waste of precious time pitching them, when they could be scamming somebody who is not on the list? It stands to reason that you don't go to a lesbian bar to pick up women.
As for Cardholder Services, it is entirely a bot that rings everybody because they know their location-hiding software is so good that the FTC can't catch them. They are the slickest of the slick in the telephone scam business. Totally untouchable, and they know it.

What needs to be done is to choose a few cases and make them high-profile where the telemarketer was put to death for murder. Somewhere in America several times a month at least, somebody tripped and fell and died as a result of their injuries, running into the house to get the phone in time.

Simply put them to death summarily.

they have a very sophisticated caller id system. they are able to spoof pretty much anything
"national park service" they have spoofed the local police, friends and even my own name and phone number. it is a game at this point ..
usually i depress #1 and speak to a live agent. i am often times caller 24 or 30 or 18 and within about 1 min i am the next call.
they ask if i have any high interest credit cards i want to transfer over to them and i often times tell them i am at the city morgue and only have
dead bodies, no credit cards. that worked for a few months, although i sometimes get 4 return phone calls in an hour, with one of them asking me questions about
working at a morgue &c .. i usually say i just have formaldehyde no credit cards and to please stop calling cause he was going to wake up the dead.
no calls for a few months, now from time to time but not nearly as much.
i was listening to "this american life" about a month ago, maybe more than that and there was a story about these viral telemarketers,
it turns out some of these callers are typing a computer to have it "speak" think a stenographer but in reverse, so they type phrases
and a voice speaks them to the potential customer. more like an android than a robot i suppose.
anyways, when i got some of these calls, not the credit card services ones but others that seem to spring up and are obviously some weird sophisticated
computer person trying to have a conversation with me, i now ask if they are robots, and they call less and less ...

years ago i was getting credit card service calls, 10+ times a day, it was before they had sophisticated spoofing abilities. i figured out where the exchange was, spoke with the company leasing their line
and even to a guy in LA who was at the "switch" or "node" where millions of telephone calls per hour are fed through ... and he helped me decipher where the call was coming from. it turned out
that it was a guy who was renting a line from one company and transfered it to another in another state and fed all the calls through several phone companies before it made it to me.
things are different now, its usually somoene in a boiler room .. i feel kind of bad for them, and wonder how often they get a life-one, i am guessing it is probably as often as
someone offeres up their personal information to a nigerian prince's lawyer, or the local groups that call on behalf of the police auxiliary ...

 

[John Koehrer]

But would you take advantage of an uninformed seller?

Why would you take advantage of someone in uniform??

 

[Theo Sulphate]

Y'all are getting these calls on "land lines", right?

My home phone is switched to never ring. I just use it to call out. For 99.9% of all my calls, I use my cellphone. I get no spam or telemarketing calls on it. I only answer the cellphone if I recognize the caller.

 

[Eric Rose]

I remember some spirited discussions around what is or is not art. At the end of one such war a former member quite APUG with the advice that we should all "eat shit and die". I felt it was very heart felt and an artistic statement in itself

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

I never answer the phone if I don't recognize the caller. If it's a legitimate call then they'll leave a message.

 

[moose10101]

At the end of one such war a former member quite APUG with the advice that we should all "eat shit and die".

Performance art; no thanks.

 

[Photo Engineer]

One thing that is a problem is that when these telemarketers are on the line, you cannot hang up. They keep going.

Now, here is the problem. You can't hang up even if there is an emergency and so you cannot dial 911 or any other number. You are stuck until they finish the spiel no matter how long it is.

This is going to lead to a serious problem someday if not already reported.

PE

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

One thing that is a problem is that when these telemarketers are on the line, you cannot hang up. They keep going.

Now, here is the problem. You can't hang up even if there is an emergency and so you cannot dial 911 or any other number. You are stuck until they finish the spiel no matter how long it is.

This is going to lead to a serious problem someday if not already reported.

PE

That's odd... I've never had that problem before.

 

[MattKing]

This is an interesting response: Dead Link Removed

 

[BrianShaw]

Once or twice a year our phone gets "stuck" with no dial tone. It takes the phone company up to 2 weeks to restore our service - during which communication with elderly parents is severely impaired. It is very dangerous for them since they can't get emergency calls through to us. I think it is telemarketer computers that lock us out of our own phone service.

 

[MartinCrabtree]

Telemarketers get a rant from me as long as they'll stay on the phone. Nonsensical raving lunatic off the cuff nutjob freakazoid stuff.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

That's odd... I've never had that problem before.

PE is correct. The calling party controls the line.

The central office will only send a disconnect signal to the called party when the calling party has ended the call. This is called a forward disconnect message. It's necessary in order to allow control of things like remote answering machines that will answer a call, but because no human is involved, must also be told when to hang up.

You normally don't notice it in human-to-human calls because when you get pissed and hang up on someone who has called you, they usually get pissed back and also hang up on you, thus terminating the connection.

Ken

 

[BrianShaw]

Long ago I stopped having argumentative discussions with telemarketers. Then I started asking lots of questions. Then I started asking what the were wearing. Lately, no matter what they are selling I tell them I'm in that business. Call me for home remodeling and I'm a contractor. Call me for heating and air conditioning, well I own a heating and air conditioning company. Call me for donations to the policemans fund and I say I'm the chief. Call me to vote for a Republican candidate and I tell them I'm not a citizen (but those calls are generally recordings so nothing I say will phase them one iota). Call me for charity household goods pickup and I'm generally quite cooperative. I tend to like the charity organizations.

 

[BrianShaw]

We mostly get robodialing humans. I would tell them that I was deceased but they were too stupid to know what I was saying. One lady said she hoped I got better soon.

My favorite is when they call looking for my dad. He really is deceased. I once gave a telemarketer a "forwarding number". I wonder if he really called the cemetery.

 

[Xmas]

After two missed calls I googled the source number and got a hit from all the other complainants who had also googled.