Howard Rheingold Quotes

Who, other than a crazy person, does anything besides hang up on a robo-call? Any call, any person, anywhere, under any circumstances.

Everyone believes that artificial or prerecorded calls - 'robocalls,' as they're known - are awful. They're intrusive. They're unwanted.

Telemarketers tell me I sound like Bill Cosby.

Virtually every community in the country has legislation regulating door-to-door trade, yet telemarketers have run unchecked for years. The industry in general uses all sorts of slimy tricks to make sure you never make it to the do-not-call list.

I've occasionally wished I had Caller ID. Even telemarketers, I hate to hang up on them. I try to explain I'm not interested, but they have all these canned responses so I end up having to hang up on them anyway.

Recently, I have come to assume that any call to my landline is from a telemarketer or an automated call from Terminex, letting me know that our regularly scheduled pest-extermination service will occur on its regular schedule. So I usually ignore my home phone.

Repeat after me. 'Robocall' is not a bad word.

When a PR person asks why is it a big deal that they got your name wrong or sent you a pitch on something you would never cover, it's because when you get hundreds of those a day, it's incredibly annoying. It's basically like having telemarketers call you all day long for something you never want to buy.

So I rang up British Telecom, I said 'I want to report a nuisance caller', he said 'Not you again'.

The do-not-call list puts the responsibility where it should be: on the telemarketers. If they want to make the calls, they should be the ones doing the work to ensure fairness.

I worked as a telemarketer for an SAT-prep company. That was the worst of it, because I had to call people in post-Katrina New Orleans and offer them this very, very expensive SAT class. And I'm not even a good salesman.

I was a telemarketer for exactly one week in 2005. I could not take 'no' one more time. I could not take the rejection.

I don't get on the phone and prank people and things like that on the phone with people, no.

When telemarketers call me now, I won't get the blow-horn. I'm more polite than the average person.

I like texting as much as the next kidult - and embrace it as yet more evidence, along with email, that we live now in the post-aural age, when an unsolicited phone call is, thankfully, becoming more and more understood to be an unspeakable social solecism, tantamount to an impertinent invasion of privacy.

A telemarketer has as much right to force people to listen to a sales pitch as a door-to-door salesman has to force himself into a home.

My phone blows up all the time. I had to change my number.

I am pleased to see portions of my own robocall bill, the 'Stopping Bad Robocalls Act,' incorporated in the TRACED Act.

For too long, Americans have been plagued by unwanted and unlawful robocalls. For too long, they've found unauthorized charges and changes to their phone service on their bills - practices commonly known as 'slamming' and 'cramming.' And for too long, some phone calls that are placed to rural residents have been dropped.

For illegal robocallers, the goal isn't always getting you to answer. Sometimes, it's getting you to call back.

Over the years, countless people throughout South Jersey have shared with me that they are constantly harassed by robocalls and scams. Members of Congress have a responsibility to hold scammers responsible for their abusive practices and protect the American people from this abuse.

The scourge of unlawful robocalls is technically complex to address, and no single action will get the job done.

Robocall scams not only inconvenience us at the dinner table, but they prey on the vulnerable, including seniors, and it's despicable.

I remember if the telephone rang after 9 o'clock in the house, my mother would say, 'Who's ringing at this time?' We just wouldn't answer the phone.

Oh God, I've done telesales. It doesn't get much lower than that, really. That's the job I enjoyed the least.