My rant-o-the-week is about telemarketers. The FCC, FTC, or whoever should force telemarketers to show their company name on Caller ID. All the telemarketers come up on my Caller ID as "UNKNOWN", which is the same as most hospitals, clinics, hospices, and doctors' offices. The telemarketers have been driving me nuts lately because my father is in the hospital and I can not just ignore the "UNKNOWN" calls.

what do you think about a rule like this?

For this reason I have Call Intercept on my line. Any call that would show up as "unknown" or "unavailable" is now forced to leave a recorded name of who they are before my phone rings. When I pick up I hear the recording and can elect to take the call or decline it. However, the telemarketers are getting slick to this, and now I get calls that just show an out of state number and the name of the company, which of course goes through!

Jor- I added myself to the no call registry and I haven't gotten any calls since. It made my week to come home and not have a machine full of junk. Have you looked into that?

My rant is that it's only 9:30 here in LV. It should be the end of the day already!

I don't worry about telemarketers. THEY hang up on me anyway! What I hate are the election calls. They call any time, never apologize, flood my answering machine and it's impossible to stop them from calling! Before every election I answer my phone: Hello, I hope this is not an election-related call as I'm sick of it. And the amount of unsolicited garbage in my mailbox, it's unspeakable!!

Two more soldiers were killed in Iraq today. For what?

Fillibusters.......Pooey!

I really don't have much to complain about,and everything to be thankful for. Even the rain, we need the rain in California. And I've just finished cleaning my gutters, hooray!

The way these messages randonly follow each other sometimes lead to quirky results! I was deep into reading about terrible telemarketers and unwanted junk mail, when Ronkala posted: "Two more soldiers were killed in Iraq today. For what?" The quirky answer that popped immediately to mind was: "So we can receive unwanted junk mail and receive unwanted telemarketeer calls IN PEACE?"

Maybe that's just my own quirky thoughts, but I'm still thankful for another good week protected by fine young men and women.

easytraveler

My rant of the day is using cell phones while driving.

My son's car was parked in the street in front of our house last night and this woman plowed into it while reaching for her cell phone.

I do have a cell phone that goes unanswered many times. I bet she wishes she had let hers ring. She was driving a 5 day old $40000 vehicle.

Dumb Dumb Dumb

I have to work all weekend after already working all this past week. Thats my rant.

Vacation in 3 weeks though.

Many rants but I deleted it and I'll pick a rave instead...getting ready to go on a sailboat tonight with another couple for the weekend. Hope to do alot of good fishing and I hope I don't get sick, I am worried about that.

My rant: Its freakin freezing in cleveland right now!

My rave: Despite the wicked winter weather, Cleveland Rocks!

Jor - I believe either the FCC (or states) forbid telemarketers from blocking their phone number ("Anonymous") However, "Unknown comes across usually for a different reason. The way I understand it, the way caller ID works is that the information about a call is passed on thru the network only if the call goes thru a phone company's central office with something called an "SS7". If the call goes thru several Co's and on the way one doesn't have that SS7 switch, the call information is dropped and you'll get "Unknown" or "Out of Area".

Rain on the weekends!

I seem to have been getting more spam faxes since the tele-marketing ban was put in place. I should have put my fax # on the registry???

One thing worse...door to door solicitors.

My rave is I'm leaving for France in 13 days and I'm so excited I can't stand it!!

My rant is about some of the people on the forum. How can some of these people find Fodors, get into the forum, register, get a password, log on and post a message, yet not be able to key two or three words into google.com?

indy-That is funny. You have my rave!

Bon jour!

My rave.
For various reasons, I have been stuck in at home for a while now. You posters have kept me company, amused and sane (ok, that is up for debate) .. so I would like to rave about how glad I am that everyone is so funny, smart, silly and helpful and Thank you for entertaining me (while giving poor Yankee a big headache because I kept notes and now he has a long list of trips to take me on)

Indy, Oh my god, how could these people register and say what they want to say? For god's sake, only people with correct points of view should post on this site.

BTW, Telemarketers suck. They need to find a new job like everyone else in a career with no future.

indy, I'm surprised at your attitude.
Most posters who are new to computers don't know what google is, what lol is; be alittle gentle you must remember when you first learned, now that's my rant on behalf of newbies.

Hey, Scarlett, you're pretty funny, smart, silly, and helpful yourself. I think you should be one of our collective raves. I always look forward to reading your posts. I hope all is well with you.

Ditto to Meesthare's post; Scarlett, you rock girl! You're the best. Thank YOU for being there and God Bless!