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How one man turns annoying cold calls into cash
- jacquesm 13y agoI'm having a serious 'now why didn't I think of that?' moment here. Brilliant :)
- programminggeek 13y agoThis reminds me of how direct response companies would send out envelopes with pre-paid postage on them for return mail and people would fill them with pennies so that the companies had to pay a lot more in return postage. It's funny how clever people can be when they are annoyed by something.
- tonyedgecombe 13y agoI have wrapped a brick in a reply paid envelope from a very annoying direct mail company.
- Demiurge 13y agoAnd did you have to ship it as a package? I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work with a mailbox.
- eli 13y agoThe brick is likely put in the trash and the direct mail company isn't charged. You're mostly just annoying your postman.
- ErsatzVerkehr 13y agoThe official USPS policy is that such mail is just thrown in the trash: http://pe.usps.com/text/csr/PS-086.htm http://pe.usps.com/text/csr/PS-086.htm Here is some other coverage: http://consumerist.com/2007/11/01/update-taping-pre-paid-business-reply-envelopes-to-packages-does-not-work/ http://consumerist.com/2007/11/01/update-taping-pre-paid-bus... http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/566/can-i-mail-a-brick-back-to-a-junk-mail-firm-using-the-business-reply-envelope http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/566/can-i-mail-a-br...
- icelancer 13y agoUSPS is complicit in delivering junk mail, so it's fair game.
- larrys 13y agoJunk mail keeps the cost of other mail down. Not to mention a whole industry and jobs are linked to it. And it works if it didn't the junk mailers would stop mailing.
- pigscantfly 13y agoI'd be willing to pay slightly more in postage in order to eliminate junk mail. The mob (or patent troll industry or insert random undesirables) employs people, too, but you wouldn't argue for its protection solely on that basis. And the fact that it works ignores the fact that it irritates everyone who isn't a junk mailer. There are far more honest ways to advertise. Not sure what you're trying to say here.
- larrys 13y agoI'm not arguing for it's protection based on that fact at all. I'm pointing out that this idea that junk mail is bad because it annoys some people is wrong. Guess what? Not everyone is annoyed or bothered by junk mail. Not everyone is annoyed by spam either and I'm not talking about idiots who respond to spam or even read it. There are people that get so few emails that if they login and don't see any mail they think the mail is not being delivered at all. So they'd rather have something show up to show that "the system is working".
- pigscantfly 13y agoGuess what? The number of people who are annoyed by junk mail or spam greatly exceeds the number of people who gain some benefit from it (mainly spammers and junk mailers - and since they are dishonest actors, I give their considerations very little weight). My argument is not that junk mail is bad, because it annoys some people. My argument is that it is bad, because it annoys almost everyone. PS - Surely you can think of a better system of informing users their inbox is working than regularly spamming everyone who has an inbox...?
- jacquesm 13y agoThis is how direct mail companies acquire the bricks their offices are made out of.
- cpeterso 13y agoIf the postage was pre-paid, why would post office mail a letter that exceeded the postage already paid?
- pwg 13y agoThey aren't "pre-paid" but rather "we will pay the postage, provided you return the envelope". I.e., the PO charges for the count of what comes back through the mail. In the U.S., the postage cost is full first class rate plus a service surcharge.
- jack-r-abbit 13y agoI used to just send them back with the entire contents of (and including) the original envelope they sent me... but with nothing filled out. I would usually try to remove any references to me. Otherwise I'd just send the empty envelope back. I figured it put the burden back on them to dispose of the trash they had sent me. But I never thought to put some heavy stuff in them. :)
- Karunamon 13y agoTrue story, I had to do this to get the Good Sam (basically an RV services company) to stop mailing me. Phone calls didn't work, so the next time I got one of their mailers, I shredded the contents, stuffed them all in the reply envelope (that thing was at least a full pound - the junk was manilla-envelope sized), and added a note that says to remove me from their list. It's been two months now, no more messages from them.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- robobenjie 13y agoThere are two things to like here: 1) No one like solicitation calls and its nice to see someone stick it to them and 2) he is shifting the economics to be more representative of the costs to all parties. There is a cost to the person being called (being annoyed, interrupted etc) and by charging that cost to the caller only callers who still have a positive return will call. The price to make a call now more accurately represents the resources it consumes to the calls should get both more infrequent and higher quality.
- bored 13y agoEvery call becomes a mini timeshare
- mathattack 13y agoI was trying to figure out the economics... 10p - Is that roughly 15 cents? I assume that's a per minute charge. So he gets 60 minutes/hour * 15 cents/minute * 1 dollar/100 cents = 9 dollars per hour talking on the phone? It seems a correct cost - probably a little more that the fellow on the other end of the line, but he's the one with the money. It also seems very cost-ineffective unless he's a minimum wage employee or very lonely.
- sebnukem2 13y agoWell, his first goal was to reduce the number of unsolicited calls, so it is very effective. The fact that he makes little money on the side is just the cherry on the cake.
- dredmorbius 13y agoRight. Factor in the reduced interruption cost of receiving 10-20 fewer calls/month into the cost/benefit calculation. That's one less interruption per 2-3 days.
- JonnieCache 13y agoYou've got to factor in how funny it almost certainly still is. After a while that will ebb away and he'll probably do the same cost benefit analysis and go back to hanging up on them. I bet the first minute is still charged up front though.
- suyash 13y agoGreat protection against Recruiters in Silicon Valley!
- rjd 13y agoOne of my friends did this in London. Except he was a recruiter and was floating fake CVs to cause other recruiters to ring him. He eventually got chased down over fraud charges but nothing every ever eventuated in a legal sense (as far as Im aware).
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI would love to see TV advertisements for premium numbers for recruiters to call, I can see the ad copy now ... "Want to talk to a hot hot prospect? Maybe someone who not only can program in .NET but they are an open source GOD? They hit all the right buzzwords on their CV? They not only went to the right school but they are school chums with the CEO of the company you're working for! Call 1-976-NERD-4-HIRE and get some hot candidate talk now."
- kawera 13y agoRelated: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/get-a-job-the-craigslist-experiment/ http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/get-a-job-the-craigslist-expe...
- usaphp 13y agoCan we have the same solution for email address? Say you have to pay money in order to email me, that might get rid of spam!
- antidaily 13y ago[ insert Bill Gates $1 to send emails joke ]
- gknoy 13y agoI believe people have talked about something similar, namely requiring cryptographic operations which are relatively cheap (time, electricity cost) to do for one email at a time, but which would make it infeasible for bulk mailing spam.
- dllthomas 13y agoPeople have also proposed it with money; I believe the overhead has consistently been too high.
- claudius 13y agoOnly accepting encrypted email would be a start, I guess – at the very least, the sender has to know the ~1 kB for the public key and he also has to encrypt every email individually.
- 9ac345a5509a 13y agoOne such system is Hashcash [0], there is an extension for Thunderbird [1] which uses it. The only thing is that legitimate mass emails (think mailing lists) will be delayed as well, unless some sort of exception is added. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash [1] http://pennypost.sourceforge.net/PennyPost
- fryguy 13y agoI think the standard solution for the mailing lists is the "subscription" email pays the hashcash, but has an automated way to whitelist the email upon receipt.
- mistercow 13y ago>Because he works from home, Mr Beaumont has been able to increase his revenue by keeping cold callers talking - asking for more details about their services. For less than $7/hour? I mean, I guess it's really easy money, and it would be great for the unemployed, but to me, 9 minutes of my free time (or worse, since he works from home, his work time) is worth more than a dollar.
- aroch 13y agoIn fairness, I could vaguely mumble at the phone without being overly distracted from my work
- mistercow 13y agoYou'd need to pay enough attention not to agree to anything.
- jdee 13y agoBack in the day when 0898 numbers existed in the UK you could make £1.50 per minute. I knew a guy who made a LOT of cash by hooking one up to a fax machine and then calling window companies and telling them "I'm about to go into a meeting where we are going to decide which windows to buy for a skyscraper we are building, please can you fax me your brochure immediately". He then gave them the 0898 number to fax the 200 page brochure to...
- hnncl 13y agoVery sneaky! I wish I'd thought of it!
- eli 13y agoSounds pretty unethical.
- carleverett 13y agoYeah, it's one thing to charge companies for phone calls when they were going to call you anyways, it's another thing to suggest to a company that you're interested in a bulk order, and then charge them to send you the information that you requested. That's sounds more just like theft.
- jdee 13y agoYou are correct. I'm pretty deeply involved with telco fraud and it's countermeasures. This is really tip of the iceberg as to what goes on. The latest scams involve making your iPhone show missed calls even though your phone didnt ring by sending it a really short call attempt. Guess what the caller ID of the missed call is? Premium rate number. The amount of people who ring back these calls is incredible. When you call the line you hear a long dial tone. You think its dialling the number but its already been answered and is charging you per minute... Again, I'm not making any representations that these things are ethical, but they absolutely go on today, and these are the only kinds of scams I feel comfortable sharing - the reality is a lot scarier.
- callmeed 13y agoIf only there was a way to do something similar with email. My "premium" @yahoo.com account would make a killing off everyone's newsletters and drip campaigns.
- DennisP 13y agoThat's been proposed from time to time. If everybody charged a dime to accept an email, you could email back and forth with your friends at no net cost, but spammers would be out of business.
- spudlyo 13y agoOr alternately make the sender do something computationally expensive before their email can be accepted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system
- eli 13y agoThe problem is the bad guys have botnets. They're already not really paying for their CPU time.
- alcari 13y agoIf you require proof of work equal to, say, 3 "average modern CPU core seconds", they're still not going to send you spam because they could've sent spam to a few hundred other people in the meantime. It may not be costing them money directly, but it is a cost measured in a finite resource.
- eli 13y agoFundamentally, the system is always going to hurt the honest people running e.g. a developer mailing list harder than spammers who can take advantage of stealing other people's resources.
- wnevets 13y ago>Because he works from home, Mr Beaumont has been able to increase his revenue by keeping cold callers talking - asking for more details about their services. This where I started to dislike this guy. A deterrent to cold calls is great but tricking the other party to stay on the line is fraud if you ask me.
- enraged_camel 13y agoYou may want to look up the definition of "fraud."
- wnevets 13y agofraud noun 1. wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.
- delinka 13y agoAs long as he's previously disclosed the fees involved with calling him, he's within the law. If the lackey who works for the would be vendor knows nothing about the fees, that's not his problem because the company had been informed.
- wnevets 13y agoHe may be within the law however I doubt at the start of the call he tells the lackey that he has zero indent on purchasing the product/service and just wants to keep the lackey on the line. To me that is a wrongful deception intended to result in financial gain.
- pigscantfly 13y agoThen again, if the representative can do their job and make a truly compelling pitch, maybe he'll buy their product. I think it's unfair to assume that his interest in every tele-marketed product is absolutely nothing.
- biot 13y agoSee also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_pumping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_pumping which has involved companies like FreeConference.com, Google Voice, and others who route calls through rural carriers using standard long distance area codes. Through a quirk of the 1996 Telecom Act (since fixed), the rural carriers were able to charge access fees of up to 20 cents a minute. The carriers had revenue sharing agreements with the companies driving the calls. Multiply this by thousands of callers, where everything is handled over VoIP by a rack of servers and it was quite lucrative. More reading: https://www.google.com/search?q=free+conference+termination+fees https://www.google.com/search?q=free+conference+termination+...
- gonzo 13y agoIf you actually read the first link, you'd see that Google Voice won't connect to exchanges where "traffic pumping" occurs. http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/10/sex-conference-calls-and-outdated-fcc.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/10/sex-conferenc... AT&T filed a complaint against Google for this behavior (and lost). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_pumping#Role_in_dispute_between_AT.26T_and_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_pumping#Role_in_disput...
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoTrue hacking.
- runarb 13y agoPhreaking
- alanctgardner2 13y agoFor all the people saying this should be applied to email, it already has been (sort of) with LinkedIn's InMail. Basically, premium accounts for recruiters et al. get a limited number of InMails every month. If they want more, it costs something like $10 each. The trick is that the mail doesn't count unless you actually reply to them. The end-game is that I politely reply to every recruiter who contacts me that I'm not interested. I don't make any money, but at least there's a downside for them to spam a bunch of unrelated accounts.
- jacalata 13y agoNot quite - if this was the same, then LinkedIn members could set a fee for recruiters to contact them and /they/ would receive the $10. However, this system is interesting - I should go reply to all those recruiters.
- taejo 13y agoSo to avoid spam, you sign up for a service from one of the biggest spammers in the business?
- merraksh 13y ago10p/minute, or 6 GBP per hour, is probably good enough money if you are on minimum salary (but then you don't work from home like this guy) or unemployed. I don't think it makes sense otherwise.
- vidarh 13y agoIt's 7p/minute after the cut, and 6 pounds per hour is already below minimum wage (assuming he's 21 or over, there's lower minimums for 18-21 and below 18)
- crashoverdrive 13y agoI feel this is a microcosm for our society today. Particularly in America. "Let's find a way to manipulate people into giving me money for doing nothing" As a hardcore coder, a workaholic, and someone who came from rags to riches, I find this kind of behavior deplorable
- mikeash 13y agoDid you make your riches by making unsolicited phone calls to sell people stuff? I can't see why this would annoy you otherwise.
- icebraining 13y agoI'm assuming you're talking about the telemarketers.
- larrys 13y agoThere is a probably an idea in here somewhere for businesses that receive many wrong numbers (as we do). When someone calls and is a wrong number (they sometimes launch into an entire diatribe as if it's the first time we've gotten a wrong number like that (it's not)) we should give them a pay number to call where someone will not only listen to them but direct them to the correct place. We've done a version of this will misdirected emails. We would email back a paragraph stating they are writing to the wrong place and include a list of paid links to the place they should really be contacting instead of us.
- iuguy 13y agoThere's an opportunity here for a startup to provide premium DIDs for people to give out that forwards to their number and provides all the info necessary to comply with the codes.
- tezza 13y agoDon't forget the ever reliable counter-script to use against them: http://egbg.home.xs4all.nl/counterscript.html http://egbg.home.xs4all.nl/counterscript.html FWIW I've set up some disposable number like this guy via Flextel. If ever I've been looking for a new contract I put a disposable number on my CV. When I get a contract, i disconnect and they cannot call again
- dredmorbius 13y agoAnd what's the point of that? Particularly when there are much more effective scripts to use, such as asking where your number came from, and requesting the TM not contact you and pass that request upstream. Or get a call-blocking app/service / Google Voice number (not that I care to feed Google any more personal data).
- lladoog 13y agoOn Flextel you can set 0871 numbers up to an auto-attendant menu, which means that robot auto-diallers just hang up, but real people can get through. They don't pay as much money though, but some 0871 numbers are free. I think you can also set a divert on anonymous caller (number withheld) You might be able to set two numbers to transfer to each other endlessly, unless the right pair of menu numbers is pressed.
- jpatokal 13y agoBecause it's hilarious to hear random telemarketers describe their favorite brand of toothpaste? And the kicker is the last bit: "Do you have a problem answering questions from a stranger on the telephone?"
- argumentum 13y agoOnly one question: does this exist in the US?
- cowsandmilk 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium-rate_telephone_number#United_States_and_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium-rate_telephone_number#U...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nonchalance 13y agoIncidentally, this is similar to the free fax numbers (taking advantage of the regulatory fees that are set by the area code)
- mmayberry 13y ago90% of my calls are robo calls where its just silence on the other end. Whats stopping me from answering the phone when one of the bots calls and never hanging up?
- valgaze 13y agoIan Ayres from Yale had a paper with similar ideas and they quoted a court case at the beginning that reads: "[T]he right of every person ‘to be let alone’ must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.” - Rowan v. Post Office Department, 397 U.S. 728, 736 (1970) http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayres/mprivacy.pdf http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayres/mprivacy.pdf
- capex 13y agoI can see a phone company offering you-pay-me-to-call as their core service coming up soon.
- lessnonymous 13y agoI think all business-to-consumer calls should be charged a premium rate that's passed on to the consumer in question as a credit off their next bill. Rather than telling this guy he's rorting the system, we MAKE this the system.
- lladoog 13y agoOn Flextel you can set 0871 numbers up to a menu, which means that auto-diallers just hang up, but real people can get through. They don't pay as much money though, but some 0871 numbers are free. I think you can also set a divert on anonymous caller (number withheld) You might be able to set two numbers to transfer to each other endlessly, unless the right pair of menu numbers is pressed.
- patio11 13y agoLittle hack which happens to be true in my case and is 100% effective: "Thanks $NAME. I appreciate where you're coming from since I used to work in a call center myself. Good luck." "Oh, thanks, $TERMINATE_CALL_SCRIPT."
- Casseres 13y agoI used to work retail. Occasionally we would get telemarketer calls, I would just tell them, "We are a retail store, please stop calling us." It works as far as I can tell.
- Toenex 13y agoWhat I find surprising is that the telemarketing systems don't appear to be filtering out the dialling of 0871 numbers.
- ohwp 13y agoIn the Netherlands we have a Don't Call Me List (https://www.bel-me-niet.nl/ https://www.bel-me-niet.nl/ (call-me-not)). When you subscribe to the list it's illegal for companies to call you (for advertisement). Works very well.
- jrockway 13y agoWe have this in the US, but companies use it to find people to call and hope you don't actually report them.
- rob_mccann 13y agoWe have a service in the UK called TPS which is voluntary to adhere to. Companies use it as a telephone directory here too.
- yason 13y agoUh, is it that common, really? Where do the companies they get his number? I don't live in the UK but I get maybe one unsolicited call per year. I don't know why really: I'm not on any do not call lists or anything. When I get that yearly-in-the-average call of mine, I just ask if they're selling something and then tell them I never buy anything from a phone marketer which kind of leaves them hanging and soon hanging up.
- estel 13y agoI don't receive 30 a month as the guy in this article does, but absolutely get one or two a week (usually from recruiters or people "from Microsoft" who've spotted an issue with my computer).
- philbarr 13y agoThe calls I get always say they're from "Windows". "You mean Microsoft?" "No, Windows" "Microsoft Windows?" "Yes" "So you're from Microsoft then?" "No, Windows" "You know this might be a more convincing scam if you didn't try to make out you're my operating system?" ...and so on...
- vidarh 13y agoAre you working from home much? The vast majority of these junk calls happens during the daytime to early evening.
- jwr 13y agoActually, this makes a lot of sense, and I don't see why the use of premium numbers should be restricted. Why not make it part of a business model? I should be able to get a number that costs extra to call. My time is valuable and anyone calling me should think twice whether the call is worth his money. And I don't mean just telemarketers — anyone. Getting my immediate attention should not be free or cheap, it should be expensive. I am willing to share profits with my telco. I think telcos should make this a standard offering and let any number be switched to a premium one, with cost per minute set by the user. To avoid unexpected charges and subsequent problems they should play a recording while connecting (before actually charging for the connection), warning about the costs and explaining that holding will ring my phone and start accumulating charges. If there was a telco offering that kind of service, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
- vidarh 13y agoThe use of premium numbers are heavily regulated because they are subject to a lot of scams. The main consideration is that the caller needs to be aware of the cost, and there needs to be a mechanism to handle complaints. I think the regulator is exaggerating here - "eveyone" knows that 0871 numbers are charged at a higher rate, and as long as he is prepared to answer complaints and doesn't try to misrepresent the costs, he should be in the clear. For genuine companies it should not be a big deal - after all they happily call cellphones all the time. Now, if he was using 070 numbers it'd be dicier. 070 numbers are notorious - they're basically "follow me" numbers that can be rerouted wherever you want. Except they cost 40p per minute, which means there's whole armies of women paid to hang out on chatlines and dating sites and drop 070 numbers to people because people confuse them with cellphone numbers (07x where x is 4 or above, though there are some other services like pagers too in that range). In fact, the last time I saw a "genuine" 070 number was in 2000 or so. As for your proposed service: While you can't keep your number, in the UK you can certainly set up your own 09 number at 25p (I think) up 150p per minute, or 07 number at 40p, or the 0871 at 10p. The 09 numbers must play a recording, and most 0871 numbers will also play recordings to be on the safe side. I think that's the closest you will get - in the UK the regulator will not allow premium charges outside of the designated ranges not just because of confusion but also because if you can have premium rates everywhere, then automated blocking of premium rate numbers becomes problematic - you'd have to create an API or something to check the rate, and have everyone who wants to block premium rate numbers update their PBX's, and then it's far simpler to just keep the numbering plan.
- codecrusade 13y agoThis is the future. Thinking how to build a service around this.
- nivertech 13y agoScroll down after the comment textarea: "If you are happy to be contacted by a BBC journalist please leave a telephone number that we can contact you on." Leave your pay phone number ;)
- oneeyedpigeon 13y agoI'd be interested in the number of legitimate calls he gets to his landline. At some point, it's probably more worthwhile saving the cost of said landline and directing all his contacts to a mobile number / email address.
- xedarius 13y agoI think this is brilliant, and if I could charge people £10 a minute for ringing my landline I would. What I don't understand is why the phone agency is recommending that people don't follow his approach ... why exactly?
- prawojaz 13y agoSpam filters are long overdue on phones. Thankfully where I live now someone has made an app that automatically filters out telemarketers. It uses a crowdsourced list. Firs I set it to only warn my when of thus telemarketers called, but it worked so well that I now just block them automatically. Haven’t had to talk to a telemarketer in 4 month :)
- squozzer 13y agoGlad to see someone fulfilling my dream -- I called it "the money moat". I submitted an idea like this to my previous job (phone company) -- it was not popular (what a surprise.) Apparently toll-free solicitation calling is considered a sacred right in the US. Your inclinations be damned.