Do Not Call

Some days, you learn how much you didn’t know.

At 11:23 a.m., November 28, our home phone rang. Checking the caller ID, I saw “unknown name,” along with a local number: 405-720-1170.

I answered. Immediately, an automated marketing message invited me to sign up for Direct TV. Several years ago, we listed our phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, thus announcing, “Telemarketers, beware: If you call us, you can get in legal trouble.”

Lately, however, we’ve received telemarketing calls, all automated and many having to do with satellite television.

This day, as before, the machine voice told me to press 1 to sign up and to press 2 if I had "received this call in error." Previously, I had pressed 2 and then jumped through numerous hoops to tell the machine not to call our number again. This time I pressed 1 in order to tell the same thing to an actual person.

When the sales rep came on the line, I asked, “What’s your name?”

"Direct TV."

"No, what is YOUR name?" For future reference, I wanted to know who I had told to take us off the list.

He responded, "Do you want to sign up for Direct TV?"

I repeated, "What is your name?"

Sarcastically, he answered, "Mickey Mouse."

"Well, then, Mickey Mouse, would you please remove our number from your calling list." He hung up on me before I could finish the sentence.

Immediately, I dialed the number from which my caller ID said the call had come. A recorded message informed me the number was "disconnected or no longer in service."

So far, I had learned two things: Mickey Mouse works for Direct TV. Caller ID can lie.

Going online to the National Do Not Call Registry website, www.donotcall.gov , I filed a complaint. In answer, I received this reply: “We Are Unable to Accept Your Complaint. The phone number you entered [our landline] is currently not on the National Do Not Call Registry.”

Opening a file drawer, I retrieved my copy of the official “Registration Complete” paper that shows our number listed on the Do Not Call Registry until a date well past November 28, 2007.

“The plot thickens,” I said. Since the Federal Trade Commission maintains the Do Not Call Registry, I called the FTC.

Talk about jumping through hoops. After scanning several web pages to find the customer service number, I dialed 1-877-FTC-HELP, then pressed roughly 37 more buttons – including giving pushbutton answers to “interview” questions – before a living customer service rep picked up the line.

Even she did not know how or why our phone number had apparently dropped off the Registry. Her advice: Register again.

Yet she did inform me: A telemarketing call that begins with an automated prompting is illegal. Regardless whether the number called is listed on the registry, the call is “not legal” and most likely “not legitimate.”

If the FTC rep surmised correctly, the caller did not represent Direct TV but rather is running a scam to get people’s credit card numbers. She told me if even a few people report something like this, FTC lawyers will take action. She filed my report and advised me also to complain to the state attorney general, which I’m now jumping through the hoops to do.

Thus, without knowing it, I uncovered a plot. I reported a scam.

God says in Isaiah 42:16, “I'll take the hand of those who don't know the way, who can't see where they're going” (MSG).

How encouraging! I don't have to know everything - just hold onto the one who does.

© 2007, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.