In the span of the last two weeks or so, I have gotten a few strange telemarketing calls that have mananaged not to get fooled by my telezapper. These calls are strange in that the people on the other end have such strong accents that it is hard to understand what they are saying. Shortly after I got back from our meet and greet, I got a call with such horrible sound quality that all I could make out was that the person on the other end was saying, "Haallo? Haallo?" I'm curious as to where in the world these calls might be coming from. Have we reached the point where it is economically feasible to run an outbound call center from India, Mexico, or who-knows-where?

Out of curiosity, Alfredo, why oh why have you not signed up for the "Do Not Call" list? It really works! I get perhaps 2 calls a month from telemarketers, at most (and sometimes, they are loopholing in because I'm doing business with them or something). You don't need a telezapper to get rid of them.

Andrew

It is easy to get rid of a call from India. Tell them you live in a cardboard box with only a telephone. Let this new member of Asia's middle class know that if they want America to eat tomorrow, they really should send some money. It usually works, or is at least funny to me.

Alfredo, that was just me calling from McMenamin's payphone in the loo!

Traditional international long distance is becoming a thing of the past. With the onset of VOIP and IP networked PBX's it would be quite simple for these call centers to make local calls to the US fron say India!

When I was running the old Schmizza in Gresham, every single Friday night without fail, during our dinner rush, we would get a telemarketing call (businesses can't go on the no call registry). It would be some pushy-assed telemarketer from India prodding me for information. I asked to speak to the supervisor numerous times and they refused ... they kept calling and calling. We'd hang up and they would call back.

I just tell them it's a payphone and ask if they want to speak to the guy passed out next to it....he appears to live there! CLICK

Alfredo, the answer to your question is yes. Absolutely, inbound and outbound support and telemarketing is being done overseas.

Also, VOIP can have real transmission issues, depending on the technology used, and the way the calls are created. So that could be part of the problem.

Finally, the no-call list really does work. We went from many per day to zero.

"Finally, the no-call list really does work. We went from many per day to zero."

Echo dat.

And it would be completely feasible to telemarket into El Estados Unidos from someplace far off like India, or even China likely............computer/electronics tech support "hotlines" have done similar things for several years now.

That's going the other way around of course (USA to foreign phonelines) but I don't at all see why it wouldn't (or couldn't) be feasible to go from foreign to USA lines.

(Reportedly McDonalds a number of years back was outsourcing all its drive-in window order taking to some company in North Dakota. From what I understand that didn't work out well at all. Although nowdays it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they were to do a stunt like that again, only this time outsourcing to a foreign country.......

"Hello, welcome for visit the Chitty Mick Donalds, may I take order please?")

I need to get back on the "do not call list." I found this Telezapper at a Dollar Tree store, about two years ago. For only $1 I figured, why not? It is hard to gauge the success rate of these things in a quantifiable manner. When I first put it on, I had a lot of hangup calls, and after about a week or two, there were almost NO telemarketing calls.

Have any of you guys tried Skype? It's really freakin' awesome. I've started using it for video calls. (It's free to call computer to computer, costs only when you call a phone number.) The audio quality is way better than a regular telephone's. The video quality is a lot better than I thought - surely not 30fps video or anything but not awful, even over a slow WiFi connection. I'm going to set it up for my Mom back east next time I visit. It seems like a wonderful way to keep in touch, particularly overseas.

Andrew

What's really fun is to start a conversation with them...many will tell you actually where they are calling from, what life is like, and how they are trained to talk to us Americans.

Of course, you have to be in a pretty damn good mood to do this...I occasionally get into some pretty interesting conversations with some of these people, probably because they are just as annoyed making the calls as we are receiving them and it breaks up the monotony.

Andrew,

We have a weekly video call with our son in Japan via Skype.

It's saving us a fortune!

There are ways of doing this for free. Did you know Windows XP has a hidden program for voice/video conferenceing? Netmeeting is a free tool one can use. You will not find it on any menu but if you go to START and RUN then simply enter CONF and hit OK. The trick will be setting up your firewalls to allow one another to communicate. It's actually an old 9X component but is buried yet still available in newer OS!