EngageTel Inc. www.engagetel.com "Bulletproof" telephone service operator for unscrupulous telemarketers Cheyenne, Wyoming
EngageTel provides telephone service exclusively to telemarketers, and offers this upstanding demographic anonymity and safe harborage from abuse complaints. In other words, EngageTel is a telephone variant on the theme of "bulletproof hosting."
On November 14 2011, I received the latest in a string of TCPA-noncompliant illegal telemarketing calls to my cellular phone about mortgage refinancing. Noncompliant elements of these calls includes (1) telemarketing to a cellular phone, (2) failure to identify the caller, and (3) use of automated calling. The number originating the call was 616-971-0256, operated by Earthlink Business but with service sold through wholesaler EngageTel. Such details are inscrutable to the ordinary consumer, and require a bit of focused effort to uncover. Anyway, one would hope that EngageTel would be responsive to complaints about its customers, reviewing feedback on client behavior, disconnecting service that is used outside of TCPA compliance, and helping with positive ID of callers who don't fulfill their own legal obligation to identify. But EngageTel expressed no interest in being helpful to me when I lodged a complaint. In fact, they suggested the following:
"It is possible that you have 'opted in' with your cell phone as your contact number and are unaware that you have done so."
Stop for a moment and ponder the simple ridiculousness of this telemarketing-industry shibboleth: in their delusion of grandeur, people are actually so interested in being dialed on their own dime by telemarketers that they are rushing to SIGN UP! (And yet, for some odd reason, the operators need to obscure their identity and take every effort to not hear from pesky people who didn't want the call.) Seriously. Try to wrap your brain around that monument to pure idiocy.
Speaking of obfuscating identity, EngageTel is operated out of a small residence in Cheyenne (the address obtained from their business records with the Secretary of State of Wyoming) that is already infamous for identity laundering, including harborage of jailed Ukrainian extortionists, gambling rings, fraudulent online pharmacies, and similar highbrow elements society. Reuters ran an expose last year, see: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-usa-shell-companies-idUSTRE75R20Z20110628
So chalk up another ne'er-do-well under the Gerald Pitts empire of obscurity: EngageTel Inc, telemarketers' best friend.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
Carl Willis
Albuquerque,New Mexico,
USA
David's trying to put lipstick on a pig.
#3Author of original report
Wed, November 16, 2011
David's correct that my last email to Engagetel contained two instances of profanity, namely, a four-letter response to the ridiculous excerpt printed above about "opting in," and a reference to the telemarketer calling me from his line whom I called a "[g.d.] nematode." The comparison is actually rather unfair to this phylum of intestinal roundworms, which are parasites by design rather than choice. And make no mistake: David's operation is parasitism by choice. However he elects to euphemise what EngageTel does, that fact that you're reading this complaint probably means you've been called on your own dime by their uncompliant customers, have found accountability lacking, and are on the warpath for scalps. David knows exactly who I am. He knows my full name. He knows where I work and where I live. On the other hand, I'll repeat my point that Engagetel has deliberately made its home in the shadows, hiding its operatives behind an infamous identity-laundering house in Wyoming, hiding its Internet domain registration records behind a third-party registrar, and doing the best it consciously can to flee a public presence and accountability. It's increasingly obvious to me that the dirty little secret of telemarketing in the cell phone age is its reliance on unscrupulous behavior in order to carve out a profit margin, and my interaction with Engagetel is Exhibit A in that case.
As regards my demands, they were (and remain) simple: Either (A) verifiably terminate your client using your line at 616-971-0256, using the evidence of malfeasance I have offered but that you refuse to consider; or (B) identify your client at 616-971-0256, in lieu of him identifying himself as required by law, so that I can go ahead and process this nematode with my own bare hands. Very basic accountability here, David.
David
United States of AmericaRebuttal to crank submission
#3UPDATE Employee
Tue, November 15, 2011
EngageTel provides compliance services to Call Centers, which are businesses that call other businesses and consumers for the purposes of collecting debt, political consulting, charitable solicitations and yes, marketing products and services. We provide traceable telephone numbers to our clients to use in their calling, making them accessible by and accountable to the FCC and other federal and state agencies that may be investigating reports of improper calling. As with many other businesses, we are contractually obligated to protect the privacy of our clients unless we receive a valid subpoena, and would open ourselves up to liablity and potential litigation for violating our contracts should we give out our clients' information without a subpoena. "Carl" came to us over the Internet and demanded to know the contact information of the company that called him. We explained that we would need a subpoena to provide the information he was seeking. We advised him to obtain a subpoena, or to file a complaint with a consumer protection agency if he felt he had been wronged, and also offered to place him on a Do Not Call list that would prohibit any of our clients from calling him in the future, however he refused this service. We do not know "Carl", and are not interested in placing our company at risk of liability to cooperate with him. After going back and forth with him using email, his messages became more demandiing and less civil, the last of which was very profane. We will not be communicating with him again. While telemarketing is certainly not popular, it is nevertheless legal if done properly. Our clients use our services because they want to be legal, and they do not want to call anyone that does not want to be called. EngageTel processes thousands of Do Not Call requests every day, enabling the people that were called to not be called again by our clients (EngageTel has a very small client base relative to the number of Call Centers in the US, so filing a DNC request with us does not guarantee that they will never be called by a marketing company in the future). We advise anyone reading the complaint against EngageTel to understand that the complaint was made by a disgruntled individual for all intents and purposes anonymous to EngageTel, "paying us back" because we were not able to cooperate with him based on common business practices and nondisclosure rules. "Carl" is not interested in not being called, he is out to do damage. We will not spend the time to respond to further posts by this individual on this site, or other responses to this rebuttal.