The FTC fined a Dish Network telemarketing firm $75,000 for hanging up on customers, reports the Deseret News. The company used teleautobots to dial peoples’ homes, which were then supposed to connect to a live telemarketer when someone picked up. However, the system would sometimes get more live customers than there were telemarketers, leaving some customers with a silent line. Federal regulations stipulate that if you use teleautobots, you have to connect the customer to a person within two seconds. The FTC made this law because people, in particular women and old people, were worried they were being stalked when they answered the phone and no one was there.
Provo marketing firm fined for hanging up on customers [Deseret News] (Thanks to Brandon!) (Photo: Getty)
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First off not all auto-dialers are used for evil but because of these stories there are many that hang up on useful calls. One example is the auto-body industry uses them for customer that want feedback on how well the repairs went as do insurances to critique a claim process. These are used to improve the processes or to find out when some lazy jerk-wad manager is scamming/poorly repairing cars at some remote franchise and not reporting the mess-ups.
@evilhapposai: If the autodialer is not being used by an organization like the police to warn of an imminent safety threat, then it *is* being used for evil.
For all other purposes, there is a system called “the postal service” that works perfectly fine.
Anyone else get the robodialers that are set to make it sound like someone accidentally dialed the wrong number instead of just giving dead air? I get these all the time. I’ll pick up the phone and will get a recording of someone saying “Sorry I dialed the wrong number”, then it hangs up.
And….yeah…..why $75,000? That’s nothing. Should be $75 million?
@RevRagnarok: Lord we get those calls too, about a truck that we sold almost a year ago. And every single one says, if you do not respond to this call, we will assume you are not interested and stop calling you, this will be the last time this INCREDIBLE opportunity is made available to you… Sigh, I hate telemarketers
@evilhapposai:
No, auto-dialers are always evil. The worse ones are the surveys.
@Forkboy3:
I just love the one’s that know they are going to get your answering machine and then pretend they got somebody totally different.
“Hey Shirley, I got a hot stock tip for you, but don’t tell anybody…. GM is going to buy Toyota…. buy all the Toyota stock before everybody else starts buying”
My name ain’t Shirley. And I sure as hades ain’t going to buy a stock, insurance policy, Bank CD or whatever else just because somebody “confused” my telephone number.