The Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, has filed suit against 15 companies in the state for violating the Texas do-not-call list.  Each company named in the suit has at least 10 violations reported against it.

As usual, the telemarketers are using lame excuses to try to get around the law:

Among them, four Houston area companies, including Jospeh C. Sparks Area Wide Auto Glass of Katy, Auto Finance 4 Pre-owned Cars of Stafford, Houston Allstate—a house siding company—and Lakefront Properties of Houston.

Nearly one million consumers have signed up for the do-not-call list. Of the companies named in the suit, each have received at least 10 complaints.

But as Houston Allstate President Jim LaGrappe is concerned, that’s news to him.

When asked if his company has been making illegal calls, he says “No, not that we know of, but evidently we have since we got this lawsuit.”

La Grappe says he just now received letter of the lawsuit, while his marketing director says the company has received the do-not-call list but it’s hard to understand.

“The list is a conglomeration of all different cities, not just Houston and the list is really hard to decipher,” Mike Thompson says.

I really fail to see just how hard a concept it is to not freakin’ call people on the damn list!  If their system is automated they can just feed the list in and compare each outgoing call against the list and move on to another number if the number they’re about to call is on the list.  This is a pretty simple operation for a computer, and most of these damn telemarketers are automated in such a way that the computers do all the dialing.

Lest you think Allstate is getting a bum rap here, consider this:

On the list, consumer Melinda Rohrer, who says when Houston Allstate called her she told them not to call back, but on the other end of the phone was laughter.

“I said ‘Well, we have no interest in your service. Please remove us from your call list,’ and he was still laughing when I hung up,” Rohrer says.

Right now I’m waiting for the next refresh of the Texas and national lists to go into effect so my new number will be off limits to these bastards.  In the meantime I’m having to answer every call and tell them to buzz off.  So far I haven’t encountered anyone who gave me any crap about telling them to put me on their do-not-call list.  I think they realize that they’re treading dangerous ground with us these days.  I’m on a hair trigger just waiting for one of them to give me any grief about it, because it’s become more sensitive on those days when I work from home and can’t afford to screen my calls. 

(The weird grammar in the quotes above is presented exactly as given on the News 24 Houston site.  I would suggest that maybe they need to hire an English major.)