I actually looked into getting a 976 number on a second line into my house. That way I could just sit there and gab with the telemarketers, and take $3.99 a minute of their money for their wasting my time. I decided that it was just too much trouble. I did, however, actually get some useful information from a telemarketer once. I talked to the MCI guy for about 45 minutes once when I pulled out and compared every item on my AT&T bill with the services they offered. My AT&T "One Rate Off-Peak" was a better deal across the board, so I stuck with it, and now I feel a lot better about my choice in long distance because I got to do some live comparison shopping. The MCI guy was pretty angry when he realized I wasn't going to buy anything, but he was the one that encouraged me to compare services in the first place. As a bonus, MCI has never called me back. As another bonus, I told AT&T that I had chose them over MCI, and they gave me 10 hours of free long distance. One other thing to remember: If you get a taped telemarketing message, write down all of the contact information you can and turn them over to the feds. This sort of thing is illegal and readily prosecuted. - Kev zscoundrel To: kclug@kclug.org Sent by: cc: owner-kclug@marauder.i Subject: Re: off-topic: phone hangups lliana.net 05/30/2002 04:43 PM > PS - Don't waste your money on Caller ID. It's gotten > practically useless. > It's pretty sad, we complain about not being able to tell who is calling, so they charge us for caller-id. Then they charge the tele-marketers extra for anonymous lines, then they charge us extra to weed out the anonymous calls. . . . I would be willing to pay A LOT extra for the ability to cause an electric shock to those that make unwanted calls at meal time!!!