The following letter
was printed in the Daily Record on 9/16/15 and the Neighbor News on 9/23/15
ROBOCALLS !!
I’ve written about the barrage of unwanted robocalls
that I receive before. If anything, it’s a problem that got worse. As an experiment, I decided to keep track of them
on my computer. The numbers are amazing.
Over the past 2 ½ months, I have received 164 calls, from
72 different area codes, from 28 different states, plus Canada and Washington
DC.
I don’t answer these calls. I let my answering machine
do that. Most simply hang up. I’ve gotten the same message from several different numbers. These folks know how to beat
the system and the “Do not call” list is useless.
Pres. Obama. Why don’t you try to do something about
this? It’s a real problem. I wonder how many old or sick people fall when trying to get to the phone. Instead of going
to Alaska to rename Mount McKinley,
Mt. Dinali,
why bother? It’s in Dinali National
Park. Besides, 99.9% of Americans will never see Mt McKinley. Why not spend more time to create
US jobs so these robocallers can get real jobs?
I got a call several times and the caller id said it was
me calling.
I’m sure that millions of Americans are getting
these calls. If the robocallers can figure how to do their damage, why can’t the government get the “Do not call”
program to work. But then again, you had real problems with the Obamacare web site.
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The following was printed in the Neighbor News on 10/1/14
WHO’S CALLING?
Imagine getting a phone call and your caller ID says it’s coming from you.
I’ve had several calls recently that actually happened. The phone rang and since I was waiting for a call from
my doctor, I picked it up. Imagine my surprise when the caller ID showed my own name and my own phone number. Adding to that,
the caller that answered spoke with a heavy Indian accent, I presume he was in Mumbai, New
Delhi or some other Indian city.
Needless to say, I was p---ed. I told him to take my name off of their contact list and hung up.
The other day, I received a call and the caller ID simply said out of area and displayed the number as 1-000-900-xxx.
I didn’t know that an area code of 000 existed. That’s because it doesn’t.
I’ve written about these annoying robocalls before, but these two really bothered me. I am on the do not call
list and I must average about 5-10 a day. But how do these privacy violators manage to show my own name and number when they
call me? Isn’t that a true invasion of privacy as well a fraudulent marketing?
What good is the “do not call” list if it can’t stop all these unwanted, aggravating calls? I understand
that this is the technology age, but isn’t here anything that can be done?
I just changed my answering machine message. It now says “Hi, this is Vic. I can’t answer the phone right
now but if you leave a brief message and your number, I’ll call back if I’m interested. If you don’t hear
from me in 48 hours, delete my name from your mail list. Thanks!”
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Victor F. Banko (C)
Dec.3, 2015
