

How to deal with a relentless spammer, a WePay April Fools’ special - zopticity
http://www.wepay.com/blog/2011/04/01/how-to-deal-with-a-relentless-spammer-a-wepay-april-fools-special/

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dpcan
This felt demeaning and mean to me.

I was very uncomfortable watching it. It looks like one of the company's
employees showed up... possibly one of the people you claim may already be
getting mistreated?

Now what happens to this person after they come back to work having wasted an
hour with you?

If it had been the CEO, then I would see some humor possibly.

Where's the line? The CEO of GoDaddy kills an elephant in Africa to feed a
village and save its crops and the world shits bricks. Another company goes
out of their way to trick and be mean to another fellow human being and it's
funny?

What the hell am I missing?

~~~
randall
I think it's turnabout here. Spamming, being crappy business people, I think
this is their 74 minute way of getting the people to never call them again.

~~~
jm4
Only problem is it backfired on them the moment they set up the in person
meeting. The offshoring company doesn't know they were being played. Anybody
who would agree to an in person meeting- hell, these guys even initiated it-
is a hot lead. On top of it, the "CTO" looks like an easy mark. They are going
to receive calls for probably the next three years. Sleazy move on their part,
and not at all smart if the objective is to stop the sales calls.

~~~
bullrunbear
any suggestions to stop the sales calls?

~~~
jm4
Be firm, but cordial. Tell them you are not interested and the repeated phone
calls are a waste of your time as well as theirs. If it keeps up tell them you
feel like it's getting to the point of harrassment. Tell them you will call
the better business bureau. Look into blocking the calls. The important thing
is to not give them the impression you are even the least bit interested in
doing business with them. Ever. There is an opportunity cost involved with
them making the calls. Sooner or later they are going to realize it makes no
business sense to keep this up.

I guess if that still doesn't work you could just tell them to get fucked. No
reasonable person is going to keep calling to be verbally abused.

~~~
rdl
I'd go with a C&D letter, ideally from a lawyer, sent registered mail.

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aberman
Rich from WePay here. Definitely did not want this to end up on HN. Awkward...

edw519: I know what you're going to say...and I agree with you this time ;)

~~~
edw519
OK Rich, I know it's just good clean fun (especially today), so I'll see your
"We Pay Haiku" and raise you a...

    
    
      Hacker News Dilemma
      
      You work your butt off on your blog
        Providing content that's all the rage,
      But no matter how hard you try and try
        You can't hit the Hacker News front page.
        
      Then someone takes your picture
        Goofing off or rolling joints,
      And there your are at Number 1
        Voted up with 42 points.

~~~
aberman
Well done, sir.

Again, I agree - I didn't think this belonged on HN.

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reitzensteinm
This reminds me of something a friend's game development company did in the
90s. They kept getting fax spam from some local print shop, and after calling
them back repeatedly asking them to stop, they decided enough was enough.

So at about 9pm, when they figured everyone would have gone home, they taped
together two or three bits of paper to make a loop inside the fax machine, and
faxed it back to the company - it went all night.

I have visions of mountains of paper strewn across the floor, but more likely
the other fax machine would have had a couple hundred sheets loaded at most
and probably quite a bit less.

Still, apparently the print shop was annoyed enough to call the cops, but as
you'd expect, nothing ever came of it.

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mayukh
I don't get it, why cant you name this douchey company?

For the amount of work that went into setting it up, the prank itself was
boring, if the 5 minute reel is the funniest part I shudder to think what a
yawn the rest was. There was potential for a lot more, could have really made
that guy squirm a lot more..

~~~
citricsquid
PhotonInfoTech.com, I assume they don't say it for legal reasons?
PhotonInfoTech.com could claim the claims are fake, libel etc?

It's easy enough to locate who they mean, just google for the quotes they use.

~~~
geuis
Redirects to <http://www.photon.in/>

~~~
armandososa
<http://cl.ly/2R1g352G0n3E253p1m2s> priceless.

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rdl
Uh, wow dudes.

Assuming this happened in California in the recent past (post 1994), and the
annoying outsourcing guy was not aware he was having audio recorded,
congratulations -- you've just violated state law! (California v. Gibbons, 215
Cal. App. 3d 1204 (Cal Ct. App. 1989).) This is California Penal Code SS
630-638. Up to $2500 fine, 1 year in jail.

(any covert audio recordings of telephone/electronic conversations are also
illegal in California; it's an all-party consent state, although you can
disclose and report recording all business calls as a routine thing (you play
a "we record all calls" at the beginning of the call, and staying on is
implied consent). )

IANAL, but YGANVP.

~~~
oomkiller
They could have overlooked this, but it would not seem odd to say it's being
recorded, for whatever reason. Or even having a sign that says "audio and
video recording in use" would probably suffice.

~~~
rdl
Yes, it's one party consent, two party notification. There was clear
expectation of privacy (it wasn't a public meeting in a cafe, or a press
conference). Hiding the identity of the outsourcing guy might legally change
things -- I actually have no idea. The firm is trivially identifiable, but it
might be enough. Regardless, it's irresponsible.

More ice blocks and real guerilla marketing, less bragging about violating
employment laws or wiretapping vendors, please.

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citricsquid
Tivo Android App? Spoilers!

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bertil
Was there anything funny in there? Yeah, they collage buzzwords, mock
Louisiana and the blurry guy approves—but how is that funny?

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jcr
"If I'm here and you're here, doesn't that make it our time?"

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JacobIrwin
Well played

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zyfo
Just over an hour? I thought he'd at least take him out bass fishing for an
afternoon.

