Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Phone Harassment Bleg

27 Comments

I got an email from a friend:

I am fairly at my wits’ end (short trip, I know). Perhaps you have someone reading your blog who can help. The situation is this:

Since early July, my company has been getting about four or five calls a day from #209-382-7432. When the phone is answered, an ear-splitting howl comes out of the earpiece. Nothing else. If one calls that number, it’s a robot answering for free magazine subscriptions.

I called the phone company. The “harassing calls” department says you have to have a police incident number before they can trace the call, and they will not inform you of who is placing the call, only law enforcement. So I called the county sheriff, got an incident report, and called the phone company back. For a month we reported all harassing calls. The phone company then called us and said “Yes, you are being harassed and we have notified your local law enforcement.” (Note that they did not tell the harasser to stop.) But the sheriff can’t do anything because the 209 number is not in my county. I have not seen the incident report because it’s not my business. No I am not making that up.

The harassing calls department at AT&T is bloody useless. AT&T does not care if you are being harassed. It’s not their problem and they will hang up on you if you ask them why not. And they will not return phone calls asking for clarification.

So I called our attorney. He suggested I call the FBI. I did. The FBI said they do not deal with harassing phone calls, try calling the FCC. The FCC hasn’t a clue what I am talking about, and why don’t I complain to AT&T?

Do you sense my level of frustration here? My people are being harassed daily and I can’t get anyone to take me seriously. Can anyone who reads your blog help? Have any advice, or knows of another avenue to pursue? I’m lost.

I’ve no idea, but maybe some reader does.

27 thoughts on “Phone Harassment Bleg”

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  2. Unless the local police file a report, there’s likely nothing you can do. The other problem is that if it’s VOIP, they can spoof any number they want (a lesson learned when our IT guy forgot to take 666-666-6666 as our caller ID number when he moved the VOIP system to production).

  3. And you should not only install your own blocking device, but also cancel your account with AT&T and move it to another provider. In fact, all accounts you have with AT&T, if they also provide cell, internet or other services. You should cite their handling of this case as the reason why, and you should consider filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

    For what it’s worth, the phone number tracks back to California (http://mobiletracker.mobi/number/+1-209-382-xxxx-details-7350.html), so you may be able to get some help from local officials there.

  4. One thing possibly worth trying is simply to put the phone handset down for as long as it takes for the other end to hang up. This simply costs them money for no benefit.

  6. This is tangential, since we’re talking about a business site, but for personal stuff I’ve largely transitioned everyone to call my Google Voice number. It lets me handle calls differently based on number, and it’s actually got a spam filter. Which is pretty slick. Plus the voicemail transcription (when it’s working well) is neat.

  7. That Digitone box looks interesting, but frankly, it sounds pretty primitive. It is absolutely astonishing to me that phone equipment and service providers have not marketed a wide variety of sophisticated call management tools. To give one simple example, I would like a feature where an unknown caller could be sent straight to a special voice mail box — and automatically blacklisted if the contact was not later deemed appropriate.

    If you proposed today that you wanted to launch a new venture where paying customers kept a bell in their home that any stranger in the world could ring, you would be laughed off the premises.

  9. I once had this problem when I was managing a dot com office, we were getting hammered by complaints from people who had kept receiving faxes advertising a pizza place in another state, but the callback number on the faxes was ours, not theirs. Eventually I found that they had transposed two digits on the phone number on the fax and called the pizza place and bitched at them about it. WHen it kept happening, I told them they needed to make it stop or I was going to retaliate with a similarly erroneous fax campaign advertising child porn with their real phone number as the number to call. the problem stopped within 24 hours.

  10. Perhaps try the sherriff’s office in Merced County (where area code 209 is)? It’s (close to) their jurisdiction.

    And San Joaquin County. And Stanislaus County. And Amador County. And Calaveras County. And…

    Next?

  12. 1) It’s an unlisted landline in Le Grand, CA. There are any number of Internet services that will sell you the listing for a few bucks. Try whitepages.com, for example.

    2) The FBI guy *almost* had it right. Telemarketers are regulated by the FTC, not the FCC. They maintain a “Do Not Call” list. I’m not sure how good they are at dealing with violators, however.

  14. Le Grand, CA, US

    Latitude 37.29, Longitude -120.31 (100-212 Cody St N, Planada, CA 95365)

    Timezone: UTC-08:00)

    Service Provider: Pacific Bell

    Tower Switch: PLNDCA11RS0

    Phone Type: Landline

    Disclaimer: the above information was obtained through open sources and is not confidential. No claim is made or implied regarding the accuracy of this information.

  15. Le Grand, CA, US

    Latitude 37.29, Longitude -120.31 (100-212 Cody St N, Planada, CA 95365)

    Timezone: UTC-08:00)

    Service Provider: Pacific Bell

    Tower Switch: PLNDCA11RS0

    Phone Type: Landline

    Disclaimer: the above information was obtained through open sources and is not confidential. No claim is made or implied regarding the accuracy of this information.

  16. Calling that number, the recording at the end says “if you wish to be placed on our do not call list, please press 8″…. tried that yet?

  17. Have you tried your state’s attorney general’s office? I know Missouri’s attorney general used to be pretty aggressive about this sort of thing (even for out-of-state callers) before he was the governor. One of the reasons he got to be governor, actually. Hopefully your state is the same.

    Mike

  18. Thanks all for the suggestions and help!

    Yes, we’ve done the “Press this number” and lots of other things.

    Now that I have a better idea of how to deal with it, I’ll deal with it. Thanks again.

  21. Aleata,

    Are you familiar with “Google Voice”?

    A one-time fee of $10 will migrate your number to Google Voice.

    You can manage your account online and block inidvidual calls with impunity. I use the free service that gives me an alias number in my own state. It is tied to my work cell-phone. It could be tied to ANY phone on planet Earth for that matter.

    I can give it (the alias number) out at will and if someone abuses it or gives it to an unauthorized party, I just block that caller. It automatically forwards their calls to an “I’m sorry, this number has been disconnected” message. But only for that individual caller. A call from any other number goes right thru.

    For $10 you can migrate your primary number and do the same without having to bother with the alias.

  22. It will even email you your voice mail messages. It also tries to transcribe them to text. This feature is found wanting however and can be the source of much amusement.

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