Robert
Staunton,#2Consumer Suggestion
Wed, March 12, 2003
Has anyone considered the need to report these directory scammers for mail fraud. Get the form at your local post office. The billing practices of these companies clearly constitute mail fraud. Contact your state Attorney General. Vermont shut some of them down, Noteably Pavlos Angelatos and World Wide Source. Missourri is about to drop the hammer on them. Mister or Ms. Telemarketer, sitting in their boiler room bunker in Montreal or Dartmouth, is either woefully ignorant of state laws--or hopes you are! Most states have "right to cancel" laws. If you are a telemarketer you are required by law to notify your contact of them in such transactions. Usually it is a 72 hour period or something similar. It goes without saying that the telemarketer would also have to clearly identify themselves and provide clear contact information to create an enforceable transaction. Your state probably also has laws on the books similar to this Virginia statute: +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 59.1-200. Prohibited practices. A. The following fraudulent acts or practices committed by a supplier in connection with a consumer transaction are hereby declared unlawful: 1. Misrepresenting goods or services as those of another; (eg: The "Real Yellow Pages") 2. Misrepresenting the source, sponsorship, approval, or certification of goods or services; 3. Misrepresenting the affiliation, connection or association of the supplier, or of the goods or services, with another; 4. Misrepresenting geographic origin in connection with goods or services; 5. Misrepresenting that goods or services have certain quantities, characteristics, ingredients, uses, or benefits; (saying you distribute over a million books when your circulation is closer to 35000). +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ With a little knowledge you should be able to help stop this kind of operation in your area. Their only strength is in their telephone operation. They also have no respect for anti-harassment laws. Just keep hanging up on them. You can be nice about it since you possess the moral and legal high ground. They seem to take sadistic enjoyment out of reducing professional people to rage and verbal conflict with them on the telephone. Kill them with kindness.