Some outfit named political opinions called, asked me to take a survey and then get two free days in the bahamas once I completed the questions. They were (I was sitting at the computer when they called so I just wrote them into notepad as they asked):
1.) In your opinions, what do you feel is most important to restoring Americans economic status?
a)creating jobs
b)reduce govt spending
c)flat tax
d)size of gov
e) none2.) which party would you be most likely to vote for in November>
a)dem
b)rep
c)ind
d)will not vote
e)not sure3.) Overall do you approve or disapprove of barack obama’s job as president?
a) approve
b) disapprove
I just hung up when I finished rather than get involved in some Bahamas vacation scam nonsense.
cathyx
What was your answer to #1?
Comrade Dread
I’m over on the Left Coast and I got the same call.
You have more patience than I did. They called my cell phone at work. I took the phone tree option that told them to piss off and remove me from their mailing list.
Jeff Spender
I keep getting calls from them as well. I just hang up once they mention something about a free trip to the Bahamas.
How they got my phone number I’ll never know.
John Cole
@cathyx: 5- none of the above.
Any of the other four would be used for wingnut attacks.
Violet
I got the same call last week and pushed whatever button it was that was supposed to get me off the list. Haven’t got a call since. They were also offering a Bahamas vacation.
James Gary
I’m reading this blog from a sunny beach in the Bahamas, thanks to my answering that poll last week. Boy, are you guys stupid.
:P
MikeJ
I don’t think that’s a push poll. A push poll has questions like, “Is Obama inelligable to be president because a) he’s a communist or b) he’s Kenyan?”
Those were pretty neutral questions, even if they were going to be used for evil.
gogol's wife
@MikeJ:
That’s right. If you think that’s a push poll, you haven’t been push polled.
Steve
Another common mistake is confusing a message-testing poll for a push poll. This one sounds like it was neither.
The Dangerman
@gogol’s wife:
Agreed.
My last push poll was a series of questions roughly like “Would you be more or less likely to vote for Obama if you found out he secretly wanted Iran to get a nuke and use it to destroy Israel”. I took the poll as it was a live person as opposed to automated and I made him repeat the questions as often as I could.
Ben
FYI, this isn’t a legitimate polling firm… they want to sell you the cruise, the poll is just cover for that
Delia
I’ve gotten that call four or five times. They must really want me cuz I keep hanging up on them. If they get it up to a week in Hawaii maybe I’ll take them up on it.
ruemara
That was a leading poll. My push poll was “are you aware of Obama’s assault on your 2nd amendment rights as a voter”? Once I got through with that guy, I’d like to think he reconsidered his choice of employment.
maya
Yeah, doesn’t look like a push poll to me either. A wingnut push poll that would place dem on top of rep on the #2 question? Hardly.
John Cole
@MikeJ: Right. Fixed the title.
Delia
@Ben:
Now you’ve just crushed all my hopes and fantasies.
22over7
I got one of those this morning, on my cell at work like Comrade Dread. As soon as I heard “Bahamas,” I hung up.
But I get lots of regular polling calls in the evening. I particularly like the calls with real pollsters, so I can make them laugh at their own silly questions and move the bell curve a little left.
Southern Beale
John, this isn’t a traditional push poll. It’s a scam. I’ve been getting these calls for well over a year. It’s always so-and-so from “political opinions of America” offering you a free trip to the Bahamas because of their generous donor. If you’d hung on they’d have asked for your credit card number to pay for the taxes on your “free” trip. Google it, you’ll see.
It’s like “Rachel from cardholder services,” calling to tell you it’s URGENT that you call back NOW to take advantage of some credit consolidation service. These are all scams. I’ve reported them to the FCC because they say they want the complaints so they can shut these people down. They phish for phone numbers (one time it came up “Michael Kors” on caller ID…) but they’re all scams. We’ve been on the “do not call” list forever so it’s illegal.
dedc79
A push poll has questions like “If you were to read tomorrow in the news that Obama was having an affair with a male, socialist, islamic terrorist would it make you less likely to vote for him in the next election”
This is just a poll with answers limited in a way that will allow the poll sponsor to present misleading findings that favor the GOP.
Update: I see you changed the post title, so nevermind….
Southern Beale
@22over7:
OMG totally. I once got a guy who could barely speak English, and he was reading me these questions about how terrible illegal immigration was. I asked him, “Dude, do you realize what you’re asking? Does this not bother you at all?” He needed the job, telemarketing firms are the only ones hiring.
MattR
@Southern Beale: I recently waited out the automated part of one of those credit consolidation calls and got transferred to a human being. After they began their schpiel, I asked what financial institution they were associated with and they hung up on me. (EDIT: I don’t think they have called back since, though it has only been a week or so)
Maus
I appreciate that it goes after the most gullible Americans, at least.
cathyx
I never get these calls. My number is unlisted.
fasteddie9318
Listen, Cole, the next time the Bahamas poll people call, you may feel a slight sting. That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.
Southern Beale
@cathyx:
SO jealous. Husband won’t let me unlist our number. Thinks for some reason people will try to reach us for something. Now of course the genie is out of the bottle. I probably will need to change our home number and that will be a pain and a half.
MikeJ
@Southern Beale: People still have land lines?
Skepticat
Wish they’d call me. Oh. Wait. I live in the Bahamas and we don’t have phone service. Never mind.
cathyx
@Southern Beale: Yeah, they’ll want to reach you to do a poll.
cathyx
@MikeJ: This person does. Not everyone lives in great cell phone reception mecca like you.
RalfW
The forgot option 1)f – regulate ladyparts.
Southern Beale
@MattR:
Yeah I did that too. I was trying to find out the same information. These kids are well-trained (there is a ton of information on the Interwebs about this scam, some whistleblower-types have come forward … ). I was trying to find out where they were located. I think I got someone relatively new, he did tell me they were based out of Orlando, FL. But he wouldn’t give me a company name and he eventually hung up on me too.
But yes, I report each and every one of these calls, and sometimes I record them on my iPhone. And I file complaints.
Technically, there is a $1,000 per violation award that goes to the actual recipient… something like that, I think it’s from the states not the federal govt. I don’t expect to cash in but I want these asswipes shut down.
Do you know, last weekend I got a text message from my CC co saying there was a problem with my account and I immediately assumed it was a scam because I’ve received so many of these calls! They also called me, and I saw the 800# and thought “scam!” Turns out my credit card number had been compromised. So, these scammers are more than just a pain in the ass. They’re interfering with legitimate business, too.
Butler
Ben is correct, this “poll” wasn’t a poll at all, push, research or otherwise. The questions are just a lure to get you to the part about the cruise, where the scam lies.
Radio stations do this sometimes with time share companies. They’ll have a “trivia contest” where the first 10 people to call in with the “right answer” will win a fabulous weekend in Las Vegas or some such nonsense. Of course, it doesn’t matter when you call or what your answer is, you “win” just by dialing, and the prize is sitting in a time share sales meeting.
Jade Jordan
John Cole, A pop quiz without the answers….WTF?
MattF
Yeah, it’s a sales pitch in the guise of a poll. They probably do the sales pitch this way because the Do-Not-Call list allows polling– of course, the poll is bullshit but starting out with a poll adds a layer of misdirection to anyone trying to make a complaint to the FTC about it.
mikefromArlington
Got the same call in Arlington va on my cell
Southern Beale
@Skepticat:
How weird is that. I wonder if they’d call you and offer you a free cruise to the U.S.? :-)
Redshift
@MattR: For me, it took three times going through on the “credit card services” one to a person and demanding to know their business name and address so I could take them to court before they stopped calling. Normally, I just screen the calls, but we’d been getting answering machine messages from them for months, and I was sick of it.
The similar mortgage scam only took one round of threatening legal action.
Southern Beale
@MikeJ:
I know. Husband insists. Also, we have internet via DSL and satellite TV which requires a land line for some reason I still don’t know, I guess to download the guide or some such? But if you don’t have a phone they charge you extra. It’s weird.
But yeah I could live without the landline. I do most of my long distance phone calling on Skype anyway.
Southern Beale
@Redshift:
I bet they haven’t stopped calling. It goes in cycle. Betcha anything you’ll hear from them again. They have no way of removing your number form their call list. It’s all automated.
RalfW
@MattR:
Yup, I’ve been hung up on too as soon as I ask for the firm name. Makes it crystal clear that they’re a scam.
I’ve filed FCC reports, FTC reports, written both my US Senators and Congressman and heard bupkus back, other than a short note from an Amy Klobuchar intern who thoroughly misread my letter and thought I was being harassed by the FTC.
As soon as I made it clear that I wanted the Senators help to hold the FTC accountable for results (ie: my phone not ringing with scam artists!), he sent me a form “thank you for contacting the Senator, she always listens blah blah blah…” letter.
Redshift
@Southern Beale: Well, we’ll see. The timing seems like an awfully big coincidence, but if it starts again, I will bow to your superior wisdom.
JPL
Any one want to wager what percentage of folks actually take the poll? I’ll go first and guess 27%.
WaterGirl
I have gotten this call 3 times in the past month. I always answer and then hang up. Free trip. Yeah, right.
I did get a call from some right-wing group a few weeks ago asking for a donation to some “save our country from the evil barack obama” group. I politely answered their questions and said that I couldn’t support any of those candidates, because “even Barack Obama is better than that sad crop of presidential candidates”. (yeah, so I let them think I was republican.)
I actually got into a good conversation with the person, who admitted that the current crop of R candidates was pretty pathetic. I like to think I helped the cause, even a little bit.
Shana
I’ve had at least a dozen of these over the last couple of months. I now answer the questions, click through and start screaming at the people on the other end to take me off their fing list. Doesn’t do a damn bit of good but makes me feel better.
Bruce S
This isn’t a poll. It’s a scam to sell you a “free” trip.
Soonergrunt
It appears that the poll is camoflage for the scam to get you to pay port fees, customs fees, and so forth which are all wildly inflated with service fees.
MattR
@Redshift: When Googling, I found an LA Times article about these scams that includes a story about one guy who was so frustrated by the dozens of calls despite his attempts to get removed from their list that he threatened to “go down there and beat their heads in”. That got him a call back from someone warning him that they would file a police report against him. He dared them to do it and they declined. The story does not explicitly say it, but I assumed he wanted them to file the police report to force them to identify themselves on the record – which I also assumed was the reason they declined.
Also from that article:
So maybe the proper response is to ask to speak to Chris?
j
I just got that same call about 10 minutes ago. They have been pestering me for about 2 months, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. I just hang up on them 10 seconds into their pitch.
But they still aren’t as persistent as the Santorum polsters. They were ruthless. 4 or 5 times a day, day after day for a month. Even if I had any plans to vote for that creep I wouldn’t do it after all the phone harassment I received.
David Koch
not a real poll
not a poll if they don’t ask demographic questions about age, income, education, race, religion, etc.
I was polled about 3 weeks ago on state issues and approval/disapproval on the governor and state reps, they asked about 40 questions, and 10 of them were easily demo questions.
stibbert
@Southern Beale: attn Southern Beale et al, registration w/ ‘do not call’ will expire after 5 years, then you’ll need to re-up.
David Koch
TWSS
Martin
@David Koch:
Those questions come at the end.
But the scale of this polling effort (I’ve gotten the call as well – twice) suggests that they’re simply going to take subsets of the responses to present the results they want. They’ll call 20,000 people and then report a sample size of 2,000, with the 2,00 answers they want. The internals will look all nice and neat as well.
BTW, the solution, if you have unlimited long distance or are local to the call is to hang up and redial last number, and then just put your phone down and walk away. Caller captures the line, so they can’t dial back out on that line again until you hang up.
trollhattan
Has anybody alerted the Bahamas they’re about to be inundated by mobs of rubes flying Gullible Air?
JPL
Clark Howard said that you should try to get a number or a web site so you can report the abusers. I don’t answer numbers that I don’t recognize and lately have been receiving several call a day from 1, it doesn’t list a an 800 number just the number 1.
trollhattan
@JPL:
At long last, a phone number I can remember. “1”
Warmongerer
Push polls are persuasion calls disguised as polls. They don’t call a random sample – they try to reach as many voters in their target universe as possible. The intent is distribute the message to as many people as possible. The poll will typically only be a couple questions at most.
Message testing polls are legitimate polls. They go for a random sample and ask demographic questions at the end for weighting. The intent is to find out how effective a message (negative or positive) is with various groups.
Both can feature negative questions about a candidate so people routinely confuse them.
I’ve run into a lots of situations where panicked supporters called in to the campaign about “push polls” being conducted only to find out it was our own pollster asking the questions.
Southern Beale
@stibbert:
Already done that!
Origuy
I got a call about a local school bond issue. I wasn’t busy, so I stayed on the line, mostly to keep them from calling back. It sounded like they were message-testing, as the questions were of the sort: “If you heard X, would you be more or less likely to vote for the bond?” It went on for 12 minutes, which I thought was unreasonable. I think the woman on the line was a volunteer supporting the bond issue, so I didn’t get too upset. I usually vote for those things, even though I don’t have kids and it raises my property tax.
Schools are worth paying for.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@James Gary:
Thread winner! Where do you want your internet delivered? What? In the Bahamas? Coming right up, delivered personally. As soon as I answer that poll.
j
@stibbert: The “Do Not Call” list specifically exempts political calls and political polling.
Thanks to the Citizen United ruling EVERYTHING is “political”.
So, in sum, Fat Tony and the other 4 fascists said the proles can be bothered any time the 1% thinks it will chase us away from the voting booth.
Tonal Crow
@stibbert:
According to the FTC, do-not-call registration never expires.
Tonal Crow
Did you know that http://www.donotcall.gov ‘s digital certificate is issued to “LOCKHEED MARTIN ASPEN SYSTEMS CORPORATION”?
Curious.
S V
i got called by a very similar push poll on friday over here in Cali. Difference was they were saying i was going to get an Alaska Cruise. I hung up on question 2 (or was it 3). Question 1 was something about if i cared about reckless spending and deficits, question 2 was about job killing obamacare, and ….
felt like i needed to take a shower at the end of that…. not even sure how they got my number. and it was my cell at that.
Matt McIrvin
I don’t think it matters if you’ve got a landline; those jerks call me on my cell number.
This isn’t a push poll, but neither is it a poll at all; it’s just some kind of scam.
bemused
A few years ago, I got a push poll type of call (land line) from a live person. About 4 to 5 questions, one was about abortion, can’t remember the rest at the moment. No “none of the above” answer option and I didn’t like any of the other answers to the questions which were problematic, too leading.
I did question the caller what group he was calling for and figured out it was probably coming from a rightwing group in MN close to the MNGOP or the MNGOP itself. These days, the MNGOP is very preoccupied trying to dig themselves out of bankruptcy while writing bills to drive the state into the toilet. Then there’s that Brodkorb suit against the Republicans in the Senate that is costing $330 an hour in attorney fees. They don’t have much time or money to do push polls.
Bride of Chucky
They called me in late Feb. I live in N Texas. After I answered the questions I waited for them to tell me about my fabulous vacation and when I got someone on the line I asked who had commissioned the poll and then told them I wasn’t interested in the “vacation”.
This is the group -http://www.politicalopinionsofamerica.org/index.aspx
Brian R.
@Southern Beale:
We have DirecTV and no land line. They use it for some guide functions and pay-per-view, but if you can live without the latter, you don’t need it at all. We’ve been doing fine for a decade now like that.
Brian R.
@JPL:
Seeing how these idiots piss on you but tell you it’s raining, that number seems appropriate.
Halleck
http://www.scam.com/blog.php?b=24625
Michele C.
I don’t have a “real” number and haven’t for 10 years, but I still occasionally get these calls, even though there is no such thing as “listed” for cell phones that I can figure out. What kills me is I’ll get calls for Wal-Mart prizes when there is no Wal-Mart near me (New York City) or for winning some McDonald’s certificate when I don’t eat McDonalds.
I wonder if they’d get more suckers buying into the Bahamas thing if they loaded it with push poll questions? But that’s my bias against stupid people raising it’s ugly head again.
equs_personus
I have been polled 3 times by these people with thes same questions each time. I didn’t stick around for the vacation either. After a fourth call, I will deserve one!
Lojasmo
@RalfW:
Amy k is worthless. Our junior senator is better.
opie jeanne
@stibbert: Wrong, the Do Not Call list never expires.
opie jeanne
@Southern Beale: He’s wrong. It doesn’t expire.
Ryan Flynn
Oh my God! I’m so over this “free vacation in the bahamas!” scam. I got a call like that some 3 weeks ago and this guy named Clint told me I got picked to participate in a survey and get something in return, this bahamas craze. And answered the survey and I was like starry-eyed for over a week! Then another week came and there was no call about bahamas, nor did Clint check on me. And I remembered I gave Clint my bank details because it was where he’d deposit the pocket money for the trip. Can you believe I actually fell for it?
Well, it was too late when I called my bank because I found out I didn’t have much money left in there. At least, Clint was kind enough to leave me $137.
Ryan Flynn
And guess what? I looked up the phone number online and found it reported at consumer complaint websites such as http://www.callercenter.com for fraud.
Thatgaljill
I got a call like that last week… my questions were about the “debt crisis” and how I rated the performance of Democrats, Republicans and the President. I too hung up before finding out about my free cruise (rolls eyes)