The phone call arrives 10 or 15 times a week, and it’s always a chirpy sales pitch from an anonymous telemarketer peddling an extended auto warranty.
Which means that 10 or 15 times a week, Craig Davis is one unhappy man.
The semi-retired Holly Hills resident is on a no-call list. Pitchmen are supposed to leave him alone. They don’t.
“I just get so frustrated and angry when I get the calls,” he said, sipping coffee at a Denver deli. “They just won’t stop. You complain and complain, and nothing happens.”
Davis is one of thousands of Colorado residents who cheered when the state legislature established no-call lists and a complaint line in 2001.
It seemed a slam-dunk idea: Tired of calls at all hours from telemarketers, who are to peaceful evenings at home what fire ants are to picnics?
Put your phone number on the no-call roster and presto, problem solved.
It didn’t work out that way.
Why? Because of an ongoing war of wits and technology between tele-scammers and law enforcement.
Nate Strauch of the Colorado attorney general’s office told me Davis is being plagued by a scam sweeping Colorado and other states — not for the first time, either.
The technology behind the scam is dubbed “robo-calling.” In this latest version, a bogus auto-warranty company hires a sales-lead generator, whose computers dial millions of numbers at random. When the computer finds a valid one, a recorded message is delivered advising recipients their warranty is expiring and should be renewed. A call-back number is left for the gullible.
“It’s our biggest source of complaints,” Strauch said. “We’re trying to track down where these calls are coming from, and we think this latest scam is based in Utah. But these fronts have layers and layers you have to peel off.”
What confounds Davis is that the pestering calls come to his cellphone. It’s a private number that should be immune to the barrage of offers for vehicle warranties, mortgage services and debt relief.
Robo-calls trump that. Even a car trip in the countryside isn’t immune.
“My girlfriend and I were out driving and her cellphone rang,” Davis said. “They were trying to sell her an extended auto warranty.”
Frustrated, he complained to his state representative, District 9’s Alice Borodkin.
“The only thing I got was an e-mail telling me all the great things she was doing in her district,” he said. Naturally, he’s now on her mailing list.
Davis suspects part of the problem can be traced to companies selling their numbers in bulk to telemarketers. It’s a common practice because it’s easy cash.
“Someone needs to go after (these) companies,” he said. “I think the no-call enforcers should tell them that if they’re discovered to be linked to these callers, they’re in trouble.”
For a while, Davis tried tracking violators. Through reverse searches, he compiled a list of businesses that hit him with cold calls. He abandoned the log in February. “There were just too many of them.”
Strauch feels his pain. He advises consumers to access and file complaints about such calls.
“What we’re asking people to do is get as much information as possible from these outfits so we can put an end to them,” he said.
Technology is a wonderful thing, right up until it’s not.
William Porter’s column runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com.
