Everyone complains "The only phone calls I get are from telemarketers" While this could be an exaggeration I decided to take my phone records and do a little research. Stunningly for my house yes most of the calls are from telemarketers or 78% of the 251 phone calls over the last 3 months or roughly 2.2 calls per day. We get 4 categories of these phone calls. Hangups, Mortgage scams, Bill Collectors for other people, and Product/Service advertising. Mind you my phone is listed on the federal do not call registry and has been since its inception and we opt into nothing. More disturbing is the product service calls are from local numbers.

My phone service is an IP phone service provider, and I think I am going to simply place a human check on my phone. So in the future all phone calls will be routed to "Please prove you are human by pressing 7 and your call will be answered promptly" Not pressing 7 will dump you into voice mail which I can ignore. That will end all of the illegitimate phone calls ringing and my phone will only ring for actual people.

But this should not be necessary. Our laws need to be tougher and easier for consumers to use. It needs to be a crime with jail time to use a phone for business proposes without transmitting your actual business name and phone number, and the number transmitted must be one that is answered by a person or machine that gives out your business name and address. The second piece is abusing the do not call list should be easy for consumers to enforce. None of this you have to tell them in writing to stop calling you. If you are on the list $500 the first time enforceable by the consumer in small claims court and $1,000 for each additional. Oh and for those collection agencies, its your responsibility to be sure the numbers you are calling are not on the do not call list, and if the person is not the person who actually owes the money, you are also in violation of these laws. Simple adjustments to our current laws could put a swift end to this problem.