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Author Topic: Crack down on cold calling  (Read 2853 times)

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Offline Grumpmeister

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Crack down on cold calling
« on: April 24, 2016, 01:10:42 AM »
The government has announced new measures to combat cold calling including massive fines for companies that use withheld numbers. Sounds good I hear you say, the government is actually doing something that benefits us. Most of the new measures they are talking about were already in place years ago when I was running dialers for call centres and as much as they will say that calls from overseas will also be covered that will only be the case if the company in question is based in the UK.

Oh to have someone in charge of a department that actually knows what they are talking about.  Banghead

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/663853/Cold-callers-to-face-huge-fines
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Online Barman

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2016, 07:29:03 AM »
The government has announced new measures to combat cold calling including massive fines for companies that use withheld numbers. Sounds good I hear you say, the government is actually doing something that benefits us. Most of the new measures they are talking about were already in place years ago when I was running dialers for call centres and as much as they will say that calls from overseas will also be covered that will only be the case if the company in question is based in the UK.

Oh to have someone in charge of a department that actually knows what they are talking about.  Banghead

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/663853/Cold-callers-to-face-huge-fines

 noooo:
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Offline Steve

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2016, 09:07:47 AM »
The government has announced new measures to combat cold calling including massive fines for companies that use withheld numbers. Sounds good I hear you say, the government is actually doing something that benefits us. Most of the new measures they are talking about were already in place years ago when I was running dialers for call centres and as much as they will say that calls from overseas will also be covered that will only be the case if the company in question is based in the UK.

Oh to have someone in charge of a department that actually knows what they are talking about.  Banghead

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/663853/Cold-callers-to-face-huge-fines

Quite, it's a bit like them saying they'll pass a law requiring pickpockets to wear registration plates.  Law breakers don't give a flying fuck about any law that's passed just laws that are enforced.

Fine BT for connecting the calls they should reasonably know were dodgy and suddenly this would end overnight.  BT have the ability to work out what is legit or not (but surprise surprise they make money from both)
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Online apc2010

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #3 on: April 24, 2016, 11:11:47 AM »
A call centre has opened here ..... rubschin:

Offline Steve

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #4 on: April 24, 2016, 11:30:06 AM »
A call centre has opened here ..... rubschin:

I'm sure you'll find it so hard to find just the sort of unprincipled shites to staff it

If so seems we have a limitless supply of the cnuts here, can we send them over?
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Offline Grumpmeister

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #5 on: April 24, 2016, 12:14:06 PM »
That's not an entirely fair categorization Steve. Yes there are a hell of a lot of single minded, results driven unethical tossers but they don't make up the entire workforce. There are those who go out of their way to help because they believe the whole "this call can change a person's life for the better" line, and in certain circumstances that may even be true.
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Online apc2010

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #6 on: April 24, 2016, 12:39:26 PM »
A call centre has opened here ..... rubschin:

I'm sure you'll find it so hard to find just the sort of unprincipled shites to staff it

If so seems we have a limitless supply of the cnuts here, can we send them over?

Well it does seems to attract a lot of ex-timeshare salesmen .... rubschin:


(timeshare got banned here )...

Offline Steve

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2016, 12:49:32 PM »
That's not an entirely fair categorization Steve. Yes there are a hell of a lot of single minded, results driven unethical tossers but they don't make up the entire workforce. There are those who go out of their way to help because they believe the whole "this call can change a person's life for the better" line, and in certain circumstances that may even be true.
I know one

He's married to someone I know.  If you've ever seen the Python Ken Shabby and the beautiful daughter sketch it captures it well

! No longer available

His whole attitude to calling people on the TPS is tough luck on them. 

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Offline Grumpmeister

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #8 on: April 24, 2016, 02:12:56 PM »
The TPS is a grey area, for starters you can still be called up to 28 days from registering without any repercussions as there is a grace period to allow all call centres to update their records. Then there is the 'prior business relationship' argument which is in place to allow your bank, service providers ect to remain in contact with you and promote new products and services that may be of benefit. Finally there is an insidious little trick that companies have been using for a while now which is to change the wording of the 'tick if you don't wish to receive' box to  tick if you DO wish to receive. This negates TPS entirely as you have then given explicit permission for them to contact you. In a lot of cases following gaining that permission, customer data is then sold on for additional profit.

There are a lot of things wrong with the industry and they were what led me to give the whole thing up after 10 years. For starters the entire silent calling debacle could be significantly reduced if all of the telecoms providers decide to work together and set an industry standard tone for the start of answerphone/voicemail messages. The diallers can then be set to recognise the tone and reac accordingly instead of using complicated arcane technofuckery to basically guess when a call is getting through to an answering machine or a live person. This would make pacing diallers a hell of a lot simpler as you dont end up constantly trying to recalculate the overall silent call percentage both from live calls and the perceived false positive AMD results which makes it a hell of a lot harder to effectively pace the system, (something that can never be a standard as while they are similar in overall design, the answerphone detection algorithms for diallers are markedly different depending on the manfacturer) and also reduce the overall number of silent calls as more agents would be available at any given time to take live calls and not be held or connected to answerphones depending on how the detection works. Of course this will never happen as the telecoms providers all make a healthy profit promoting their own nuisance call products and so prefer the current status quo.

The biggest problem overall is that the industry watchdogs are staffed with people who in the main have a basic understanding of how the whole thing works or have come from withing the business and have an 'incestuous' relationship with it. That being said, there are those who have worked hard in order to improve the service overall. Darryl Beckford is a prime example of this. He is a call centre consultant who used his experience withing the industry to create a voluntary code of practice regarding silent calls and the use of recorded messaged in order to reduce anxiety for people who have received them. Now you may say that as a voluntary code it is worthless but after reading an earlier version of it I forced it through the call centre company I was working for a the time because it was the right thing to do. Something that took OFCOM and the establishment bloody ages to partially incorporate afterwards.
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Offline Steve

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #9 on: April 24, 2016, 04:34:32 PM »
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So seems the best solution is get the Mafia to give them a visit.  Now who do we know with Italian connections?
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Offline beerhead

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #10 on: April 25, 2016, 07:51:06 AM »
Get Nick to do it. He'll make them an offer they can't understand.
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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #11 on: April 25, 2016, 08:00:13 AM »
It is National Telephone Day apparently....  noooo:
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Offline Nick

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #12 on: April 25, 2016, 08:01:41 AM »
Is it time for my blower joke?
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Offline Steve

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #13 on: April 25, 2016, 08:43:17 AM »
Get Nick to do it. He'll make them an offer they can't understand.
lol: lol: lol:
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Online apc2010

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Re: Crack down on cold calling
« Reply #14 on: April 25, 2016, 06:11:24 PM »
Is it time for my blower joke?

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