Have you heard of the Jolly Roger Telephone Company?

That is funny, and useful. I love it. For six bucks a year, I’m sold. I hate telemarketers.

This just gave me an app idea.

I like the one where a bee lands on him.

My solution is that I just don’t pick up if I don’t recognize the name or number. If it’s important they’ll leave a message. Telemarketers never do.

I’m with @Darth_Algar and I don’t have a problem with telemarketers. I am always friendly and don’t fault people for making a living or moonlighting in the industry. It’s a job, it’s not “personal” when you get these calls and just like the internet, there is a real person on the other end that deserves to be treated politely. My daughter worked in a call center taking political surveys that were commissioned by the state of CA. for a few years when she was a teen. It’s a crappy job, but it is a job and it is also a viable marketing tool.

I say get over it, and either don’t answer or simply say ” I’m not interested but thank you anyway, have a nice day.” Such a first world non-problem. You control your phone, take control if it bothers you that much, just don’t answer and let the calls go through to VM. I think this scapegoating of telemarketers is a nice psychological defense like being a troll on the internet, a way to project your own frustrations onto others. Just fucking don’t answer, simple.

^^ I agree.. They’re just doing their job. Don’t pick if you don’t want to..Simple.

The point of the OP is that the Jolly Roger Phone Company is frakking hilarious.

Wonderful. It’s turnabout and I hope it catches on to the point that telemarketing is no longer a profitable proposition.

Telemarketers have a very high occupational suicide rate. The ones I’ve met were homeless and heavy into drugs. Fine. They made that choice. I solved the problem by losing the landline in the 90’s and I don’t pick up if I don’t know the number, I don’t pick up. My number is unlisted. I’ve had about three suspected telemarketer calls this year. They don’t seem to call cell phones much.

The problem with telemarketers isn’t the asshole on the line bothering you, it’s the guy who runs the service. It’s predicated on annoying the hell out of millions of people to make a buck, often not respecting people’s wishes who list themselves on the do not call list. Oftentimes the products/services they’re pushing are SCAMS. The genius of the Jolly Roger Telephone Company is that if used by enough people, it causes telemarketers to waste lots of time. This causes large increases in the expense for the owner of the operation and could make the whole operation unprofitable.

Additionally, the guy who set this up is planning on using his system to combat windows support scams. If you’re unfamiliar with the practice, fucker will buy ads that look like virus alerts that instruct victims to call a number for technical support. They are routed to India and serviced by scammers who pretend to be agents of Microsoft/Apple/etc. The victim is tricked into handing over control of their computer to the scammer via a remote session where often the scammer will load viruses and other malware onto the victims machine. The victim is extorted for hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of dollars.

Yeah, I was startled at first by the crow’s suicide revelation, because I don’t regard the wage slaves on the end of the phone as telemarketers. Now there surely are scam artists actually doing some talking on my land line. Lately there seems to be a particular concentration of folks of Indian ethnicity, whatever that’s about.

There’s a bee on my arm! Wait…wait…there’s a bee.
Can you start over? Sorry. I’m listening now.
Um…wait…wait…the bee is moving. Hang on…

(or something like that)

The people that worked in the call center where my daughter worked in high school were all, either high school or college kids moonlighting or older men and women supplementing their retirement incomes. That is the only experience I have. The owner of this call center was an RN who contracted with the state of CA. to do political surveys. Everyone seemed pretty “normal” to me.

@Coloma Here are some examples:
Scammer trying to trick people into giving their credit card numbers

Fake IRS agent scammers that try to trick people into wiring money or they think they’ll be arrested.

Auto warranty scams

Vacation scammers

@gorillapaws Well of course scammers of any kind should be infitrated but I am talking about your run o’ the mill survey takers or firemans ball calls. lol