Stewart, John wrote:
Well, I just got a call from the person at the store who is
responsible for setting up the technical side of things.
It was not a good conversation.
I recall a telephone solicitation ...
I was getting calls from a cemetery about their great real estate
deals ... on the same unlisted telephone number that was setup
for my father to use when he was visiting me. He was in his late
80's at the time ... I did NOT want him getting one of those calls.
It took a call to my local Police Department to get that to stop.
... but only for 6 months!!!
One day, I got a call from them, but from a different phone number
... one that someone answered.
I'll just have to let you guess how much fun my return call was
for them.
The sad thing was that they claimed that it wasn't their fault ...
they gave the abysmally poor, lame, stupid, feckless, otiose excuse
that the software in the autodialer cleared the 'Do Not Call' list
every 6 months.
I generously pointed out that in that case they should expect to
loose a lawsuit every 6 months. ... And furthermore, that while
I could sue them in small claims court without an attorney, since
they were a corporation, they would be required to bring their
attorney to each court appearance ... or risk a contempt of court
citation ... AND have to pay their attorney.
That's when those harassing calls stopped. Forever.
[NOTE: those terms, "abysmally poor, lame, feckless, otiose", are
all real words ... when you LART someone with those and they ask
what they mean ... get them to use a dictionary ... imagine someone
having the dictonary tell them they are stupid in 4 or 5 different
ways. <g>]
I was very calm (until the end) and tried to explain why it was a
bad idea, what they needed to do to make it work ethically, etc,
how they could handle it in a way that would be better for them.
Basically, she said that they couldn't do anything about it, it
was just a feature of the software they use, and she suggested
I not use the online reservation system, and should just send
> their emails into the spam filter.
I'm certainly going to report them to RBLs.
I'm trying to resist the urge to sign up multiple email addresses
on their spam list (no validation whatsoever; you simply enter an
email address and name, and that person is added to the list).
Of course you can't do that. Besides being wrong ... it would
violate your ISP's TOS/AUP ... and you would have no defense.
That having been said ...
I recall a time in about 1994 when I was subscribed to the
cypherpunks eMail list (where I learned a lot about netiquette).
One day, I got a copy of the welcome message ... and another
copy of the welcome message ... and then a question about that
welcome message followed by another copy of the question ...
followed by ... it looked as if _everyone_ got a copy of that,
and another, and ...
Then I saw these 3 messages ...
"Damn! Someone subscribed the list to itself!"
"A curse on them!!!"
... and finally ...
"And a recurse on them!"
johnS
--
Martin
