Today I woke up to a call from a semi-local (NJ based) phone call at 9:35 AM. Working with factories and suppliers in China on a routine basis, I am a day sleeper, and enjoy such. So the fact I forgot to put my phone on vibrate and got woken up by a call didn’t make me very happy.
Thinking it was semi-important due to the locality, I answered…. Fax Machine. This is a new cell phone number, nor has ever been a fax number, spam auto-dialer. Damnit. Back to sleep.
9:44 am, Same number calling again. Threw phone and back to sleep. One more time 10:43 am, same fax machine again. At this point I’m up, livid, cleaning around my linux server, and pissing around Reddit.
They really shouldn’t have called the 3rd time when I was piss angry I up before 10AM, just after getting to sleep at the peak of dawn before 6AM.
The number that was / is calling is: 732-826-4839.
Seems I was being called by Lemon Bay Resort, LLC which ‘claims’ and I use the term loosely to operate out of Englewood, FL, where I found them in the local chamber of commerce’s newsletter of businesses. They were a new business as of May 2009 from the Englewood May ‘Pulse’ Newsletter
After poking around, it seems that before Mr. Leon Watts started phone spamming from a block of NJ based landlines cloaking as a Florida Resort (he owns a good chunk of 732-826-2xxx-4xxx) he was, and continues to be a roofer out of NJ. There’s a cached Google Document of his References and background of his NJ based roofing company ‘L.R. WATTS & SONS ROOFING, INC.’ started in 1978.
It seems since roofing, Mr. Watts has started an industrial cleaner company, and sells green household products and still seeks partners. Apparently though he’s had 20+ years in the consumer retail product industry, which just about overlaps his Roofing company. Roofing and Industrial Green Cleaners, and now Auto-Dialing Phone Spamming for a Florida resort. Damn, this guy is busy.
I called Lemon Bay Resort, which oddly is just 1 number away on the pad from LRI Associates based in NJ and put on the old ‘executive’ voice asking if it was a Mr. Leon Watts and if he in-fact owned the fax number 732-826-4839. He responded yes, at which point I dropped the executive voice, and asked why their fax auto-dialer had been calling me all morning. It took around 2 seconds to register for him, then He started laughing. Mistakeeeeeee. After around 5 seconds I realized this piece of shit knew quite well what was going on, and was in NJ (as I called him on an NJ landline) which I explained. I then gave him the ultimatum of:
a) removing my cell phone number from their list as it was a NJ based cell phone placed on the federal do not call list.
b) losing his block of numbers, which I assume spans from 732-826-2000 to at least 732-826-5000, as one of his auto-dialers was in the 4839 range, and his shell FL company has a phone number of 732-826-2001, and his NJ cleaner company has a number one off of 723-826-2002.
He was speechless for 5 seconds, after I told him I knew quite alot about him, and one again asked him to stop spamming me with a fax machine, especially on a cell phone. He hung up.
I called back and explained his company called me 4 times, he wasn’t getting off that easily. At this point his demeanor changed from laughing to ‘I don’t know who you are’ – I explained he didn’t, but his autodialers had quite a good idea. He hung up.
Called back a 3rd time, I got the company switchboard.
The question still remains… This is a brand new cell phone number, that has never been a fax number, so it could not be a previous owner or a mistake. Purely an auto-dailer for what seems to be a sub-par golf resort based in Florida who spams in NJ (pun quite intended)
If anyone from the company would like to fill me in with more than bullshit on to why a 908-72x-xxxx new cell phone number was autodialed 3 times on a tuesday morning from a fax machine, please feel free to contact me.
Moral of the story: Do not piss off someone who gets off on this type of investigative work, and especially someone who’s been there, and knows every trick in the book, if not 10x more.
Next time, spam your fax advertising for your shitty golf resort in Florida, from an Internet Fax service. Don’t use your land-line NJ based phone number which has evidence pointing to the fact you own a block of 3,000.
Oh, and whatever company you used to get the NJ call / fax list sucks. Although, I’m honestly guessing you just have been auto-dialing for months and have just hit the 908-723 block. 23% in. 908-723 is an ATT cell phone block. Good season.
