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American Home Craft Calls Four Times In One Day 916-290-4373
   
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Added by Garnet R. Chaney, last edited by Garnet R. Chaney on Aug 10, 2007  (view change)
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These people just won't quit calling. Today (7/26/07) they called four times!

Again they have "unknown name" / "unknown number". And again, they went through their spiel.

Their Interogation
American Home Craft
  • How old is your place
    • Oh, maybe 20 or 30 years old
  • Do you have single pane windows.
    • Well, they are double hung. (They never seem to know what this means, and yet they want me to think they are experts regarding windows.)
  • You don't live in a mobile home?
    • No, I can't drive my house.
  • Are your windows Single pane? (The whole time I'm talking to this girl, I can hear this loud mouth guy telling her what to say.)
    • They are double hung.
  • Wood sash?
    • Oh yeah, I guess so.
  • Little energy loss with those windows.
  • Is your house stucco or wood?
    • Um it's neither of those.
  • So what is the outside made of?
    • Um, it's that metal called alzheimers....
  • You you mean aluminum?
    • Oh, yeah, right, I forgot.
  • Do you work days or nights?
    • Why do you want to know that?
  • We want to know when we can stop by and show you our work...
    • Oh, ok, come by tomorrow at 10am.

Darn, I got interrupted by someone else, and couldn't continue the call any longer...

One of the times they called, this number came up: 916-290-4373
Name: Dakota in Sacramento
American Home Craft
They have offices in San Diego, Sacramento, Hayward, etc.
Home office San Diego
www.ahcionline.com
Brad Smith
1-866-436-2730

Nancy, Sacramento Ofc
Mktg.

Angela Berry mgr.

They want to come and visit your house.

So schedule them to come to someone else's house.

Now I'm not a lawyer, but I got a great idea you might consider trying:

Best idea on how to deal with them

Or better yet, here's a great idea of what to do when you invite them to your house:

Make papers to sue them in small claims court for violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Serve them with the papers when they show up for the appointment!

Maybe you could also include violations of the Telemarketing Sales Rule as additional counts in your suit against them. The TCPA gives you a right to recover $500 in damages every time they call you after you've asked them to stop calling.

Make the lawsuit so it sues them, and also Jane Does two through ten, so you can include other related people in the suit.

Then when they show up, be very nice, ask them for their name, then pencil in their name on the papers as one of the people being sued, then have a friend serve the law suit papers on whoever showed up at your doorstep.

Can you believe that I told them I'd have the lawsuit papers ready to serve on whoever shows up, and they were still so desparate for business they still wanted to send someone out to visit!

Dude, I am reading with some trepidation about your bitching constantly about telemarketers. Why don't you quit being a jackass and put yourself on the DNC list. I think you actually like wasting your time and others by publishing this crap. Getting people in trouble who are making a measly 8.00 an hr.. What the calls disturb your ranting on the internet.. Get a life dude and/or a real job and maybe you wouldn't be at home all day to get these calls!

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 04, 2008 11:40 | Reply To This

If you dont like telemarketers go on the DNC list and quit crying like a little girl...its easy just go to www.dnc.gov and get on the list....but you cant sue them untill you do go on the DNC and then only after 31 days....read the laws......

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 26, 2008 10:51 | Reply To This

I feel sorry for the poor salesman that's trying to feed his family and wastse 2 hours of his families time and money coming out to a false adress. It's not his fault that the compay had a telemarketer call you. So next time you get a call like that please just tell them you are not in the market for such products. Please don't waste some poor guys time that is trying to make a living and feed his family. It's not fair and it's not the company that looses out, it's the poor sales man. Also these types of companies have quotas and by doing that you put a mark against the sales man that goes against his closing ratio so he could loose his bonus, or worse yet, his job.
Please don't treat your fellow Americans this way. Times are hard enough for everyone without being screwd by you.

Posted by Anonymous at Oct 29, 2008 12:22 | Reply To This

How about a duty to inform the salesman that his company is engaging in unethical and possibly illegal practices? If the company is generating dud leads for him by aggravating the public, he needs to know that and either:

  • Let his manager know of the problems in the telemarketing department so they can be more respectful of the public and the law
  • Decide he still sells enough of their stuff that he doesn't care
  • Find another job, or product to sell

I don't know many good salespeople who want to be associated with a company that is doing wrong and illegal things to generate sales leads for them.

Unless you request the do not call list none of what you are saying is valid. Companies make sales calls, welcome to a free market place country. If you do not want them to call you, ask them to place you on the do not call list otherwise you have no validity to your complaint.

Posted by Anonymous at Feb 26, 2008 11:01 | Reply To This

A customer data privacy course that I took because of my relationship with one of my clients, said that the law gives companies a max of 10 days to respond to requests to remove a customer from their marketing lists. They didn't say which law it was, but it would seem to support my contention that these companies must not ignore requests for removal. There was nothing in the course saying that we could ignore the "choice" of consumers if they don't bother to register with government lists like the Do Not Call Registry.

Also, while the Do Not Call Registry, which is controlled by the "Telemarketing Sales Rule" (TSR) of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), there are other better rules to sue telemarketers under. One example is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, (TCPA) which is under the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which predated the TSR and was not superceded by it. TSR is just another regulation, which in my opinion is less oriented to protecting consumers than it is about generating additional tax revenue for the government from the fees charged to telemarketers to access the list, just look at the how it requires a consumer to prove $50,000 in damages before a consumer can sue a company for violating the TSR. The TCPA allows individual consumers to recover $500 in court for violations of it.

Posted by Garnet R. Chaney at Oct 31, 2008 03:49; last updated at Oct 31, 2008 04:00 | Reply To This

Serving the poor sales guy papers at your door step is the most childish thing you can think of isn't it. He didn't call you, he just has to spend his time and gas going to your house. If your going to sue the company sue the company, but how would you feel if you work on commission only and you were sent out to someone's house only to get served for a phone call your company made. That's just unAmerican. Times are hard enough for these folks without you wasting thier time and money. These people are hard working American citizens who have children to feed and bills to pay just like you. Let's be a little more sensitive about who we're jacking off here, please. Put yourself in thier shoes.

Posted by Anonymous at Oct 29, 2008 12:28 | Reply To This

I actually do commission only sales. So I do empathize with those salespeople. But no one forces me to sell any particular thing, or to sell it any particular way that is not ethical. I don't sell just anything, I am careful to only work with companies whose products I can genuinely trust. And I don't blythely force myself on prospects who clearly want nothing to do with my presentation.

The biggest problem with the telemarketing salespeople is that many of them, when informed of the rules against how they are telemarketing, respond as if the rules don't apply to them, as if I don't know what I am talking about when I tell them I have an absolute right to be respected in my wish to receive no further sales calls. Are they innocent because they are just trying to earn a living, and are just doing what their job tells them to do? I don't think so, they have a responsibility to learn about their profession and recognize when they are given illegal work orders.

  • Can you believe that I told them I'd have the lawsuit papers ready to serve on whoever shows up, and they were still so desparate for business they still wanted to send someone out to visit!

If I warned them what I was going to do, who is the one wasting the salesperson's time? Me, who is trying to do anything to avoid further contact, or an over eager telemarketer scheduling a visit despite my clear request for no further contact?

Another lovely company, FBK 866-221-8574, has been calling me like clockwork every month trying to sell me their junk. They think it is really funny when I ask them "Why are you wasting your sales time bugging someone who has been guaranteeing you for months that I am more likely to give myself a root canal than I am to buy your stuff?" While some of the salespeople might actually be clueless and innocent, there are too many others who act with some kind of smug assurance that they will not be held accountable.

It is also difficult sometimes to find these companies, so serving their representative at your door with a suit against the company might make a lot of sense. If you later believe that the rep is innocent, you can ammend the suit later to remove the salesperson from being a named party. You might let them know about exactly the telephone harassment that led you to the action of suing them. That poor salesperson at the door might have no idea what the telemarketers are doing at his company, and your suit could be the wakeup call that encourages him to look into problems at the company, and perhaps look for another product to sell.

Times might be tough, and jobs hard to find, but long ago we decided not to excuse the people who were just following orders leading them to do illegal acts.

Posted by Garnet R. Chaney at Oct 31, 2008 03:47; last updated at Oct 31, 2008 04:06 | Reply To This
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