Got a sales call from Sonic to a "Do Not Call" number

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6 posts Page 1 of 1
by tigertech » Tue Sep 24, 2019 3:46 pm
I use Sonic for my home and landline service. Today I got a sales call from "Christina calling on behalf of Sonic" at my (non-Sonic) work number, trying to get me to switch my business phone and Internet service to Sonic.

It was a cold call (they did not know my name, or that I was a Sonic residential customer -- she asked for "the person who makes decisions about which company provides your phones and Internet" etc.) to a number listed on the Do Not Call registry, which is illegal and surprising.

Does Sonic do this directly, or use third-party companies to do this? (I have a recording of the call and can provide more info if Sonic wants it.)
by dane » Wed Sep 25, 2019 9:32 am
We've been looking into this, and haven't yet figured it out. Sonic of course doesn't engage in cold call telemarketing, nor do we outsource that to anyone. And we have no one by that name here either. We're still trying to work it out.

Oh, one thing that might help: any chance you've got caller ID for that call yesterday? Maybe the calling number would tell us something.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by tigertech » Fri Sep 27, 2019 5:27 pm
Sure thing -- I forwarded the info and a recording to you guys as your ticket #5733998. Thanks!
by dane » Tue Oct 01, 2019 4:05 pm
Okay, we have completed our investigation, and here's what we learned:

We identified the Sonic agent reseller who made the call to the Tiger Technologies number, which they obtained from the Reference USA business database. Their feedback to us was that they take care to confirm that their sales team members are not calling residential consumers during their solicitation attempts, but only businesses. Business numbers are not covered by the national do not call registry rules.

Based upon the recording you provided, we concluded that saying that they were "calling on behalf of Sonic" doesn't make clear enough the outside sales agency relationship. This was not a Sonic employee, but an IT solution brokers who sell an array of telecom services to commercial clients from a variety of carriers. We've asked them to correct this - we believe they should provide their company's name and their role, not just ours in order to avoid the potential for confusion.

Thank you for the report - this was new information to us, we were unaware any of the various sales agents were engaged in any outbound telemarketing of Sonic business services, so I appreciate you bringing that to our attention, particularly so we can assure they're not creating any confusion about not only who's service they are selling, but their own company's identity and their role. But they do appear to be conducting the calls lawfully - do not call rules do not apply to business numbers.
Dane Jasper
Sonic
by tigertech » Wed Oct 02, 2019 2:42 pm
dane wrote:Okay, we have completed our investigation, and here's what we learned:

We identified the Sonic agent reseller who made the call to the Tiger Technologies number, which they obtained from the Reference USA business database. Their feedback to us was that they take care to confirm that their sales team members are not calling residential consumers during their solicitation attempts, but only businesses. Business numbers are not covered by the national do not call registry rules.
Thanks for looking into this! I appreciate it.

You're right that I was mistaken about it being illegal to call a business number on the do not call list; my apologies. For what it's worth, I checked more and found that business are allowed to register on the list to discourage callers (and my company did many years ago); it's just not illegal for telemarketers to ignore that as it is with consumers. Obviously telemarketers should still honor that listing, but you know how that goes.
dane wrote:Based upon the recording you provided, we concluded that saying that they were "calling on behalf of Sonic" doesn't make clear enough the outside sales agency relationship. This was not a Sonic employee, but an IT solution brokers who sell an array of telecom services to commercial clients from a variety of carriers. We've asked them to correct this - we believe they should provide their company's name and their role, not just ours in order to avoid the potential for confusion.
That's good news. I wouldn't have been annoyed if they'd made it clear; I think they were intentionally muddying the waters. It's because of Sonic's good reputation in my head that I was so surprised by it.

Thanks again!
by dane » Wed Oct 02, 2019 3:40 pm
Bingo.

=)
Dane Jasper
Sonic
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