Here's who is calling on this number. It is a survey company called Western Wats located in Utah. They use eleven phone numbers: 801-623-4621 through 801-623-4631. They do customer research on contract for many companies, notably for Kaiser medical, Time Warner Cable, and various banks. Also do research for the Democratic National Committee. In mid-2007 some who have received calls from this company are asked about "temporary" residents of their house, or are asked for a Spanish-speaker in the household... which indicates that they are trying to reach undocumented aliens for a survey, although who would pay for a survey like that is anybody's guess.
Western Wats is not required to respect the National Do-Not-Call List, because they are conducting legitimate customer research surveys on behalf of their contractees. If you have an account at a bank which then hires WW, then they have every right to call you and ask how the service from the bank has been. If you have communications service from Time Warner, then WW has every right to call you on TW's behalf and ask how your service has been. If you are an American citizen, then WW has every right to call you on behalf of the Democratic National Committee to ask you what you think about politics.
Now, as to who these callers actually are...
Western Wats has two locations in Provo, Utah (about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City):
290 West Center Street in Provo, UT 84601. At the corner of South 3rd Street West, two blocks east of Pioneer Park and two blocks west of University Avenue. This is the business office.
701 Timpanogos Parkway in Orem, UT 84097. Orem is on the northern outskirts of Provo, and Western Wats is at the corner of Timpanogos Parkway and Research Way, just across the railroad tracks from Orem Cemetery. This building is their call center.
Why don't they answer when you pick up? Because their automated dialing system calls a batch of numbers at once, and the first one to make a live connection is routed to one of their phonejockeys, and the rest of the calls are dropped. Yes, this is highly annoying, but it is the most efficient way (in their eyes) to get the maximum number of completed surveys per hour.
How can you get them to stop calling you? There are three ways. First, when you get a call from 801-623-4621 or -4622, -4623, etc. through -4631, you wait until a real person speaks, then just ask them (in your sweetest voice) to "please remove this number from the call list." If the phonejockey is not a complete a-hole, they will tap a few keys and remove your number.
The second way is to go online to their website. Just add ".com" to the company's name. On the website, there is a link to a page where you can enter your number and ask that they remove you from their call list.
The third way is to contact Western Wats directly. By mail, use the address of the business office in Provo listed above:
Western Wats
290 West Center St.
Provo, UT 84601
By phone, call them at:
(801) 373-7735
I hope that helps to clear up the mystery of who is cluttering up your phone's caller log. Yes it is very annoying that they block their outgoing caller-ID, but that's not the fault of the poor young people working as phonejockeys. Don't take your frustration out on the people who call, because they're already frustrated themselves. If they had any career prospects right now, then they wouldn't be slaving away on the phones for a pittance over minimum-wage. Most are students who couldn't give a darn about what survey they are carrying out, and this type of work makes them develop a pretty thick skin, pretty quickly. They develop what I call "personality callouses" so any foul language you might hurl at them just washes right off (and your rant will likely be recorded anyway, so don't be a jerk!)
On a sidenote to Western Wats: why don't you change your outgoing caller-ID to say "survey" instead of "unavailable"? If I see "unavailable" on an unknown incoming call, there's just Zero Chance that I'm going to pick up. But if I see "survey" then I get the option to decide whether I'm not too busy to answer a few questions. I'm betting that you only get a few "hits" per 1,000 placed calls. If your caller-ID said "survey" then I'd bet that you'll double or triple your number of "hits".
[/i]
Linear Mode
