New Hampshire Real Estate & Consumer Resources

If I could get CitiGroup CEO Charles Prince on the phone or catch him on the street, this is what I’d like to say to him: Ha! Ha! Ha!

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to see one of the top fat cats like this jerk getting a little payback that he so richly deserves.

I surely don’t expect him to suffer any financial pain. Guys like this are wealthy enough to live out their lives (and probably the lives of many others) without having to earn another cent.

I’d like to see him out on the street like all the poor people that have suffered through foreclosure due to the willingness of the big lenders to push mortgages that people could not afford.

No, it’s not financial problems that will be a problem for Charles Prince. His real  pain will come from the embarrassment of looking like a failure. Guys with enormous egos like he probably has must fear that more than anything else. He failed in a very public way at the helm of a huge company everyone has heard of.

News reports say that Prince is set to step down tomorrow at some kind of emergency meeting. Good riddance.

Maybe, just maybe, this will be a lesson to the greedy creeps that run some of these big corporations. Sometimes your actions come back and bit you in the rear end.

As readers may know, I am anything but a fan of CitiGroup/CitiBank/CitiMortgage/Whatever and any news regarding hardship on the part of that outfit puts a smile on my face.

I sure feel badly for all the lower-level employees who are just trying to make a living and may be facing lay-offs soon. I did my time inside Corporate America for quite a few years myself and was thrown out on my butt a while back, so I can truly say that I “feel their pain.”

I do not, needless to say, feel the least bit sorry for the Charles Princes of the world, however. It’s quite refreshing to see a little bit of what some of us might call “justice” metered out for a change. Hit the road, Prince, CitiGroup may become a better company without you.

How many times have you clicked on a link to a news story and then ended up at the brick wall that is the “Register” page? It happens to me all the time.

I’m a regular reader of the Drudge Report, and as most Internet users know, that site contains many links to various news stories all around the net. It seems to be less frequent than it once was, but I still end up getting a registration page thrown in my face when I click on a link to a story.

This is because of the short-sided nitwits that are running some of these news sites. What they don’t seem to realize is that when I hit one of these registration pages, the last thing I am going to do it register on their site. And it really doesn’t have anything to do with privacy issues.

I visit the Drudge Report because I want a quick rundown of the day’s news stories on one page so I can scan it quickly and see what stories interest me. I am not going to stop my surfing to fill out my name and address or name and zip code or whatever on some site that puts a wall around their content and only allows registered users to access it.

What these registration tyrants don’t seem to realize is that the same news stories are available on about a million other sites that do not require registration at all.

When I run into one of these registration brick walls when trying to access a news story I simply bring up Google, click on “News” and then type in some keywords for the story. You know, something like “dog bounty hunter racist” (I’ll use that one only because I think that guy is such a jackass).

Google News will present me with than more than enough links to satisfy my appetite for that particular news story, and then some.

News sites make their money from the advertisements that appear when you visit their sites, but registration tyrants don’t seem to realize that demanding registration from their readers is reducing the number of eyeballs on their pages. People like me very quickly seek their news elsewhere and some other news site benefits from the extra eyeballs on their pages.

Smarten up and ditch the registration nonsense already. It’s so 1990’s.

I got an e-mail recently from my Dad about dealing with telemarketers and junk mail senders. It was one of those e-mail messages that is forwarded endlessly around the Internet, but this one actually looked like it might have some useful information contained within.

The old tried-and-true methods like picking up the phone and then asking the telemarketer to “hold on” and setting the phone down until their patience runs out was covered as well as a new idea or two I had not heard of.

I have no idea if this next one actually works, but I just may give it a try next time I get one of those annoying telemarketing calls that hangs up on you without saying a word.

The information I got from a telephone company employee differs a bit from the explanation of these “hang up” calls that appears in the e-mail, but for all I know, there could be more than one purpose for these annoying phone calls.

Anyway, this e-mail reports that if you hit the ‘#’ button on your telephone a bunch of times (like 6 or 7), the system that makes the call will recognize it as some kind of signal that will remove you from their calling list.

I’m a pretty skeptical guy and these are the kinds of things that always sounds like a load of crap to me. Frankly, I doubt this button-pushing will do a darn thing, but I figure it won’t hurt to give it a try.

The information in this e-mail regarding junk mail was nothing terribly new, but it did give me an idea or two.

People have been playing tricks for years on junk mailers by using postage-paid envelopes to send their junk mail back to them. I’ve done this a few times myself in the past but have not done it for quite a while.

One of the suggestions was to take the little advertisements that utility companies, credit card companies and others enclose along with your bill and send them back along with your payment. The only problem with that idea is that I do 100% of my bill-paying online these days. I did get another idea from this, however.

As a small business owner, I can use some of the postage-paid envelopes to send advertisements for my products or services back to the sender. Sure, it’s a long shot that the employee charged with opening the mail will actually buy anything from me, but it’s not impossible. Besides, it gives me a small sense of satisfaction to return some of my own junk mail to the junk mailer.

I wish I knew what it was that has ended my long period of peace and quiet. A few years back when I signed onto the national “Do Not Call” list the telemarketing calls to our house virtually ended.

Once in a while (maybe three of four times a year), a telemarketing call would come through from some outfit we had a “relationship” with, but beyond that, the silence was lovely.

This recent plague of junk calls started with those idiots at CitiBank/CitiMortgage who were using the “relationship” loophole in the “Do Not Call” laws and apparently lending their name out to other companies who were calling here and claiming to be calling “on behalf” of CitiMortgage to pitch some lame offer that I had no interest in.

I don’t know all the legal details of how these things work behind the scenes, but it is pretty obvious to me that these companies are using these loopholes in the law to pitch various offers that have nothing to do with mortgages or any other financial service.

I don’t think I can blame CitiBank/CitiMortgage for the other calls I have been getting lately, as much as I would like to. In fact, I am not hearing from anyone lately claiming any association with my “friends” and CitiBank/CitiMortgage so I guess my request for them to add me to their “Do Not Call” list may have taken effect.

The most recent junk call came last night at 8:37 pm, which, if you ask me, is a bit late to be making junk telephone calls. I think I may have been the latest call of that variety I have yet received. The caller ID displayed: 866-566-5188.

Since I was relaxing in my recliner watching TV at the time of the call, I was certainly not about to get up and answer a call that had the look of a junk call to me. So, we let the machine handle it and as expected, in typical junk call fashion, no message was left.

My usual Internet detective work revealed that the number was traced back to some kind of survey company that claims to be calling “on behalf” (sound familiar) of various companies or is calling to ask some questions from a political poll or some kind of survey.

It is important to note that these kinds of calls are exempt from the “Do Not Call” laws, so these idiots that want to disturb you and ask you a bunch of stupid questions are within the law when they do so. As far as I know, you can ask them to include your number on their own “Do Not Call” list and they will have to honor that request.

Today at 12:54 pm the phone rings again. This time the Caller ID reveals 818-756-7494 and says “California.” “Hmmmm,” I thought to myself, “that’s a new one.” I did not know it at the time, but it really wasn’t.

I actually tried to answer that one but since I was doing some extensive cleaning and re-arranging work around my office at the time, my phone was not as accessible as usual and by the time I picked it up all I heard was dead air. I suspect the dialing machine that these morons used had already given up on the call.

A quick search on the net makes it apparent that this new number is associated with the one that rang us last night. In fact, it’s the same company that called us last night.

I don’t know whether this is a sneaky tactic on their part that’s used when they don’t get an answer when calling from their 866 number (which is obviously some kind of company). Perhaps the next call is made from this other number to make it look more like a legitimate call instead of the junk call that it actually is. Just a theory since I don’t put anything past these weasels.

In light of this increasing number of junk calls lately, I think I am going to have to take a new approach to this whole situation. I don’t even want to waste my time telling these jerks to put me on their “Do Not Call” list or yelling at them or pretending I don’t speak English (which could be entertaining).

From now on I am simply not going to answer the phone when I see a number I do not recognize as a call from someone I actually want to talk to. That includes “Unavailable” and “Out of Area” as well.

I just finished moving my Caller ID unit right over to my desk so I no longer even have to spin my chair around to see the display. That should make it a bit easier for me to ignore these pesky, persistent idiots.

When you think about it, this whole telemarketing thing should piss off everyone who has ever received one of those calls. After all, you pay $20, $30 or $40 or whatever to have a telephone in your home for your convenience, right? It’s not free, it is a service you are paying for.

Then you have these telemarketing idiots calling your number and basically demanding your attention right now. That’s the way the telephone works after all. You’ve got to drop whatever you are doing to answer the call only to hear some jackass on the other end trying to sell you something you most likely to not want. That is why I pay to have a phone in my home. I think not!

I love Caller ID and it took long enough for the telephone companies to make that technology available to customers. Now they need to take things a step further and give us the ability to block these junk calls.

This is a feature that could easily be added to the telephone system. It would all be based on Called ID, a technology that is already in place. I want to be able to punch in a code on my phone and then enter in a number that I want to block from ever calling me again. If someone with a blocked number called, they would be informed by way of a recorded message that their call has been rejected.

This is the kind of service we need with these junk calls still crawling all over the telephone networks like a virus. Come on telephone companies, give us the tools we need to customize our service the way we really want to!

It’s been pretty quiet around here on the telemarketing front. I have not received any more calls from the numbers I have discussed here recently. Perhaps CitiMortgage/CitiBank, whom I blame for the recent rash of telemarketing calls, has filtered out the information to their partners that I do not want to be bothered with their calls. Lord, I hate CitiMortgage/CitiBank.

While I have not received any calls for a while, I did get one back on October 3 at around 7:00 in the evening. This time the caller ID was displaying the following number: 800-786-0685, which was displayed on my TV screen thanks to my Dish Network DVR’s caller ID feature, which I just love.

I certainly was not about to get up from my recliner to answer a telephone call that originated from an 800 number. To me that says “phone spam” loud and clear. In other words, telemarketer!

A bit later I looked up that particular phone number using a search engine and discovered that that it was indeed a telemarketer. Other people who had received calls from that number reported that it was some kind of “business opportunity” nonsense and when they tried returning the call, they were simply left listening to a seemingly endless recording of music.

Being naturally curious, I called the number myself and ended up hearing the music just as the others had described. That’s kind of odd and makes me wonder if it is just the tactic these low-life telemarketers use to avoid talking to people who call them back to complain.

What’s even more strange is that I have not heard back from them again. Who ever heard of a telemarketing outfit that does not call back after they call once and get an answering machine? They are making me feel like George Costanza in that Seinfeld episode where the cult-controlled carpet cleaning company would not bother trying to recruit him!

Seriously though, I am much happier to never hear from these weasels again and my feeling will absolutely not be hurt if they never call me again.

Makes me wonder if these most recent callers were part of the CitiMortgage/CitiBank family of annoying telemarketers.

So, this is day eight with no telemarketing calls whatsoever. Here’s hoping it can stay that way for a long time.

Sometimes when dealing with a certain organization or company, you just get a “feeling.” The kind of feeling that tells you that you should be extra cautious in all your dealings with them.

Unfortunately, I did not get the feeling where this particular company (or companies) is concerned until it was too late. I had signed up for a contract with them for a year.

As noted above, the company I am referring to seems to go by various names. The two I am familiar with are SecurePay and Pipeline Data Processing, but I have seen other names at various times on account statements and other correspondence I have received. Although this outfit may offer other “services,” I had signed a merchant account contract with them.

If you are not familiar with a merchant account, it is the type of account that allows a business to accept credit card purchases. I signed up so that I could accept credit cards in my online store. What other way is there to shop online?

To spare myself typing this whole story again, refer to an earlier post I entered here when I first started having problems with these idiots. That should provide all the background required to understand this story.

On 9-26-2007 my one-year contract with this company ended. Or, perhaps I should say, should have ended.

When I got in touch with an employee named Jennifer a few months ago, I was assured that my contract would indeed end on 9-26-2007, but unless I wanted it to just automatically continue, I needed to fax some paperwork to them with my signature and all the magic account and ID numbers before they would terminate it.

Well, I don’t have a fax machine and although I can use my document scanner and PC to send a fax, frankly, it is just a pain in the rear. I guess I will never understand the business world’s obsession with the fax machine. We’re all wired up with e-mail and the Internet so what the hell do we need fax machines for? They seem rather primitive to me, but I digress.

When I informed Jennifer that I did not have a fax machine (must have been a real shocker!), she told me I could send the paperwork through the mail and she provided me with the address.

Around the beginning of September, I prepared all the paperwork and sent it in to Pipeline Data Processing as instructed. I wanted to make sure it would get there in plenty of time before the contract expiration on the 26th.

About a month ago, I got my usual account statement from the company which showed the approximately $30 or so they deducted from my business checking account for their usual litany of “fees” and “charges.” No surprise there since this was for the month of August. I knew one more round of deductions would be coming in October for the final month of the contract in September.

These types of accounts are typically set up to collect the money from the credit card transactions and then deposit that amount in store owner’s bank account, which is quite convenient. That convenience comes at a price, however.

While they were pretty good at depositing the money they collected for the transactions that took place on my web site, they were also quite adept at removing money from my account for various “fees.” Giving access to a company to make deposits in your bank account is a two-edged sword!

So, for the last couple of weeks, I have been watching my bank account like a hawk and waiting for what should have been the final deduction. When I logged into my account this morning, I saw that the deduction had been made. This time it was for about $40 since I have not been using this merchant account for a while now and they hit you with additional charges if you do not do enough business through that account for a given month. Again, no surprise. I was expecting that.

This is where that “feeling” I was talking about comes into play and my feeling about this company is not a good one. So, at this point I felt that I needed to verify that they had received and acted upon my termination request.

I decided to e-mail Jennifer and simply ask her to verify that my contract had indeed been terminated since I did send all the required paperwork to the address she provided me with. She promptly sent me back the name and phone number of the person who handles cancellations.

I should say a word about Jennifer at this point. Despite my feelings about SecurePay/Pipeline Data Processing, I also believe good service should be given the credit it deserves. Jennifer was always very quick to respond, always answered my questions and was very nice about it to boot. The morons that run that outfit could take a few lessons from her!

Anyway, I called the person in charge of cancellations right away and went through the usual drill of providing my company name and merchant ID number, etc.

When I related to her my reason for calling, there was a long pause on the other of the line and I could tell something was not quite right.

She then asked me if I had faxed in my paperwork and I told her I mailed it in. At that point she expressed what might be described as a “V8 Moment,” and if you are familiar with those TV commercials, you know what I am talking about.

I could hear her shuffling through a bunch of papers that must have been sitting on her desk. After a short while she found my paperwork and realized her mistake.

I told her that my concern was that I was going to be charged again in November and have the pleasure of having SecurePay/Pipeline Data Processing reach into my bank account once again and extract another $40 for the month of October. This, of course, should not happen, since I sent in the termination paperwork well in advance of the contract termination date.

Although she sounded somewhat hesitant to admit it, it was too late and they would indeed be extracting another $40 from my account in November. Although I was about ready to blow my top at this point, she seemed to sense that and admitted that it was her fault and that she would put an order in for an immediate credit to my account. A sort of “pre-emptive refund” to make up for what they will take next month.

Apparently, she received my paperwork back around the beginning of September and must have just set it aside and forgotten about it. Now that’s a pretty typical example of human error, and even though that is understandable in the vast majority of cases, this is exactly the kind of thing I expected to happen when dealing with an outfit like this.

As you might expect, I will be watching my account once again for the credit she claims to have ordered. The “feeling” I get from dealing with these people tells me that something may go wrong with that as well.

In summary, if you happen to be a merchant who is online searching for information on a merchant account, my advice to you is to stay very far away from SecurePay/Pipeline Data Processing.

And when you do find a merchant account you plan to sign up with, make sure you read the entire contract agreement before you sign it. There are very likely to be a few nasty little surprises in there that will come back and bite you at some point in the future if you are not careful.

I’ve heard horror stories about some merchants who have canceled merchant accounts before the contract expiration and had to pay a $300 or $500 penalty because of it, so work out a contract as short in duration as you possibly can. You do NOT want to find yourself trapped in a contract with an outfit like this, so push hard for a short contract and don’t buy their B.S. that they can only give you a multi-year contract.

I almost fell into that trap myself. I had actually started to read the multiple pages of my contract agreement around the time I had the experience with the chargeback and discovered that the “standard” contract agreement with this outfit was for three years! Needless to say, this caused me much concern because there was a hefty “termination fee” for those that wanted out of their contract before the expiration date.

Luckily for me, I had saved my original e-mail correspondence with the jackass salesman I had dealt with when I first signed up and I had a message from him that stated quite clearly that my contract was for one year. I had to forward that message to the company to prove that when I started talking to them about terminating the contract.

Just be careful and remember you are entering into a contract when you sign up for these kinds of merchant accounts. It will not be easy to get out of the contract without paying a penalty if the service sucks and you decide you don’t want to deal with them any longer.

In my earlier post, I mentioned how I was pretty happy with using PayPal to process all the credit card transactions from my store. A while back they introduced a new feature that allows you to process payments through their merchant account without the customer ever leaving your web site.

That was a huge move for PayPal because to use their service previously, you had to shuffle your customer off to the PayPal site to complete their transactions. Just the kind of thing you don’t want to be doing, and that was the reason I wanted another merchant account in the first place.

I have been using the new PayPal feature on my site for a couple of months now and it is working just great. I am very happy with it and highly recommend it. Remember, PayPal reversed the only chargeback I had ever encountered while using them and gave me the money back. Unlike the way SecurePay/Pipeline Data Processing treated me.

In addition, the PayPal transaction process is much more secure, in my opinion. As I pointed out in the previous post, when using the SecurePay/Pipeline account, it seemed it would accept just about any name and address for a transaction as long as the credit card number and expiration date are correct! Some security that is!

With the PayPal system, the CVV code is required as well as the name and address of the credit card holder that is recorded on the credit card account before the transaction will be approved. I think it is a much better system and even though it might mean a few lost sales here and there, I prefer that to being ripped off by some low life thief!

Good riddance SecurePay/Pipeline Date Processing! You truly suck!

Update: Thanks to my web logs, I can see that some folks at Pipleline Data Processing were able to find this entry quite quickly and there have been quite a few readings of this from computers at their company. Isn’t the Internet great? Although it allows companies like Pipeline to make a fortune, it can also come back and bite them in the rear once in a while. Let that be a lesson to you. When you provide service that is not satisfactory, expect that information to get around.

While watching Channel 9 News the other evening I saw one of those stories that I just have to comment about. This is a perfect example of the kind of story that can get me cursing and making obscene gestures towards the TV.

The story is set in Hampton, NH, where cats and other small pets are apparently turning up missing in numbers that are considered in excess of the norm. Many of them seem to be disappearing when they are let out to roam around the neighborhood after dark.

The town’s animal control officer strongly suspects that coyotes are to blame for the missing pets and Channel 9 dutifully provides some menacing footage of coyotes roaming in residential areas, no doubt planning their next evening meal of kitty cats and Chihuahuas.

Then comes the part of the story that gets my attention. A woman who owns a Dachshund is obviously worried about her pet winding up on the menu and she would like something done about it.

The reporter on the story says that this particular resident would like the town or the state to do something about the situation. The resident is then given a chance to speak for herself on the issue.

“I’m not for killing anything, so let’s relocate them to where they can live their lives not in a residential area,” she proclaims.

OK, that’s where it hits the fan for me.

Can she possibly be serious? She wants the town or the state to come in and spend taxpayer money to relocate coyotes because they are a threat to her dog? Which is probably more of a nuisance to the neighborhood than any wild critter ever was, with barking and droppings deposited about and whatnot.

This is exactly the kind of nanny state mentality that strongly influenced my move out of Massachusetts and into New Hampshire. Oh mighty big government, help us with our every little problem! Is it any wonder that freedom in this country is being gradually eroded? It’s because people like that don’t want freedom, they want to have their every little want and desire taken care of for them. Lord knows, you don’t want to get your hands dirty!

As far as I know, coyotes are in their native territory here in North America, while our domesticated cats and dogs are not. It’s long been known that domesticated cats are a big problem for the native songbird population, so I find it a bit ironic that nature is beginning to turn the tables a bit and now coyotes are learning to prey on the cats that have been preying on songbirds and other native species of small animals.

I’ve had my share of problems with wild critters on my large, rural property. I’ve had skunks digging up my grass in search of grubs to eat, chipmunks stealing strawberries from my garden, wild turkeys roosting on my back porch and leaving large collections of droppings and moles tearing up my field.

Guess what? I solved these problems on my own with no help from the town or the state. I don’t normally like to kill critters either, so I purchased some live animal traps and relocated a few skunks and chipmunks. I’ve been chasing the turkeys away whenever I see them around the house and they are showing up on my porch far less frequently. I also managed to work out a plan that allows me to “ambush” moles and unearth them with a good, sturdy pitchfork and dispose of them. Critter problems pretty much solved.

If you want to keep your pets safe from wild critters either keep them in the house, put a fence up around your property or go outside with them to keep an eye on them. Don’t be whining that you want the government to send out some $90,000-a-year biologist to solve your problems for you and cause my taxes to go up. Or even a $25,000-a-year part-time Fish & Game intern or whatever.

The Hampton animal control officer summed it up perfectly at the end of the story. He said something to the effect that we will just have to learn to live with these wild critters. At least someone’s got the right idea.

Grow up and take the initiative required to solve your own little problems like this. If you want the state to do every little thing for you, move down to Massachusetts or move to the city where there aren’t so many wild critters. Then you may have to worry about them being run over as a result of all that city traffic. But take heart! Maybe you can lobby the city or the state to build a little doggie or kitty bridge or tunnel so your pets can cross the street safely!

When high-speed Internet was introduced in my area about 6 years ago, I was thrilled to finally dump my slow dial-up service. There was one thing, however, that I really missed about my old dial-up service.

I was getting my dial-up service from Earthlink (formerly Mindspring) back then and they had a very nice spam filter which literally stopped all spam from reaching my in-box. That particular filter is also known as a white list, and just like it sounds, it is the opposite of a black list.

With white list filtering you are able to configure your e-mail account so that it rejects every e-mail message except those coming from the e-mail addresses that are on your white list. It is the absolute best way to stop spam.

My new high-speed Internet access was provided by Adelphia when I first got it and unfortunately, they did not offer white list filtering. The spam filter they offered was reasonably good, but spam would sneak through every so often.

When Adelphia went bankrupt a while back (the company was run by crooks) the service in our area was taken over by Comcast. Although I am no big fan of Comcast, I was very happy to discover that they offered white list filtering for e-mail accounts.

One of the first things I did was to set up white list filtering on my main Comcast e-mail account. I have never received a single spam e-mail message on that account as a result. Until a few days ago that is.

Imagine my surprise when I received a spam e-mail message from some Canadian pharmacy outfit that was pushing, what else, Viagra! I stared at the message in disbelief. How could they have gotten around my white list filter?

It did not take too long to figure it out. When the spammers sent the message, they put my e-mail address in the “From:” field. In other words, it looked like a message that I sent to myself.

It’s quite trivial to send an e-mail message with a phony “From:” field and spammers have been doing it for a long time. In fact, it happened back when I had my Earthlink account because I had put my own e-mail address on the white list in case I wanted to forward something to myself for some reason.

With the Earthlink account, it was a simple matter to just remove my e-mail address from the white list and that was the end of the spam for good.

With Comcast, this is not the case. Apparently, the Comcast white list filter includes your own e-mail address by default and I could find no way to remove it. In fact, it does not even show up on the list!

I wish I could say I am surprised. It looks like Comcast has found yet another way to prove that they suck.

I’m not sure I am going to even take the time to report this to them as a problem since I don’t usually get a satisfactory answer from them when I have taken the time to report something to them.

Most of the the Comcast customer service people I have talked to so far have been utterly clueless and spend most of their time trying to convince me that whatever problem I am having is the fault of Microsoft or the company that made my PC. Apparently, the one training class they require their customer service people to attend is called “Passing the Buck.”

Unless Comcast closes this white list loophole, more spammers are going to exploit it and the white list filter will become useless. Nice going, Comcast! I’d really love to see you spend more time fixing your problems and less time passing the buck.

Talk about timing! I just posted last night that I had not heard from any telemarketers for the last three weeks ago and guess what. Yes, this time it was from 800-553-1077.

This one was a little different. When I picked it up, a recorded voice told me it was a call for “telemarketing purposes” and was for some kind of “special offer” from National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, PA. The voice also informed me that I could call 800-553-1077 if I wanted more information about the call or something like that.

After the recording the line was just silent. I hung on for a while to see if someone was coming on the line that I could complain to but it just hung up on me after 30 seconds or so and a few clicks on the line.

See my previous post about how these telemarketers use automation to make telephone calls to their victims. This one took the extra step of having a recorded message to at least let people know where the call was coming from and what it was for. I’ll give them a little credit for not subjecting me to the “hang up” calls that most of the other telemarketers seem to be using.

I did call the number right back and an automated system allowed me to add my number to their “Do Not Call” list, which I did. Of course, it takes 5 days to process and 30 days for my number to be completely removed from their telemarketing system. More on that later.

As I’ve been saying lately, all this telemarketing started due to our “relationship” with CitiMortgage. We refinanced our mortgage back in January and the mortgage was then sold to CitiMortgage.

CitiBank/CitiMortgage has been on my list of lousy companies that should be avoided for many years, so it was just a stroke of bad luck that our mortgage was sold to those idiots. It appears my reasoning for adding them to my “crappy company list” was quite justified and I see they have not changed in the intervening 25 years or so!

OK, so maybe I am a little slow, but the more I thought about this situation, the more it started to make sense to me. Let me explain.

The “Do Not Call” laws that were enacted a number of years ago must have really put the damper on the telemarketing business. There must be millions of people on the “National Do Not Call” list and I know from my days in real estate that companies are serious about abiding by the law and not calling people who are on the list unless you had permission. It was drilled into our heads that we were not to violate the “Do Not Call” rules. Ever.

Making money certainly gives birth to creative ideas and sure enough, it appears that some companies have discovered the loopholes that allow them to call consumers even if they are on the national “Do Not Call” list.

As you may know, the “Do Not Call” rules do not apply if you have a “relationship” with a company. And since CitiMortgage is the company holding our mortgage, we have a “relationship” with them. This means that they can call us for telemarketing purposes despite the fact that our number is on the national “Do Not Call” list. If we tell them to add us to their “Do Not Call” list, then they can no longer call us for telemarketing purposes.

But the sneaky tactic that is being adopted these days is that the companies themselves are forming “relationships” with other companies like this fire insurance company that called today. Therefore, by extension, these other companies also have a “relationship” with you and can call you for telemarketing purposes. Pretty sneaky, eh?

Now this is speculation on my part concerning what kind of relationships these companies actually have. I don’t know of CitiMortgage owns these other companies that have been making telemarketing calls to our home or whether they are just forming “relationships” with each other to exchange lists of customer phone numbers.

Another thing is that I can’t imagine is where this “please allow 30 days to be removed from our telemarketing system” crap came from. That is the biggest bunch of B.S. I think I have ever heard and the telemarketing lobbyists must have paid off enough CongressCritters to get that written into the law.

Think about it. We live in the age of the Internet. Instant e-mail. Instant shopping online. Instant downloads. Everything happens so fast these days and since I worked in the computer industry for about 25 years, I know how long it takes to update a database.

These automated systems that are making the phone calls are no doubt working off of these phone number databases when they make calls, so flipping a bit or two in the database to change a “Do Call” number to a “Do Not Call” number is a very trivial matter and it should happen the second (actually less than that!) I pressed “1″ to confirm that I wanted my number added to their “Do Not Call” list. This “30 days” crap is just to cover their asses in case they don’t get around to doing it right away. Or perhaps it is just to give them another opportunity to call up and annoy people a little more.

What this means for me is that I am going to have to go back to giving out phony phone numbers when dealing with many companies. I used to do that all the time because I did not want the telemarketing calls and these sneaky tactics of forming “relationships” with other companies to skirt the “Do Not Call” laws is starting to become quite annoying.

I never used a phony phone number that actually belonged to anyone else. I certainly did not want to be subjecting some other poor soul to these annoying phone calls, so what I did was look up a ISP (Internet Service Provider) that provides dial-up Internet access in my area. I would then locate their dial-up access phone numbers and adopt one of those as my phony phone number. When some company called to annoy me with telemarketing, instead they (or their machines) would just get that annoying dial-up modem squeal and never manage to reach me.

Thanks to sleazy stunts by sleazy companies like CitiBank/CitiMortgage, it appears I may have to go back to my old ways. If that is what it takes to stop the calls, that is what I will be doing.

Well, looks like I was wrong about this one.

I’m sure it was telemarketers, but I have not received any other calls from them so far. It’s been a few weeks, and in my experience, telemarketers are more persistent and would have called back by now.

I am now wondering if the call was connected with the other telemarketing calls I was getting thanks to CitiMortgage.

I did let CitiMortgage know that I did not want any more telemarketing calls and I am wondering if that message made it through the bureaucracy in time to put a stop to the calls from 702-520-1214 shortly after the first one.

Since I have not received a single telemarketing call since then, I am more convinced that they were all started due to those inconsiderate buffoons at CitiMortgage. They really know how to treat a customer, eh? Annoy the hell out of them by unleashing a barrage of telemarketing calls on them.

If you are considering a mortgage or a re-finance, my advice is to steer clear of CitiMortgage. Unless you like being bothered by telemarketing calls.