from sd.....
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http://www.panix.com/~eck/telemarket.html
Rude Awakening
When the call came in the pre-dawn hours of November 12, it awoke me and my wife from a sound sleep. After groggily picking up the phone ? my heart suddenly pounding as I dimly expected news of a death in the family or other emergency ? I was appalled to hear a pre-recorded advertisement for a local handyman/landscaping service. I hung up without listening to the rest of the message.
Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get back to sleep because of the jolt of adrenalin. As I lay there cursing myself for not getting the company name and callback number, I decided to get even. Since I don't have Caller ID, I invested 75 cents in Verizon's *69 service to get the last caller's number. When I tried calling that number (240-453-XXXX), I got repeated busy signals; eventually, my call went through to what was obviously an autodialer trying to make outgoing calls.
I decided to plug the number into the reverse-lookup tool at anywho.com. (I could just as easily have used any of several similar tools.) Anywho gave me the caller's name ? I'll call him "ARS" ? and an address in Rockville, MD. Doing a forward lookup on the name turned up 4 more lines serving the same address; calls to those numbers resulted in busy signals all day long.
For good measure, I also checked Maryland's online real property records, and determined that ARS was the owner of record for the address in question. (FYI, there are similar free online real property search tools for numerous jurisdictions both near and far.)
The rest is here...
http://www.panix.com/~eck/telemarket.html
Total costs: Approximately $20.79 out of pocket, including *69 charge and filing & service fees, plus 2 trips to the courthouse and the occasional phone call (and keep in mind I could have gotten my out-of-pocket costs down to 75 cents with a little obstinacy)
Return on investment: $500 cash; a heaping serving of Revenge, The Dish Best Served Cold?; and one telemarketer who I am certain will never call me again