To GRANNY - Apparently you do not understand that when the "Do Not Call" system was created - two exceptions were allowed - for Charities and for political speech. As annoying as these two can be, I am still so grateful to have reduced the number of commercial calls I used to get all day long. Would I like to see these other two banned as well? - You betcha - but I do not make them wrong when they do call, they are not breaking any laws.
FYI - For all of you reading this, it may help for you to know that when hiring people to work in these commercial call centers (called "boiler rooms"), the managers look for people with lots of tattoos and body piercings - in other words people who already have an attitude of telling society 'screw you if you don't like me - I don't care what you think'... They can hear you say "NO" all day long and it not only doesn't bother them, they probably like it because it just reinforces the image they already have of them selves as society's rejects. I got this directly from a man who hires boiler room employees.
Something else useful to know is that many call centers use ROBO-calling just to ring your phone to see if anyone answers. This explains why you get calls where no one is there. If you picked up, it tells them what time is a good time to call back as someone will likely be home. Your phone number will then be assigned to a human caller to call at that time some other day. This makes much better use of their caller's time by not wasting it on calls to people who are not home. The solution is to monitor your caller ID and not take any calls you do not recognize. If they don't leave a message then they were not your friend anyway.
i really hope that the "boiler rooms" you are talking about are not researchers. i work in market research and i will have to ask the grandmothers and great grandmothers and disabled and the disabled vets and the paraplegics and all where all their body piercings and tattoos are. i haven't seen them yet and i have been there over 12 years. i have 4 tats and each ear pierced once so i guess i am included in your generalization, but there are more than 2 kinds of people exempt from the do not call list and all anyone has to do is read it to find this out.
Now I'm receiving calls from this number, 208-991-1227, after having received several similar calls supposedly from 208-991-1211. I suspect both numbers and all the Caller ID names are fake. The latest call said they were "Survey 2010" and asked 1) Do I considered myself a TEA Party patriot?, and 2) Do I support Sarah Palin. I answered "no" to both questions or I would probably have gotten the donation question. I don't know what these people are trying to accomplish; maybe scam some people into donating?, maybe develope lists to sell? I don't know for sure, but I doubt that Michael Reagan, Sarah Palin, Tea party organizations, utility companies, or organization for retraining soldiers have any connection to these likely scammers or have authorized them to be making calls on their behalf.
At least, whoever it is calling, seems to have gotten a little more sophisticated and slightly more professional sounding with the 991-1227 calls compared to the 991-1211 calls.