That depends on your carrier.  SOME cell phone companies, their managers (or
whatever they call themselves) value their privacy as much as 'we the
people' do, and despise telemarketing just as much, and therefore will not
publicize numbers that they 'own'.  Verizon is one such company.  Either
that or they got bookoo complaints when the news broke that some companies
were going to publish their cell phone #'s...

Magic Mood Jeep© wrote:

Sprint.  It really sucks and doesn't sprint.  Sprint was charging us
money to be hooked to AT&T, and AT&T was charging us money to be hooked
up to them and not only were we unable to use our long distance, but
each company blamed the other for the problem and no one wanted to fix
it.  So we shut off the long distance, and use our Alltel account for
all long distance.

SPRINT SUCKS

Pam S.

"Magic Mood Jeep" <nobody@nowhere.net> wrote:

Thanks! Off to sign up right away.

Joyce

Thank you MMJ for this link.  David and I have been having a problem with
telemarketers calling on our cell phones.  Most of the calls are recordings
but either way we don't want to pay for those calls.  Thanks a lot.  I bet
you've help a lot of people today!

Charleen
Mr. Pumpkin, Aggie Marble, Victor Velcro

Yes, I agree. I'm a little closer to that edge than I'd like to be,
myself!

And even if she were pulling a con, it doesn't sound like she ripped
you off in any way. So nobody was harmed, and it sounds like she might
have been helped, at least a little.

Joyce

That story just blows me away. Don't think for a minute that Circuit City won't
keep your phone number 'til the atom bomb drops. I bought an ink cartridge in
there the other day, and they still had my phone number/info. from four years
ago when I bought my dig. camera.
Disappearing ink, lol!
Sherry

Cheryl Perkins <cperkins@mun.ca> had some very interesting things to
say about Re: How to put a Telemarketer off his game.:

I do contribute to charity, but not by handing out what little cash I
have to panhandlers [a lot of the ones I see really *could* work, they
just choose to panhandle]. I do my giving through organizations I can
be reasonably sure are putting the money to good use.

sriddles@aol.comkitty (Sherry ) had some very interesting things to
say about Re: How to put a Telemarketer off his game.:

When the guy asks for some change for bus fare and you offer him a
prepaid fare and get turned down with "that's not what I need", it's
kinda obvious. :-)

I've been cheated by close "friends" and family members too often to be
taken in by sob stories without corroborating evidence. Some people are
truly in the position they are in through no fault of their own - and to
those people I will do what I can to help them. Then there are others who
simply don't want to do the hard work and/or take responsibility for their
own action. I believe giving to the latter type actually makes their
problems worse as it just reinforces their view that its not their fault and
that they don't need to do anything to fix the problem themselves.

And so instead of giving change to the spotty faced kid "so I can ring my
Mum to get her to come get me" I offer to ring his Mum on my cell phone. He
wasn't interested, so he didn't get any money out of me (any spotty faced
kid who appraches me with "Excuse me madam, would you mind if I bothered you
for a small favour?" has to be up to *something*). But I will buy groceries
for people who I know need them and help out when I can. In that regard,
charity begins at home.

However, I also know that our government benefits, whilst small, *can* be
lived on if you have to without starvation (unlike US unemployment benefits,
ours don't run out after a certain period of time) and that various welfare
organisations will give out food vouchers, help people find emergency
accomodation etc etc etc. Whilst I wouldn't go as far to say that life on
the dole would necessarily be pleasant or easy, I know plenty of people who
get by. But then again, those are the sort of people who want to help
themselves, take work when they can get it and aren't stupid with their
money. I no longer have much time for people who prefer to whinge and whine
than doing the work to help themselves, unfortunately. ( I say
unfortuantley, because I wish I hadn't become that cynical, but I paid very
good money[1] for that cynicism, despite all the reassurances at the time
that it would be paid back promptly).

Yowie
[1] Reckon it would be over $10,000 I am owed by various 'friends' and
'family' that I have written off. Still, at least I am lucky enough to be
able to afford to be owed that much :-)]

My DH saw in the Wal-Mart parking lot about a year ago a woman
approaching other people asking for $ because 'her husband had beaten
her, and she needed $10 more to have enough to rent a hotel room for
her and her children.

About a month later, Carolina, this nice little girl next door came
over and told us about a woman she had given $10 to who desperately
needed it to rent a hotel room for her and her children because her
husband had beaten her.  My husband asked Carolina what kind of
vehicle the woman was driving and what she looked like. (exactly like
the gal in the parking lot)  So the both of us jump on the motorcycle
and tear a.s down the street and through the hood looking for her, but
to no avail.

Then I'd say about 2 months after that, I was folding laundry one
night, just past midnight, and someone rings the doorbell.  I thought
'who would come calling at this hour without having the courtesy of
telephoning first?

So I opened the door, and there's this gal begging for $.  She said
her husband had beaten her up, and she needed $10 more so she could
rent a hotel room.  So, I stepped out on to the porch, closed the
door, and asked her if maybe I should beat her a.s also?  It really
caught her off guard.  I told her she owed the little girl next door
$10, and by God had better come over the next day and give it to her.

Of course, no one ever saw her again.  Well, not on our street.

-bonbon

 I can remember one cold Sunday night about 10 years ago. I was on
patrol in a shopping center and out of the corner of my eye I saw a
woman and a boy searching through a trash dumpster for food. The boy
wasn't any older than 8yoa. As I approached them the woman grabbed the
boy and they took off running. To make a long story short I caught up
with her and talked with her a while. At first she didn't trust me. I
guess other cops had made her move on. I could see that she and the boy
were very dirty. The boy stated thay were hungry and hadn't eaten in 2
days.
There was a Burger Street in the same parking lot so I took them over
there. As I escorted them into the place I could see the manager was not
happy with me. I asked him if he could spare some food for these two and
he rudely replied that they needed to get out of his store. So I bought
the woman and her son dinner. It was a slow Sunday night so I stayed
with them. After they finished, they were very grateful by the way, I
took them to the local long term homeless shelter so they could get out
of the cold. This place lets homeless people that are down on their luck
stay for months at a time as long as they are really trying to better
themselves and get back on their feet. The woman just could not get over
the fact that I had stopped to help her and just not tell her to move
on.
 I had almost forgotten about them when two months later I got to work
and there were flowers and chocolate chip cookies at the station. There
was also a very nice letter from the woman. It was a thank you letter
and she stated that her husband was an alcoholic and had abused her and
her son. One night he had finally just locked them both out of their
home. She used that night as a chance to get away from him. It was 2
nights after they were locked out that I had found them. She used the
time at the shelter to get her life together. She had found a job and
had rented a house for her and her son. The night I had found them they
had nothing but the clothes on their backs.
 Not every homeless person out there is a bum. Some are just down on
their luck and need that one break to get them back on their feet. Was
it fate? You betcha! I guess I'm just reiterating what you wrote about
some people really appreciating a helping hand.

 Bob

Wow! But he does have long-term memory? Can he remember that he was once
a bank manager, and so on? When he meets new people, does he remember
them if he sees them again?

There's a type of amnesia where a person is unable to *form* new memories.
All their old memories created before the brain damage are just fine. But
they have no idea that any time has passed since the accident (or illness,
etc) that caused the amnesia. It could be 20 years later, and to them, they
are still in the time just pre-accident, because they can't remember anything
that's happened since. Is your friend like this? That seems like a very
tragic form of amnesia to me, even more so than the more common kind where
someone loses a part of their past. At least someone with that kind of
amnesia is able to go on from there to create a new life.

Purrs for your friend.

Joyce

There's a lot of people around with medical or mental problems and no
place to go. Sometimes they can get work in a sheltered environment -
there's someone in my neighbourhood who does that - but such sheltered
workplaces seem few and far between.

Even, or maybe especially, in our modern societies it is very easy to fall
through the cracks if you have a longterm mental or physical problem. One
local doctor had a nickname, something like 'social refugees' for people
from rural areas with mental or physical problems who either had no family
support or had exhausted it, and came here, to the largest city in the
area because what we can offer in the way of cheap housing, access to
support groups, doctors, other professionals and food banks is better than
they have back 'home'. And we don't have a lot to offer, although we are
obviously better off than some places.