Allan Hillesheim is 62, retired from AT&T, and lives in Minneapolis. He has a busy second career selling vintage postcards on eBay. His life is full enough without Rachel. Still, Rachel calls, usually twice a week, sometimes twice a day. Sometimes she calls when he’s taking a nap. Heather used to call, but he hasn’t heard from her in a while. Rachel won’t let up.

“Hello, this is Rachel from cardholder services,” she always tells him. She wants to lower his interest rate on his credit card balance, even though he doesn’t have one, and she promises that this is the final offer, although it never is.

“You can’t interrupt her,” Hillesheim told me Wednesday morning. You can hit 9 to talk to an operator, but you’ll never find out who she is. The caller ID is spoofed. On the do-not-call list? Rachel doesn’t care.

Having read my previous foray into the world of illegal telemarketing, Hillesheim wanted Whistleblower’s help to track Rachel down and tell her to stop calling. This has proven more complicated than I thought - there’s a March 2007 FCC complaint against a company called Cardholder Services Inc. of Huntington Beach, Calif., Robert Pitsker, president. Google Street View appears to show a modest two story home on a cul-de-sac at that address (20441 Kenworth Circle), with a white pickup parked in the driveway. It’s just a couple blocks from the beach. Records show that same address has a business license for Rick Whipple’s Painting. Robert + Rick = Rachel?

So Whistleblower’s question of the day is: Who is Rachel? Where does she live? How can we stop her from calling Allan? I’ll let you know more as I find out.

Lest Allan feels singled out, Rachel has called this person, ostraya from Ottawa, Lincoln Madison and doubtless millions of others. This blogger has recorded a call from Michelle, who I’m sure sounds suspiciously like Rachel and Heather.

Hillesheim called me back on Wednesday afternoon. Rachel had called again. He hit 9 to talk to an operator. “I told them what they were doing was illegal. They hung up.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Civil liberties, Complaint sagas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.