From: Julian Macassey <julian@bongo.uucp>
Subject: Re: Mercury Marketing Again
Date: 11 Oct 90 15:11:22 GMT
Organization: The Hole in the Wall  Hollywood California U.S.A.

In article <13221@accuvax.nwu.edu>, tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) writes:

	Mucho stuff about dealing with toner conmen deleted - but
worth a read.

> One guy actually stayed on the phone a whole minute and a half.  I
> joked with him that I was getting two or three calls a week like this,
> and "they always hang up on me."  I got him to promise not to hang up,
> got a first and last name, a company name, but then he had trouble
> telling me where he was calling from.  "California", he said.  "Where
> in California?", said I.  "Uh ... L.A.".  I tried to get him to give
> me an address, and he choked.  I asked again for "the actual physical
> address where you are now".

	So now you know what all the out of work actors do in LA. When
they are not working on their hair, they work in boiler rooms. I am
ashamed to say that the capital of telephone con men is LA. The
"office supplies", charities, long distance service and such stuff are
worked mostly from Los Angeles. The securities cons are worked mostly
from Newport Beach in nearby Orange County. So if it's diamonds and
oil wells, it should be Newport Beach, Irvine and Costa Mesa. If it's
ball point pens and Toner, it should be West LA, Mid Wilshire. There
are exceptions. I know of one Oil and Coins boiler room in Century
City (Adjacent to Beverly Hills), but the owner lives in Costa Mesa.

	They like to use actors for several reasons. They are usually
desperate for a temporary job so they can whizz away for auditions.
They can assume personnas - I knew one that played a devout Jew for
the Jewish community and it worked well for him.

	In the want ads in this town there are constant ads for
"telemarketing" jobs. Some claim in the ads that the locations have
windows.

	The average boiler room is a cheap location filled with
folding tables and single line phones fed with POTS business lines.
Some have Centrex. The better places put Confidencer noise cancelling
transmitters on the handsets. Some boiler rooms only handle one or two
scams, often the scam of the owner, some are renta-voice places and
play the scam that someone is hiring them for. There are many
exceptions to the above rules, I have been in some very well furnished
boiler rooms. The better places are doing something more lucrative
than copier supplies. The top of the line places make millions on oil.
diamonds, coins, precious metals, whisky futures etc.

	All of these places change their names and sometimes their
locations with great regularity. How long have these slimeballs been
operating?  Well, some of them used to sell carbon paper over the
phone.

	Having seen boiler rooms from the other side, I would say a
good rule of thumb is: Never buy anything over the phone. Never agree
to anything on the phone. The cute girl who tells you she is working
her way through college could be a 40 year old mother of three still
waiting for a good movie part.


Julian Macassey, n6are  julian@bongo.info.com  ucla-an!denwa!bongo!julian
N6ARE@K6IYK (Packet Radio) n6are.ampr.org [44.16.0.81] voice (213) 653-4495

From: jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond)
Subject: Re: The Depths of Sliminess
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 92 18:33:59 GMT
Organization: Dixie Communications Public Access.  The Mouth of the South.

pf@islington-terrace.hc.ti.com (Paul Fuqua) writes:

[ Teleslime harrassment story deleted]

> [Moderator's Note: Very dramatic story, but is it really the truth?
> What telemarketer do you know with enough spare time on his hands to
> waste call after call on someone who obviously is not buying anything?
> To those boys, time *is* money, and people (who they call) wasting
> their time 'looking for a pen', etc are anathema. Usually the quota
> they keep requires several dozen calls per hour, and at least a few
> positive results per hour. He is giving up all this money and messing
> up his quota in order to play games with Harshaw? How could he be
> making all these calls without someone along the way identifying him
> or detirmining what organization employs him?  How come Harshaw and/or
> telco haven't trapped him by now?  Has Harshaw heard the taped
> messages left in his name and identified the voice with the person who
> originally called him? Are Harshaw and the {Dallas Morning News} each
> complimenting the other's story for their own reasons; Harshaw for his
> fifteen minutes of fame and the newspaper in a campaign to dump on
> telemarketers?  I don't believe their story.  PAT]

Pat, I know that running this mailing list gives you an all-seeing
overview of the world not available to Paul or the reporter who
investigated the story but consider for a moment the fact that you
don't know all there is to know about teleslime.

Consider that not all teleslime works in boiler rooms and against
quotas.  Consider the increasing problem we have here in Atlanta with
casual teleslime who work out of their homes (judging by the screaming
kids and blaring TV in the background) to make a little extra money.
They have neither the quota to drive them nor the thick skin to let
'em weather insults.  These people get mad at being cussed at or even
hung up on.  They do waste their time getting even by calling back.
And when they call me back, their number from the Caller*ID box goes
in Dixie's UUCP Systems file for day or two.

Yes, it is entirely believable that a teleslime would do such a thing
as described in the media article.


John De Armond, WD4OQC      Rapid Deployment System, Inc.
Marietta, Ga      jgd@dixie.com     
Need Usenet public Access in Atlanta?  Write Me for info on Dixie.com.