I am Being Stalked By the State of Colorado

Dear The State of Colorado,

I'm starting to think you're stalking me. 4 times in the last 2 days (including right now, on the weekend) your automated dialing system has called me resulting in the following back and forth:

IVR: This is the Colorado Secretary of State with a very important message about <one of my company's names>. Press #1 if you are the right person to handle this call.
Me: <pressing 1>
IVR: Thank you, we have an important and urgent message for you. Please press #0 to speak to an agent.
Me: <pressing 0>
IVR: We're sorry, there are no agents available. We will call you again at a later time. <hangs up>

I know I can be pretty intimidating some times but why do you keep hanging up on me when you find out i'm home? Was it you that i gave my number to at the bar last weekend? If so, just leave me yours and i will hit you back - I promise. Maybe i missed Secretaries day or something and you're just wanting an apology? Okay - i really am sorry - you're doing a great job! But can I tell you something? If this was an ex-girlfriend i'd actually be thinking about calling the police right now.

But Colorado, let's not start off on the wrong foot. Maybe you can pass this suggestion on to your IVR engineers: it's not really that complicated, just a little code change to your system

agent = AgentQueue.get_available_agent()

if  !agent.nil?
{
    lock(agent)
    call_tax_payer(agent)
    unlock(agent)
}

Just wrap this in a happy loop that checks the list for any unresolved cases and voila, no more restraining orderer needed.

I do need to get something off my chest though. I was amused the first time I went through this process and i even ignored the imposition that it was on my cell phone. But now i'm getting a little annoyed. If you don't have an agent available at least give me a phone number to call or an email address to write to or something!  If you wanna get ahold of me so bad you can find me in two minutes on Facebook! Maybe you're being very mysterious about this all for a reason and I admit I am a little intrigued. But that aside, this is getting pretty silly and on my personal cell phone I consider it to be at do-not-call spam levels. Not to mention it makes you and the Secretary of State look a little bit like bumbling idiots. Not necessarily the best fist impression to make with me.

Please, if you're going to use technology then at least write some decent requirements beforehand. And if you see me out this weekend just come over and say hi. I won't bite i promise.

Signed,
Baffled in Boulder

Comments

[Robert Bell]

There have been some scams against small business owners in the State of Colorado where people write, posing as (or implying they are from) the Secretary of State's Office.

See:

http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/business/update08_12_08.htm

and

http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/business/update12_03_08.htm

I am guessing that it is the same gag, only with robo-calls.

Be Skeptical. Government is just not that efficient that they would use a robo-dialer. Con men, on the other hand, love them.

Note also, that this is similar to a car sales scam that harvests data from Craigslist and Autotrader and then connects you to a high-pressure salesman (in Vegas, natch) to sell you a service for $500 to sell your car for you.

Yes, such robo-calls are illegal. If you call them on it, they claim that your advertisement was an invitation to such calls (not true) or that it "removed your number from the Do Not Call list" (also not true).

The Federal Do Not Call list is about as effective as a restraining order against an abusive husband. The con men pay it no mind....

The good news is, when you get a robo-call, you can pretty much assume it is a scam and just hang up and save yourself a lot of time.

Good Luck.

[Robert Bell]

How do you know the call is actually from the Secretary of State of Colorado?

Have you called them to check? It seems odd they would be using a robo-dialer. In fact, it seems entirely out of character for a government agency.

It sounds suspiciously like those calls from the "Law Firm" saying you owe someone money. They claim by pressing "1" you have acknowledged the debt.

I would hang up on any robo-dialer call and call back to the Secretary of State and ask what is really going on.

I suspect they probably are not the ones calling, but you have unwittingly signed yourself up for credit protector or something.

[Jason]

Awesome post. I want to code an autodialer to call you on behalf of your VC.