Charities using telemarketers! Beware of (03) 8803 7699

I have decided that I will never donate to any charity that uses a telemarketing service to handle their cold calling for donations. I always wonder why charities don't employ the people they are meant to be representing, now I understand that wouldn't work in all cases, but it would in some instances eg. disability charities, homeless charities and the like. I just don't get why they want to employ a company, which no doubt takes a large slice of the pie from the received donations. The world has gone mad!!!

Middle men, the biggest waste of space I can think of, always tacking on a little more to the price for doing very little, if anything, to add value to a product, bring back local markets, trash and treasure markets and farmers markets, why is there always someone in the bloody middle.

I know for a fact many of the disabled for example would be happy to have a job and the charity could say "we only use the disabled etc. to call asking for donations" "You help this charity in more ways than one! You help to empower people by making a donation". Set them up with a VoIP box if they have ADSL, give them a list of numbers and get them working and feeling good about themselves.

Of course I am only an idiot, I only see common sense, I don't have a piece of paper on my wall, I am just disabled ;o)

I have been getting calls from this number (03) 8803 7699 soon as I pick up it hangs up on me, I have had at least five calls from this number all hanging up as soon as I answer, it's not wanted and downright rude. At least if someone was on the other end you could say right there and then "please take me off your lists or database" but nope you don't get the chance, I can only call it harassment and it should be illegal. Upon further investigation I happened across this gem of site that had an entry about the phone number (03) 8803 7699

http://www.reverseaustralia.com/lookup/0388037699/

it seems if you keep refreshing the page the comments from different people seem to cycle through, one of the posts is from "Mike" his comment is as follows

<blockquote>I'm from Smart Health. We make calls on behalf of Australian charities to raise much needed dollars for them. The reason that calls don't answer if someone calls us back is that we use a predictive dialler to make outbound calls and don't allow inbound calls on that number. For each charity, we have a gift line number which is used to answer donor queries. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Best regards

Mike

A poster named "Guy" did some research and found their details

The company who tried to contact you is Austview Holdings, trading as Smart Health Australia.
The ADMA believes that the company is a charity. Calls made by charities do not fall within the Do Not Call Register Act(2006), however charitable calls are still subject to to the Telecommunications Industry Standard and limits the hours that they can call, requires them to enable calling line identification and requires them to provide certain information to consumers.

Their web address is www.sha.net.au and Head Office phone number is 03 8554 6100. Ring them up and let them know how you feel!

It really is a shame that charities resort to using businesses like this to do the donation collecting, I for one will not donate to charities that use these types of companies! Employ the people who most need it charities, employ the people who you are meant to be helping!

The funny thing is they are, harassing, one of the people they are meant to be helping ;o)