Cellphone company fiasco

[Dresden]

We all own cell phones. This is almost a given in this day in age. But I, like many of us, have fallen victim to atrocities committed by my provider: receiving advertisement calls/text messages. The reason I'm creating this thread is one call I receive in particular about twice a week. The location of the call spans anywhere from Texas to Connecticut. As soon as I pick up I catch an automated message in mid sentence, and in Spanish. I've tried calling the number back and receive a message stating there's been a problem connecting to the number. I also called my provider Sprint, who at this point needs to receive the Old Yeller treatment, who stood their ground and stated there was nothing they could do about these calls I was receiving, and that I should change my number. Some time after an associate of mine theorized that cell phone companies sell your number to third party individuals who will bombard you with these types of calls. Does anyone else believe this? Or does anyone else have a problem like this? My problem lies in the fact that this company languishes in anonymity and is completely untraceable, believe me I've exhausted my efforts to find these people so I can mail them something volatile.

Opinions?

 

[OpenGL guy]

Redial doesn't work because companies that use automated dialers will use a prefix to disable caller ID and stuff. There's nothing your phone company can do, AFAIK.

My wife and I used to get calls from a vietnamese woman. Neither of us is vietnamese or speaks vietnamese, but this woman would call every week and babble to use in vietnamese. We eventually moved... and then she started calling our new place. I finally said to her, "If you call here again, I'm calling the police." I guess she got the point as she never called back again.

 

[Tsmit42]

We all own cell phones. This is almost a given in this day in age. But I, like many of us, have fallen victim to atrocities committed by my provider: receiving advertisement calls/text messages. The reason I'm creating this thread is one call I receive in particular about twice a week. The location of the call spans anywhere from Texas to Connecticut. As soon as I pick up I catch an automated message in mid sentence, and in Spanish. I've tried calling the number back and receive a message stating there's been a problem connecting to the number. I also called my provider Sprint, who at this point needs to receive the Old Yeller treatment, who stood their ground and stated there was nothing they could do about these calls I was receiving, and that I should change my number. Some time after an associate of mine theorized that cell phone companies sell your number to third party individuals who will bombard you with these types of calls. Does anyone else believe this? Or does anyone else have a problem like this? My problem lies in the fact that this company languishes in anonymity and is completely untraceable, believe me I've exhausted my efforts to find these people so I can mail them something volatile.

Opinions?

I used to work for Sprint as a Customer Service Rep. and what the person(your assiociate) said is just him talking out of his a**. Is it possible for Sprint to give your number out to 3rd parties? Yes, but anyone that you have called before could do the same. The rep was correct in saying that it was nothing Sprint could do about it because there is no way the Rep, the rep's supervisor, or the supervisor's manager could block the call. The systems they have at the call center simply cannot block an individual number. You can stop text messages from a number by going to the sprint website and managing your settings. All this will do is stop the message from being recieved on your end, however if there are charges associated with the text message then you would have to get in contact with that particular company and ask them to stop.

 

[Chris123234]

I used to get alot of calls from french numbers for some reason. I'd never answer them and just play the voicemail left to hear what they are saying. Also had some spanish calls before too. They eventually stopped on their own, fortunately.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Some time after an associate of mine theorized that cell phone companies sell your number to third party individuals who will bombard you with these types of calls. Does anyone else believe this? Or does anyone else have a problem like this? My problem lies in the fact that this company languishes in anonymity and is completely untraceable, believe me I've exhausted my efforts to find these people so I can mail them something volatile.
Opinions?

There are many, many ways for people to get your number for marketing purposes, just as there are many ways for people to spam your email addresses.

Here in Euroland we have various laws to stop this sort of thing, and registering with the TPS stopped my cold calls down to nothing very quickly.

 

[_xxx_]

Here in Euroland we have various laws to stop this sort of thing, and registering with the TPS stopped my cold calls down to nothing very quickly.

Wow, nice! Is that UK-only?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Wow, nice! Is that UK-only?

It's a EU thing. There's versions for fax-junk and post-junk, etc. Basically there's a EU directive that was made law a couple of years back that says if you tell a company to stop cold-calling you, they have to stop. The TPS was originally set up as a voluntary list that all reputable companies can run against their database to stop their automated systems from cold-calling you. When the EU directive became a UK law, the TPS list became an official entity.

It was especially annoying for me because I used to get loads of "change your phone carrier" calls. Of course it was dependent on you being on a BT exchange for local-loop unbundling, which I am not. I switched from BT to cable years ago but I transferred my BT number over, hence I was on the cold call list.

After putting my name on the TPS list, and allowing a few weeks for it to filter through to all the databases used, I now get hardly any calls at all, and the one or two I get every six months when someone sells my number on soon get squashed as the list works it's way through the system again. Especially when I tell the person at the other end they've just broken several European privacy laws by calling me.

 

[_xxx_]

Won't accept non-uk addresses and numbers. And I can't find a german counterpart, except for one site wanting 20€ yearly fee for registration, but doesn't even look like it's a part of that. F*ck.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Won't accept non-uk addresses and numbers. And I can't find a german counterpart, except for one site wanting 20€ yearly fee for registration, but doesn't even look like it's a part of that. F*ck.

Maybe it's one of those things where there was an EU directive, but only the UK actually made it into a law and every other country couldn't be bothered.

 

[_xxx_]

Maybe it's one of those things where there was an EU directive, but only the UK actually made it into a law and every other country couldn't be bothered.

I know we have that law too, just don't know where to register. Whatever, it'll come up eventually. Thanks regardless for reminding me of this

 

[Snyder]

_xxx_, take a look here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinsonliste

 

[_xxx_]

_xxx_, take a look here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinsonliste

Thanks a million!!!

I get so much stuff with paper post, it's not even funny! Hope this will make it less...

 

[Dresden]

So what should I do? Is there a way to get these calls to stop?

 

[Malo]

Find someone whom speaks Spanish to translate the call and see if they can recognise the company that is trying to sell you stuff or whatever the phone call is. Once you know who it's from, maybe you can contact them directly and request your phone number to be removed from the automated call list. If they won't do that, keep calling their reception over and over until they do?