Who Called Us

This number called on 10/17/08 at around 8:45pm. When I picked up I heard a loud beep like someone was still dialing, then a distant-sounding voice that said they were such-and-such with some marketing research firm doing a survey. She sounded East Indian, pronounced Saint Louis "Sant Louise" the background noise sounded like 1000 other people talking. I told her I didn't have the time for a survey and after I hanging up I blocked the number.

In the last couple of days we've also had several dead-air calls from 801-823-2021, the same number as this - except for the last digit. I'd blocked that after the third call. Wish I could block everything from a given exchange.

10-22-08
7:19 pm

Less than 3 minutes after a call from 801-823-2020, which I screened, I received this call from virtually the same number. They claimed to be a polling firm and wanted to ask me political questions. After a few questions, it became apparent the questions were phrased in a manner to produce a positive feeling toward Republicans and negative feelings toward Democrats; that is, it was a "push" poll. I refused to answer any more questions and demanded the name of the firm behind the poll. They are the Winston Group (found online at WinstonGroup.net).

This firm has called me over 12 times in one day. I keep asking them to STOP calling me.. I have already reported the firm and the phone number to the FTC. I'm not sure how they got my cell phone number, but this is driving me nuts.

Number: 801-823-2023

Called @ 7:27pm on 12/3 - left no msg.

Receiving three calls per day--morning, early evening and 8:45 pm. Started a couple of days ago. 12/4/2008.

Called at 8:45PM, after my kid had gone to bed. I hate these people. There MUST be some way to stop these idiots. Signing up for the Do Not Call list apparentlyl doesn't work. We're now getting calls every night between 8 and 9 from various numbers, unknown numbers, etc., always after my child has gone to bed. I would get rid of my land line if I could.

I'm actually grateful to have received so many calls from this number... It finally motivated me to install the Asterisk PBX script. :)

Marketing, wanted me to participate in 12 to 15 minute survey.

hung up on answering machine three times in two hours

Three more hang ups from 801-823-2020 (which also comes in as 2021, 2022, 2023), and finally called Western Watts Data, a corporate phone survey company in Utah, which uses these lines. The central number is: 801-373-7735. Press "2" to get the "do not call" registry. I left a message, and lo and behold, five minutes later I got yet another call from 823-2020. This time I answered and a woman said she was conducting a survey for JPMorganChase Bank. Her voice on the line sounded digitized, but she was a real person, and I told her that if she didn't remove me from the call list, I would complain to the FCC and report the company to JPMorganChase. Not sure how much good this will do, but it's worth trying to call Western Watts to complain.

Woman called, asked urgently (by name) for the person who signed up for our family plan. We JUST signed up and got the phones activated no less than 2 hours ago, so I thought something had gone wrong. She sounded very urgent and demanded to speak to _____ _____ (blanking out the name here). I said she is not available but I will take a message. She insisted it is very important and urgent and demanded to know if I had been in a T-mobile store recently. Now I am in a panic. I didn't purchase the plan, so I said no, then she hung up. Weird. Now I see it was a scam, but she had the full name of the person who just bought this family plan hours ago!!

westernwats,a data collection company. westernwats.com
they call and leave a burping sound on my voicemail. Not worth the bother to pick up the phone.
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9:15pm I mean PM and 9:48pm I wish I could bold the PM part! The phone rang from these maroons...when I answered (startled of course)they woke my husband up...no one calls after 9pm they said thank for for taking this call and hung up! It was a live voice ,nice,young girl! Must not know the law about telemarketing after 9pm. Well rude awaking today! I have contacted my local Consumer protection office and the FTC...The do not call list is not working! I am MAD!!!!!!!!! You have went too far this time and pissed off the wrong person! See you in court!

Well...it's 5:51 p.m. and within the last two hours I've received 3) calls from whomever this is. I have no clue - there is never a message left and I'm not picking it up!

This is the second time today this number has called. One a 7:53 pm and one at 4:42 pm today. They never leave a message and it is annoying.

Called me with a "local government" survey. Ended with "information that will help correlate responses" including number of people in household, age and, most disturbing, my name. I refused and she ended the call.

Hung up when answered. They know not to talk to me because my wife did not answer. We are on the do not call list as well, which is also worthless.

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These morons called 6-8 times repeatedly but never answered. Good thing too.

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They call every day, sometimes 2 and 3 times a day. Sometimes they call at 9:30pm! This has been going on for weeks. They never say anything when I answer, just silence. I called the number back and got an automated message saying that they are Western Wats, a survey company. I'm going to see what I can do about these morons!!

Time: 18:20 EST (US) Call about a servey.... Told them I wasn't interested ... Also informed them I am on a do not call list... was told that my number was computer generated ... (BS! IMHO) Hung up on them. This is the 2nd call from the same number today.

It's me again. I was so mad after reading how many people they bothered (there are several websites with complaints about this number) that I went to the FCC website and filed a complaint online. Everyone should do this!
Just go to fcc.gov, look at the links on the left, click on Contacting the FCC, then look under To Obtain Information via E-mail or Online Form and click on File a Complaint. Then choose your complaint type, click Next at the bottom and it will lead you through the steps to file an online complaint.

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I just had this number show up on my caller ID. No message left. Now I have a chance to use the new call block feature of my new phone!

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They just called me at 9:30 at night on a Sunday..and just like Isabelle stated they did not say anything. Grrr

If the "Do Not Call" law doesnt stop these people from calling, what is the next step to take this jerk down? I am so ready to get rid of my land line phone. They have no right to call and then not say anything or hang up or not leave a message. No right at all.

They have been on caller ID 4 times in the last two days . . .and just called tonight at 9pm. I finally answered and they asked to speak to the male voter in the house. I have filed a formal complaint with the Do Not Call registry. I encourage everyone who is tired of these calls to do the same!

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I wish these "people" would stop calling. This time I pushed "2" and got live operator. I let him have it with some four letter words and told them NOT TO CALL AGAIN!!! I doubt it did any good, but it wasted some of his time too.

Call just came in...so it seems...so many scam calls are coming in. I don' pick up.

They call every couple of days, at least once. Called it back, went to their website, and called the number. There's an option to be put on the do not call list - let's see if it works. This organization is awful - I don't understand how they even make any money. EVERY TIME I have picked up there was nobody there! Maybe they simply make up information for their clients - wouldn't be surprised.

Why would they never speak? Maybe the callers are paid per call and they just want to keep dialing - it's weird.

Folks, I believe the reason these people get away with calling, in spite of the do not call list, is one of a few things:

1. Any company or affiliate you do any business with is at least partially exempt from the DNC rules. That means your bank, insurance, online and brick/mortar stores if you have provided them your phone number, mortgage co, utilities, credit cards, etc., or any company that they are affiliated with can call you no matter what your status on the DNC list is. You have to separately and individually opt out with these companies, and I believe you need to update your opt out status every so often.
2. Survey companies, such as this, can often get around DNC because they are not selling anything. It's the same way campaign calls are exempt from DNC.
3. New phone numbers have a certain grace period before they have to honor DNC, so a lot of businesses simply get new phone numbers every so often. They do this deliberately to skirt DNC, getting new numbers right before the old ones would become subject to DNC.
4. The DNC fines are small potatoes to companies making a lot of money calling people. Many companies simply choose to violate DNC and pay the penalties when they are caught, because they know that, statistically, they are only going to be caught on rare occasion. To them, it's worth it to keep violating the law because they only get caught a small % of the time and the penalties are very small compared to the revenues they earn from calling anyhow. It's a numbers game and, to them, the benefits far outweigh the penalties. The reward makes the risk worthwhile.
5. Offshore companies are virtually exempt from DNC because the US laws cannot be enforced where the US has no legal jurisdiction.

So, it isn't that DNC doesn't work, it's that there are too many loopholes. We need to pressure our legislators to tighten the loopholes. Make it a lot more difficult and expensive for the companies to get around DNC and we will get fewer annoying calls, at least from domestic companies (it's a lot harder to keep foreign companies from calling). Instead of spending time posting on these websites, we should instead be spending our time filing complaints with the FCC and trying to get our legislators to make the laws tougher. And, most importantly, we need to educate our friends and family. If people stopped buying things/enrolling in services/participating in surveys, there would be no money in making these calls and, by definition, they would stop. No company is going to stay in business when they aren't making money. These companies only make money when people take their calls and participate in what the caller is pitching (whether it's something that requires spending money or merely responding to a survey). It only takes a tiny percentage of calls to "pay off" by buying what they are selling or answering their questions if they are doing a survey to make it worthwhile for these companies. If we make it more difficult for these calls to yield anything, they will eventually call less often and eventually stop calling altogether. This is the most crucial part of the puzzle because even if we tighten the DNC laws and penalties for violation, if there's still money to be made in calling people, the business will simply move offshore where it is a lot more difficult or even impossible to enforce DNC laws. However, if the revenue stream from these calls dries up, so too will the calls.

They left a message yesterday and the caller is a female who is very hard to understand. She runs her words together and has an accent. I answered the phone today to hear the same woman asking for the youngest male member of my household. Being that the youngest male member of my household is 9 years old...I demanded to know who she was. She sounded annoyed by my questions and said it was a "veryinterestinggovernmentsurvey". I told her if it had anything to do with the government that I wanted NOTHING to do with it! She quickly hung up.

When you answer either nobody is there or there is a delay. These calls are computer dialed by the thousands and when you pick up, they're transferred to a "live" person who is usually difficult to understand. If a telemarketer isn't available at that moment, you get hung up on. I used to wonder why anyone would call just to hang up. Anyway, I finally got sick of these calls every day so I boughtt a Telezapper on eBay for 10 bucks. It's well worth it. The calls have definitely slowed down alot!

I called the number back, but blocked my caller ID so they wouldn't know it was me. The recording said the comapny is called Western Wats, and that they do market research. Their website address is WesternWats.com. Let's try to get them on a few spam lists so they can be annoyed like we are!

I called the number back, but blocked my caller ID so they wouldn't know it was me. The recording said the company is called Western Wats, and that they do market research. Their website address is WesternWats.com. Let's try to get them on a few spam lists so they can be annoyed like we are!

Calls but doesn't answer

I've met some of the people who work at this number. Most have police records (and a few are on sexual offender lists). So if they ask for the youngest member of the household, the person is not following the correct survey and off to get their jolly's off.