Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Yet More 888-872-2629

I'm glad I could help everyone with these pesky and very persistent Chase telemarketers who keep calling from 888-872-2629. I am a touch concerned that several people seem to be jumping mighty quickly to filing FTC complaints, though.

Registering with the National Do Not Call registry does not mean that no one can call you. Even if your number is registered, there are still certain telemarketers who are allowed to call you.

If you have any of the credit cards offered by Chase or Bank One (they're both owned by the same company), these telemarketers can call you if you have made a purchase or payment on the card in the last year and a half even if your number is on the national Do Not Call registry. You can request that Chase not call you, and the company must comply. I have not found in the regulations any mention of whether that compliance must start immediately upon the request or if the company is allowed some sort of processing window, but I imagine there probably is since there is a 30-day window on DNC registrations. Chase's automated system notifies callers to allow 30 days for the request to take effect, so I would suggest not lodging any formal complaints with the federal government until the 30 days are up. Until then, turn the phone's ringer to low or off if you don't want to be disturbed.

Remember: the more complaints that the FTC receives on companies that are not, in fact, in violation of the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the less time they have to go after legitimate violators. Before lodging a complaint, please make certain that the company is in fact in violation.

2 comments:

Titus Barik said...

Thanks for making this post. I've been called by this number almost daily for about week now and finally decided to Google for it.

Anonymous said...

Also thanks -- I also found your page by googling the phone number.

They've been calling my CELL PHONE for the last couple weeks asking for "Jeff". I'd tell them they had a wrong number and they would be fairly curteous about it... but then I'd get another call the next day.

I've had this phone # for years and never had problems with calls for "Jeff" so I doubt its a case of me having his old number. Probably someone supplying bogus contact info and ended up giving my # out randomly or something.

Today I went off a little bit on the caller (since she woke me up way too early - I work nights)... told her in no uncertain terms that there was no "Jeff" at this number and never would be. She claimed to put my number on their internal Do Not Call list which hopefully will do the trick. According to this other page that Google turned up that can take "at least 30 days" Grrr.