I must admit that being on the national “Do Not Call” list has done wonders to reduce telemarketing here in my home. For the past few years, telemarketing calls have been very rare here in my home. A true blessing.
There are however, loopholes in the “Do Not Call” laws that allow for telemarketing calls in some circumstances. The circumstance I want to talk about is the dreaded “business relationship” loophole.
If you have a “relationship” with a company, they are allowed to call you for telemarketing purposes unless you tell them not to. Apparently, a “relationship” means doing business with them, like buying something from them or whatever.
Not all companies that I have “relationships” with are obnoxious enough to make telemarketing calls to my home, but some certainly are.
Yesterday our phone rang and the number that showed up in the Caller ID was 866-266-9317. I was not near the phone at the time and my wife picked it up after looking at the Caller ID since she thought that it might be a call for my son who had applied for a job at a local company recently.
Now these 866 or 877 or 800 numbers always set of my internal telemarketing warning alarm because they are obviously from a business of some kind. In my experience, calls from these kinds of numbers are usually calls that I don’t want.
When my wife answered the phone, there was nobody there to talk to her. She said “hello” and waited a few seconds for a response that never came. She then hung up the phone.
Calls where there is nobody there to talk to you are also a good giveaway to a telemarketing call and it is very likely that you will be getting a call from that same caller again soon. And there may be nobody there to talk to you the next time they call either. More on that later.
After my wife explained the details of the call I went immediately to my PC to enter the phone number into one of the search engines. This can be a great way to identify the owner of a number that shows up on your Caller ID unit.
Sure enough, I was linked to a forum about telemarketing calls that identified the calls as coming from one of CitiMortgages “partners.” In many cases, this is corporate speak for other companies that some of these big greedy corporations own.
Apparently, CitiMortgage — part of the CitiBank “family” of companies, if you have not figured that out — is not making quite enough money in the mortgage business and has branched out and is offering other wonderful services for consumers. Oh, how filled with joy I am!
According to the information I found on the Internet, this particular call is a sales pitch for some lame appliance warranty plan that they are offering with the payments being conveniently added to your monthly mortgage payment. Oh heavens, my prayers have been answered!
I knew that more calls would be coming from these pesky idiots, so I went to the CitiMortgage website last night and logged into my account and sent them a message asking them how I can be put on their “Do Not Call” list so that I do not receive any telemarketing calls from them or from any of their wonderful “partners.”
I received a response via e-mail from CitiMortgage this morning advising me that they had gone ahead and placed me on their “Do Not Call” list. Finally, some genuine good news.
So I’m outside on my ladder today installing a vent for the air conditioner I was installing in my son’s room. My wife and son had gone shopping and my other son was playing on his computer with headphones on.
Yes, you guessed it — the phone rings. Knowing my son probably would not hear it and considering the possibility that it could be my wife on her cell phone, I hurry down off the ladder and into the garage where the nearest phone was. A phone, as you might imagine, with no Caller ID unit.
When some guy asks for me by name, I know it is trouble. When I tell him that he is talking to the person he asked for, he launches into his sales pitch by telling me he is calling “on behalf” of CitiMortgage. I guess that is supposed to make me feel at ease or something.
Sure, I am just thrilled beyond reason to hear from the gigantic mortgage company that is making a fortune from me by ultimately collecting a hell of a lot more money from me than the sale price that was listed on my house.
Before the jackass on the phone gets too far into his pitch, I tell him I don’t accept telemarketing calls. At that point, he pauses a moment and then says something like “I have not even explained the offer to you yet.”
Well, obnoxious telemarketers who get me down off a ladder don’t deserve the chance to present their offer to me so I told him “No thanks,” said “Goodbye” and hung up the phone before the idiot could utter another word.
What’s interesting is that when I looked at my Caller ID a while later, I saw that the call was listed as “Out of Area” (on some units it will say “Unavailable”) and was not the 866-266-9317 number I had expected.
A while later the phone rang again and this time 866-266-9317 did show up on the Caller ID. I was outside this time so I did not get a chance to answer it, but my wife, seeing that number, did not bother to answer it.
Now I am left to wonder, was the call I answered today from the same outfit that had called from 866-266-9317 or was that call a different CitiMortgage “partner,” which would mean I have two of these outfits calling me around the same time.
By the way, if you call 866-266-9317, you will get some kind of automated system with a friendly female voice telling you that if you want to be excluded from any further telemarketing calls, you can just leave them a message and they will gladly add you to their “Do Not Call” list and you will not hear from them.
This message is quickly followed by a voice that tells you the “mailbox is full” and you will not be able to leave a message, just as other people had reported on the Internet forum I found. Pretty sleazy, eh?
As I mentioned a while back, we re-financed our home back around the beginning of the year. We did the refinance through Lending Tree, who I was actually pretty happy with, but they then sold the mortgage to CitiMortgage and the junk mail has been coming steadily ever since. And now the telemarketing has started.
CitiBank was an outfit that has been on my list of companies to avoid doing business with for years. Back when I was in my teens or twenties, I had screwed up some of my bills and a payment to a CitiBank credit card ended up being a bit late. CitiBank was the only credit card company that had ever called me to badger my about a late payment and to this day remains the only one that has ever called me regarding that subject.
I was pretty determined to never do business with them again, but there is little you can do when your mortgage is sold to those weasels.
I guess the next time I get a mortgage, I will have to take whatever steps are required to see that there is no possibility that my mortgage will end up with CitiMortgage. Since we probably will be moving in a few years, I will probably get the chance to follow through on that before very long.
I’ve known for years that CitiBank and their “partners” suck and now these telemarketing calls have proven it once again.
Listen up CitiMortgage or CitiBank or whatever name you want to be known by. I’m on the national “Do Not Call” list for a reason, and that reason is that I do not like getting telemarketing calls. Period. Ever. Not from you, not from anyone.
I would think that a big company like yours would have someone, somewhere within your organization with the smarts to figure that out. Obnoxious telemarketing calls only make people like me more determined to avoid dealing with you ever again. Do you understand that?
By the way, see my previous message about my conversation with a telephone company employee that revealed to me a little bit about the mechanics of how these telemarketing calls are made.
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