
If you hate telemarketers, you’ll love this robot designed to waste their time - reuven
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/02/16/if-you-hate-telemarketers-youll-love-this-robot-designed-to-waste-their-time/
======
mhb
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043960)

~~~
lighttower
I just got a call from a political party. This same person has called me
before, and, I find her detestable so I always pretended to be someone else
rather than taking the call. This time I said, "hold on I'll get him on the
phone for you." Well, they are still talking, its been about 10 minutes. I
kept the phone on speaker for a while -- then I put on 34dB attenuating
construction hearing protection and put the phone in another room. I recorded
the whole thing in case anyone is curious. Normally when I'm the guy talking I
am self-questioning whether I'm being too harsh, or that I'm not being direct
enough, or etc... Listening to someone else talk, as if it were me, lets you
observe. I heard the telemarketer laughing at the terrible jokes, and, I felt
sorry for her. Like she has to laugh at everyone's jokes. I can see now how
appeasing the customer (i.e. laughing at terrible jokes) is not the path to a
sale. There is something to this "neg" (as popularized by the pickup artists
in "the game") both in pursuit of conquests and in pursuit of a sale. The
customer needs to want your approval and then you've got the sale. I read the
comments on this thread and yeah I can see both sides. It's rather difficult
and time consuming to get rid of the telemarketer once he/she has you on the
phone, so I will be using this again for sure.

~~~
greendestiny_re
I am interesting in hearing this call.

------
ycmbntrthrwaway
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11043960)

------
jasode
I'd prefer not to waste the time of human employees on the phone because
they're just minimum wage workers trying to earn a paycheck. My irritation is
with the _owners_ of the telemarketing company.

If the following fake recording[1] with the special 3 beeps intro actually
works to fool robo-dialers, I'd rather the service do something like that. I
also remember seeing a dedicated electronic box[2] that had that recording
built-in. You either held it to the mouthpiece of the phone or it was wired
in-line between the handset and the base. I'm not sure of the success rate of
that device. I wouldn't be surprised if a developer attempted to replicate
that device by making an app on iPhone/Android. Again, I'm not sure if
pressing a smartphone speaker to the mouthpiece of a handset is good enough
audio fidelity to fool robo dialers.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE4zZwDE7bc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE4zZwDE7bc)

[2] not sure if it was this one: [http://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Technologies-
TZ-900-TeleZapper...](http://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Technologies-
TZ-900-TeleZapper-900/dp/B00006881R)

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>I'd prefer not to waste the time of human employees on the phone because
they're just minimum wage workers trying to earn a paycheck.

I'm still perfectly fine wasting their time.

Honestly, I don't get this reasoning that if they are doing it for a small
financial gain, they are resolved of any blame for any harm they cause (even
if the harm is just annoying me and wasting my time). Yet I see the reasoning
being used in multiple instances where they are causing hassle or worse (say
when they lie to you about whats in phone contracts, which is my pet peeve).

~~~
jasode
_> I don't get this reasoning that ... they are resolved of any blame ...
annoying me ... causing hassle _

Yes, I agree that annoyance is being made and hassle is being caused but I
assign the _" they"_ part more to _the owners_ of the businesses rather than
the low-level employees working the phones. Those workers are just cogs in a
wheel. Therefore, I don't derive any satisfaction of justice by making
employees suffer the games of an AI Turing Test. On the other hand, I _am_
happy when business owners pay $100,000 fines for ignoring the Do-Not-Call
list.

The workers vs owners distinction is the same for fast-food cashiers asking
"do you want to Super Size that?", or Radio Shack employee requesting my phone
number for their database, or a retail employee trying to sell me an "extended
warranty". For each of those situations, I'm annoyed but it's not necessary
for me to socially shame the low-level workers with rants about obesity and
high-fat consumption, the dangers of privacy invasion and identity theft, and
the financial foolishness of 3rd-party warranties. All those employees are
just cogs in a wheel and they are _required_ to follow a script and upsell
those things. Otherwise, they are fired. I see most telemarketing employees in
equivalent situations++. Waging war with those low-level employees seems like
fighting the wrong layer. Instead, just don't spend money with the business or
utilize technical tricks (e.g. phone TeleZapper).

++To level set, I'm not talking about criminal activities such as scammers
making calls to trick senior citizens into wiring their life savings. I'm
talking about the single mother or starving college student who sees a job ad
for "$8/hour tele-sales" and hopes to get money for diapers or ramen noodles.
The telemarketing I was thinking of was newspaper subscriptions, church
donations, burglar alarms monitoring, etc.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>For each of those situations, I'm annoyed but it's not necessary for me to
socially shame the low-level workers with rants about obesity and high-fat
consumption, the dangers of privacy invasion and identity theft, and the
financial foolishness of 3rd-party warranties.

And yet, if we did that to such an extent that most people couldn't work those
jobs with those policies, would not society be better off as a whole?

>Waging war with those low-level employees seems like fighting the wrong
layer.

Speaking of war, the general way it goes is that you shoot the soldiers even
though they are just following orders and there are a dozen more to take their
place. Ideally taking out the general would be best, but when not given the
opportunity to do so you target the highest ranking person in front of you,
even if that is the lowly private who is on the same level as you.

~~~
Merad
> And yet, if we did that to such an extent that most people couldn't work
> those jobs with those policies, would not society be better off as a whole?

Your attitude isn't just out of touch with reality, it's somewhere between
'callous and unsympathetic' and 'sociopathic.'

Roughly 95% of the people who work in crappy low-wage jobs like fast food or
call centers _already_ hate their jobs. They _already_ hate what their
employers tell them they have to do. They aren't there because they love cold
calling strangers or asking you to upgrade your meal by 1000 calories, they're
there because they need a paycheck and have little other alternative.

I can only speak from personal experience regarding call centers, but I
imagine fast food isn't very different. Most people absolutely do get out of
those jobs as fast as they can. In the call center I worked at, average tenure
was 6 months if not less (that's exactly how long I lasted, FWIW). And you
know what? Every time a person walks out the door, someone else walks in to
take their place, because the world has no shortage of desperate people.

Taking the stance of 'we should torture these people as much as possible
because we don't have access to their employers' is bad enough, but to smugly
claim that it's really for their own good and the good of society is frankly
disturbing.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>Your attitude isn't just out of touch with reality, it's somewhere between
'callous and unsympathetic' and 'sociopathic.'

As is needed of any soldier killing a guy who doesn't want to be there just as
much as they don't. Probably the most sociopathic thing I did today was I just
ate a Butterfingers candy bar, made by Nestle, and thus likely involved child
slavery, which I funded by buying the candy bar. But I do think my informed
apathy is a step up from ignorant bliss.

>Roughly 95% of the people who work in crappy low-wage jobs like fast food or
call centers already hate their jobs. They already hate what their employers
tell them they have to do. They aren't there because they love cold calling
strangers or asking you to upgrade your meal by 1000 calories, they're there
because they need a paycheck and have little other alternative.

And if their work isn't a net harm for me, I'll try try to make their day more
pleasant. But when I'm at the local cell store again because another family
member was lied to about their contract, or when you just interrupted my
concentration while solving some problem to try to get me to sign up for some
service that will be near impossible to cancel and which comes with more fine
print than my employment contract, then I am not going to excuse you just
because you did such for money.

>Taking the stance of 'we should torture these people as much as possible
because we don't have access to their employers' is bad enough, but to smugly
claim that it's really for their own good and the good of society is frankly
disturbing.

>torture

I found the bug.

~~~
zaccus
What do you do for a living, and how is it making the world a better place?

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Software to aid the following:

Environmental protection. Benefit should be obvious.

Reducing drunk driving. Ditto.

Insurance (not the kind that would be better off replaced by single payer).
Probably the least obvious as it is closest of the three to rent seeking, but
the benefit is spreading risk of the incidents insured. Perhaps not as ideal
as a fully socialized government system, but this isn't one of the insurance
fields that is in direct competition with single payer.

Do you want a list of my non-work related contributions to society as well?

------
petercooper
There's another one based on Asterisk called Lenny - it's an old man who plays
the whole "can't hear you" card and it works so well. There's a whole channel
of Lenny recordings:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcinQuDXYn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcinQuDXYn8)

~~~
sbd01
I love Lenny. He's really great and elicits the most hilarious responses from
people.

------
mentos
When I was in highschool my family had 3 home phone numbers that were
consecutive (8451, 8452, 8453) and once in a while they would all light up
from the same telemarketing company. I would conference them all together and
listen in as hilarity ensued.

------
carbocation
Intellectually, I recognize that the people making telemarketing calls by and
large are in a precarious financial position, with all of the risks to health
and happiness that come with that. I think we need to treat them better (even
if that's just tersely hanging up, rather than stringing them on).

But viscerally, I can understand why we do this; my impulse, when on the
receiving end of an unsolicited inbound call, would be to do the same.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>Intellectually, I recognize that the people making telemarketing calls by and
large are in a precarious financial position, with all of the risks to health
and happiness that come with that. I think we need to treat them better (even
if that's just tersely hanging up, rather than stringing them on).

Those who steal are often not in the best of financial straights. Yet we still
punish them. Those who commit even worse crimes are often meeting some unmet
need or desire, one which may only exist because they are mentally ill, and
yet this means we see them as a danger to society. We may pity them, but we
will still punish them.

So, shouldn't the same logic apply even when the wrong being committed is much
milder? The punishment will be milder (get yelled at, have time wasted) since
the wrong is milder, but they still deserve the social repercussion of their
actions.

~~~
morninj
Telemarketing is annoying but generally not illegal.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Laws are not the only rules, they just have the strongest punishments if
broken. Their are social mores and folkways which have weaker punishments if
broken; punishments which are dealt out by many other members of society other
than the legal system.

To put it another way, being extreme mean, rude, and condescending to and
wasting the time of telemarketers isn't illegal either. Yet some are trying to
say doing such is wrong, to which I say that the telemarketers have already
committed a greater wrong of the same nature.

------
amelius
Low-tech solution: just tell them to stay on the line while you are getting
your credit card. Then leave the phone off the hook.

~~~
mineshaftgap
I just put them on hold, but people in the office are always 'who is on line
three?'. If you don't cost them real money they will keep calling.

------
ericzawo
I'm living with my parents for now and got them to cut out their cable
television package after introducing them to the Wonderful World of Netflix.
But I've found it much, much harder to get them off the home telephone (which
here in Canada costs them $40/month!!) and it's 90% telemarketers, usually
calling right around dinnertime. I'm planning to note everytime they call and
the frequency with which it's a legitimate call on a spreadsheet planned over
30 days but I still haven't gotten around to it. Despite being fairly 'with-
it' people (they both have their own smartphones, have a Sonos speaker system
and ipads for crying out loud) they refuse to get rid of the home phone. Guess
old habits...

~~~
alistairSH
I got rid of my land-line. Now I just get spammed on my cell. Can't win.

I'm in the US. We have a do-not-call registry. Spammers don't seem to care and
hide their numbers, so I can't report them.

~~~
brerlapn
I know this is a bit in the weeds, but I recently got an LG V10 on T-Mobile,
and there is an option in the Calls menu that allows me to "Reject calls from
all private numbers". I can also add numbers to a call reject list, as well.
My previous HTC One M8 had the reject by number (but not for private numbers),
as well.

My dad has a V10 on Verizon and they don't have the reject private calls
option--so it would appear that some carriers are removing functionality that
is otherwise available on at least some phones. Figured I'd share because I
had before assumed it was a technical problem to block the private numbers,
and have been happily surprised now that I don't get calls from "Unknown"
anymore.

~~~
alistairSH
Interesting. I'll have to look into that feature. Of course, I'm on Verizon,
so I'm not hopeful.

Frankly, I wish "private" numbers were banned outright. I can't think of a
good reason for allowing them.

------
newscracker
It's time someone from a major publishing house wrote a similar article titled
"If you hate online ads, tracking and malware, you'll love this new tool
designed to waste the publisher's money", and then mention that the tool is
called an "ad blocker" and provide links to the good ones. :)

------
CPLX
I called the number in the article and experimented with it. It doesn't appear
to do anything like the article says, it just says "hello... yes?" over and
over again. Maybe I am not using it right.

~~~
ycmbntrthrwaway
You should talk back for some time. Robot responds only when you pause, it
tries to detect the right moment to say something.

------
leni536
> The robot does this by cleverly exploiting a flaw in the telemarketer
> playbook: staying on the line if the person is agreeable. So the system
> leans on “yeah,” “sure,” “okay” and “yes.”

While this might be a clever single experiment, this is a really bad idea to
run a bot like this running on your phone line. Oral contracts over the phone
exist so you should avoid any kind of agreement when a telemarketer calls you.
(IANAL, I'm not a lawyer, etc...)

~~~
Chris2048
An oral contract with who though?

Does the phone-owner have a responsibility for any contract made over that
phone?...

~~~
leni536
Well, supposedly don't. But I doubt anybody would want it to bring it to court
though.

------
teekert
I usually just say (when at home): "Hold on a sec." and put my phone
somewhere. Usually takes some minutes for them to hang up.

------
pjc50
Adblock for the phone - and for the same reason, to make it usable against
spam.

------
talles
How hard is to say "Look, sorry to interrupt you but I'm not interest in your
service. Good luck with your next call, have a nice day."?

I fail to see how "fighting" telemarketers will improve anything.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
It will lower average day-to-day sales, increase turnover, decrease morale,
force the company to eat the costs of on-boarding new employees, and gradually
diminish the value of telemarketing as a valid approach to sales. The
employees will be better off working somewhere else--fast food, big box store,
etc.--and society will derive more value from their career change.

Plus, these recordings like Jolly Roger, Lenny, etc. are a tremendous source
of entertainment!

~~~
talles
If everybody that just don't like telemarketing (count me in) just politely
stop the caller and don't buy the service everything you just said would
happen, without burning the poor minimum wage employee that's in the middle of
the hate.

It's not a matter of effectiveness, it's a matter of ethics. You don't spam
the spammer. You don't fight an evil with evil.

~~~
MiddleEndian
>If everybody that just don't like telemarketing (count me in) just politely
stop the caller and don't buy the service everything you just said would
happen, without burning the poor minimum wage employee that's in the middle of
the hate.

Except apparently enough people buy their junk/scams/whatever that it makes it
viable to continue to run a telemarketing business. But just because a small
percentage of people are into it doesn't mean it's right for them to harass
everyone.

So from my perspective, as someone who's not into being telemarketed and who
doesn't have the power to make their behavior punishable by law, I may
disincentivize their behavior while entertaining myself.

~~~
talles
You have a point, but why not disincentive their behavior by just blocking
their number? That's way easier than setting up an automated prank answer
system.

But I guess that's not as exciting, no "entertainment" there.

~~~
MiddleEndian
I only have a cell phone so I get maybe two telemarketing calls per year since
it is illegal in the US to telemarket to cell phones.

Whenever I get one I report it to the FCC, although the numbers are likely
spoofed.

I've never been telemarketed by the same organization twice though, so I can
idealistically hope that each organization has been shut down.

Edit: But back on topic, why shouldn't people live their lives in a way that
entertains them more? The telemarketers are the ones initiating unwanted
contact.

------
tomkin
Is it just me, or did they pick pretty much the only telemarketer you wouldn't
want to do this to (donations)?

~~~
sokoloff
Donation solicitation isn't inherently "better" in my view.

I give to several causes important to me and my family. I also tell them NOT
to solicit me more than once during the year. Violators get one additional
warning and then I skip a year of donation with a note as to why.

If you want my money, respect my time; it's part of the deal.

~~~
tomkin
I guess living in Canada gives me a different perspective. Generally speaking
most telemarketers calling for charity are fairly respectful and are usually
contacting you due to a transactional event that's happened fairly recently.

