Telemarketers may be avoidable

Avoiding telemarketers is easy business, say some area telephone customers. It is just a matter of taking the right precautions and, when telemarketers do get through, asking them not to call back.

Douglas County resident Jim Spencer said when he got fed up with telephone promotions, he wrote to the Telephone Preference Services, seeking to be removed from telephone marketing lists.

"Within two weeks, I stopped getting the calls," he said.

Those interested in being removed from some lists should write to Telephone Preference Services c/o Direct Marketing Association at P.O. Box 9014, Farmington, N.Y. 11735. Customers should send their names, addresses and telephone numbers.

Carson City telemarketing company Teleperformance USA uses telephone marketing to make credit card offers to customers all across the United States. They also have offices in Europe.

Facility manager Susan Mercer said her workers get a fair share of hang-ups and complaints, but they don't harass customers.

"We have some successes," she said. "If somebody asks us to take them off a list, we do."

Mercer said the company, which boasts 17 call centers in the United States, is mandated by federal law to call during specified hours of the day. Numbers are not selected at random, but purchased from financial institutions, she said.

But all the effort in the world didn't help Frank Gigantino from Dayton. He said he tried a caller identification device, he tried to contact the telephone company and he even wrote to the Direct Marketing Association.

Despite his efforts, Gigantino had to eventually change his phone number.

"It was all just a big waste of time," he said. "We should compile the telephone numbers of the telemarketers and hand them out to thousands of people - then maybe they would know what it is like."