Now, honestly, if THEY were robocalling me….
The article from PC Mag (here) states that the FTC, frustrated by its own efforts to stop robocalling (translation: Throwing in the towel and hoping someone else can figure it out) is hoping you can figure out how to solve the problem. So, starting next week, you can sign up with the FTC and then upload your solution in all sorts of different ways.
However, I’ll come straight out and tell you how to stop this because most reader responses have been along the lines of “make criminal charges that stick” or “fine them into the Dark Ages”. Those solutions won’t actually stop it because the fact is that they’re usually calling from blocked numbers or from out of areas where we have no jurisdication. The solution is simple: Make it mandatory that phone service companies (landlines or cell phones) allow you to block numbers from calling you if you don’t want to hear from them. Right now, the majority of my advertising calls (that I don’t want) come from phone numbers that if I could block them, I’d never hear from them again. Sure, they could call from another number, but I’d block that, too, and then they’d have to keep paying more and more money to be able to call me. Their best alternative is to just stop calling me as it becomes cost prohibitive.
The problem is that if you have any cell phone, good luck making that happen. I’ve had an iphone with AT&T for years, and they don’t offer the service. It should be standard with your phone, as it doesn’t take any effort for them to implement this whatsoever. When I left AT&T during a short six month period when I was trying something different than the iphone, I was with Sprint, and they didn’t offer the service either.
Because no phone services allow you to do this (unless you jailbreak a phone, which a lot of people like me aren’t comfortable doing), you are forever hostage to anyone who has your phone number. Right now, I am getting nonstop phone calls from a bill collector who is trying to collect for someone named Munroe (sic). No idea who Munroe is, and I can’t get them to stop calling me. Instead, they say: “If this is not Monroe, hang up.” That would be fine IF I CALLED THEM, but in fact they called me, which means that no matter how many times I hang up, they call back a few days later with a robot caller asking for Munroe. I have zero way to shut this down, other than turning off my phone and going back to live in a cave.
The problem I perceive is that there are companies out there who don’t want to give us the freedom to stop these types of calls. That’s why it will never happen. That is why no amount of work the FTC does to come up with a solution, nothing is going to be done about it. If the FTC was serious about stopping this problem, they would have turned to the phone companies and asked them to come up with a solution (OR THEY WOULD DO IT FOR THEM). But the FTC has no backbone, so they’re trying to pretend they’re actually doing something about it when they’re not.