STOP CALLING ME! How to Block Unwanted Harassing Phone Calls

We published an article on the new phone bill policies yesterday which touched on how telecommunication operators will now be sending monthly bills via text messages to facilitate clearer communication with their customers. Today, we are happy to announce more policies for phone users: From July 2018 to December 2019, government departments will take severe action to implement harassing call regulations.

One of the most common issues nowadays has been the increasingly annoying amount of unsolicited calls made by various companies for purposes such as the sale of a property, the introduction of a loan, or training courses. How can we make them stop calling?!

Recently, 13 departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Justice have issued a special action plan for comprehensive unwanted or harassing calls to tackle this nationwide issue.

Those departments are focusing on three types of harassing calls: commercial, malicious and illegal.

Marketing-related harassing calls account for 80% of the country’s total unsolicited phone calls, coming mainly from insurance, finance, real estate, education and training sales industries.

Here is a short video to find out what their process looks like: 

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=p0743ld2mpf&width=500&height=375&auto=0

A reporter once went undercover to visit a real estate company and an insurance company and get a closer look at this harassment process.

Photo credit: 人民日报

"Instead of dialing phone numbers manually, our computer system dials them for us so that one person can make more than a hundred calls per day,” one of the real estate salesmen said.

"We have 600 phone telesales workers right now, and our target is to hire 1000,” another insurance sales manager revealed. “We set a performance evaluation for each telesales worker every day. They have to make those calls last as long as 3 hours.”

"We work like a robot, we have to make calls repeatedly, which is about 300-400 calls per day." Mr. Liu, one of the insurance company salesperson, said.

"We work like robots,” Mr. Liu, one of the insurance company’s salespeople admitted. “We have to make phone calls repeatedly, which is about 300-400 calls per day.”

‘'We offer our clients free insurance, but in order to claim it they have to provide all their personal information on some online app platforms,'' another insurance salesperson explained.

Experts: sales-related phone calls can only be made with the consent of the clients.

According to legal experts, sales-related phone calls can only move forward if the source seeking clients' information is legal. For instance, one can make sales calls to clients if they have an existing business relationship and the clients are willing to provide their personal information. But if the clients declare that they do not wish to be contacted, salespeople can no longer make telemarketing phone calls.

Anyone who receives such unsolicited harassing phone calls can (and should) file a complaint via WeChat, Weibo, and the following complaint center:

1. Inform of an offense to the 12321 Informant Center (123举报中心) by calling 101-12321

2. Or submit a 'complaint' to 12321 Informant Center's WeChat official account by clicking 'I want

3.  to report.’

Enough with those unwanted phone calls!

Source: 人民日报

Supervisor: Crystal Huang

Editor : SC

Proofreader : Ed Bellin

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