My Experience of Global Village Telecom (GVT)

GVT is a company with which I have never done business. I have never subscribed to any of its services. I have never entered into any kind of contract or agreement with it. Notwithstanding, this company has placed upon me untold stress and has caused unmitigated disruption to my life and work. I truly wish I had never heard its name.

I started to receive sales calls from GVT in 2007. At times these reached peaks of 3 to 5 calls per day. They offered "promotional" Internet and television cable services. GVT's calls were certainly the most frequent of any commercial nuisance calls, but not overly excessive for Brazil, where unfortunately one simply has to accept a cert­ain amount of pointless telephonic disruption to one's concentration throughout the working day.

In July 2011, however, the situation changed dramatically. The calls increased to between 8 and 12 per day. The call log for a typical day [12 December 2011] is shown below.

Time	Phone №	Rings	Call Type
09:17	04833315100	3	nuisance
11:17	04833315100	3	nuisance
12:43	04833315100	3	nuisance
13:43	04833315100	3	nuisance
14:09	04833315100	3	nuisance
14:34	04833315100	3	nuisance
15:20	04833315100	3	nuisance
15:49	01135638500	4	sales
16:49	04833315100	3	nuisance

Sometimes calls were as late as 8:45 at night.

The phone calls were aggressive and varied in nature. To me, they constituted a de­termined campaign of psychological torture, which I can only assume had some kind of commercial motive. Notwithstanding, I cannot imagine how even the most belligerent marketing planner could ever think that this sort of behaviour could gen­erate a positive result. The calls continued at this level for almost 22 months.

Year
2011	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2012	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2013	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec

At the beginning, in July 2011, the calls were all the same. Simple and boring. They asked to speak to João. I said I did not know anybody here with that name. Next call: same question, same answer. And so it went on. Then, in September 2011, the name was changed. The telephone caller started to ask for Leonado Borges. I said that I did not know anybody of that name. Next call: same question: same answer. And so it continued call after call, day after day, week after week, month after month.

Then, in October 2011, the name changed again. The telephone caller (always a young woman but I got the impression that there was a whole battery of women making these calls to me) asked for Carlos Eduardo de los Angeles. Who the hell he is I can't imagine. I expect it's an invented name. But obviously it was part of GVT's sick vicious technique to wear me down psychologically to make me give in and sub­scribe to their services.

These calls drove me out of my mind. I could not concentrate on my work (which requires creative thought) and I could not disconnect the telephone to get any peace as I needed to receive important legitimate calls. So I lost my cool. I finally began to shout and swear at the women making these calls. I had to be very care­ful to make sure it was not a legitimate call before I embarked on my furore, which was at times very difficult. The telephone women making the calls would defens­ively reply that they had to make the calls because my number was "on the sys­tem". I remember once exploding at the woman saying "then take it off your ****­ing sys­tem!", to which she replied that she couldn't.

One possible solution to this nuisance would be to have a telephone through which I could make out-going calls but which would not receive calls. But then I would not be able to receive legitimate calls from family, friends and colleagues. This would be exactly the telephone equivalent of the Internet “service” with closed listening ports, which I had to put up with from Oi. I would be telephonically deaf, which, for me, is not a practical option.

Wed	18 Sep 2013 10:35:07 BRT
Wed	18 Sep 2013 13:36:15 BRT
Wed	18 Sep 2013 14:36:18 BRT
Wed	18 Sep 2013 15:37:23 BRT
Wed	18 Sep 2013 16:37:31 BRT
Wed	18 Sep 2013 17:38:37 BRT
Wed	18 Sep 2013 18:11:44 BRT
Wed	18 Sep 2013 19:12:54 BRT
Thu	19 Sep 2013 10:07:33 BRT
Fri	20 Sep 2013 12:18:43 BRT
Fri	20 Sep 2013 14:43:33 BRT
Fri	20 Sep 2013 15:18:48 BRT
Fri	20 Sep 2013 16:19:33 BRT
Fri	20 Sep 2013 17:24:13 BRT
Fri	20 Sep 2013 18:33:35 BRT
Fri	20 Sep 2013 19:34:22 BRT
Fri	20 Sep 2013 20:38:45 BRT
Mon	23 Sep 2013 10:39:35 BRT
Tue	24 Sep 2013 13:41:22 BRT
Thu	26 Sep 2013 08:08:08 BRT
Thu	26 Sep 2013 18:00:00 BRT†

My outbursts obviously had some effect be­cause, in December 2011, they adopted yet an­other tack. They would ring my phone be­tween 1 and 4 times only so that I could not get to the phone in time to answer it. On the oc­casions I did manage to lift the phone there was silence and the caller immediately hung up. With this technique GVT expanded its coverage from just weekdays to include Saturdays. A few days' sample of these silent phone calls is shown on the right. †The final one was recorded GVT sales hype. Then came something worse. In addition to the normal (now silent) phone calls, GVT began to intersperse automatic calls bet­ween them. These were all pre-recorded. They always began with the words: "João, we have a very important message for you". Then one of three names would be said, the first being simply "João", the second "Leonado Borges" and the third "Carlos Eduardo de los Angeles". Then came the words: "if you know this person, press 1. If you don't know this person, press 2". I al­ways pressed "2" because I hadn't a clue who any of them were. Of course, this was all spoken in Portuguese. And so these additional calls con­tinued day after day, week after week, month after month. I couldn't do my work. I was out of my mind with anger and frustration.

Every GVT phone call, throughout this 22 month campaign of psychological torture, lost for me my concentration and train of thought on my work. It lost for me at least 15 minutes working time every call, exacerbated by the exasperation caused by my helplessness to put a stop to it all. At a conservative estimate, that's 2 hours of inef­fective prime working time per day. At $30 per hour, that comes to $29,040 in lost working time. That's what GVT's shenanigans has effectively stolen from me. And that does not include any damages for the stress involved. I suppose GVT would think of it conveniently as one of their externalized costs of marketing.

At last, during early 2013, the automatic calls gradually faded away and the silent calls gradually diminished to about 4 per day.

Earlier that same month, I had received a different kind of call. The voice was that of a live human woman who seemed somewhat more intelligent than the call centre girls. From her manner of speaking, she seemed to me to be some kind of lawyer. She assumed I was João. I corrected her. She then asked if I knew João. I said no. She then asked if I knew Leonado Borges or Carlos Eduardo de los Angeles. I ans­wered rather loudly in the affirmative. She asked how I knew them; in what connec­tion. I replied that I knew them as a result of having their names blasted into my ears 12 times a day for the past 22 months through nuisance telephone calls from GVT. Her tone turned a little apologetic and then she "politely" terminated the call with no explanation. I have no idea who she was.

From that point on, the GVT nuisance calls seemed to tail off. This just left me with a once or twice per week promotional call for their ISP and cable television services, which they must have well known were utterly futile, and therefore simply a con­tinued nuisance to me. There were other silent calls about 4 times a day in April 2013 from 03135078700. However, because they were silent, I couldn't be sure they were from GVT. Silent nuisance calls (again about 12 per day) started again early in 2015 from numbers: 01121450020, 01123776800, 01132155800, 0113792 6860. My phone rings 4 times and then hangs up. If I pick up in less that 4 rings the caller simply hangs up immediately. Again, I can't be sure they were from GVT. A couple of months later they died away.

I had tried from the beginning to find out how to contact GVT by letter in order to send them a recorded delivery notice to the effect that I was receiving nuisance calls from them which were significantly disrupting my work. I searched long and hard, but nowhere on the Internet could I find the address of GVT. Eventually I found it on the website of the American CIA regarding some kind of pending action against GVT. This site contained a link to the site of Business Week, which gave details of GVT, including its official postal address in Curitiba, Paraná and the names of its ex­ecutive officers.

Having finally found this information, I decided not to take the matter further be­cause, as a lone individual, I would have little chance of achieving satisfaction again­st a telecommunications giant like GVT. Besides, I couldn't afford the cost and I had suffered an enormous loss already in terms of working time. Nevertheless, looking at this list of executives, I can't help thinking what a pathetic bunch of immature excuses for humanity they must be, as obviously it is they who are re­sponsible for devising and authorizing GVT's reprehensible behaviour towards me. Where did they come from? One thing I can surmise is that if ever GVT were to go bust, they would have no trouble getting jobs with the psychological torture de­partment at Guantanamo Bay.

I am sure that if any lone individual were to perpetrate such a campaign of nuis­ance calls upon any GVT executive, that individual would be rapidly prosecuted and jailed. But if you are a giant corporation perpetrating it upon a lone individual, that's OK. What is not OK, apparently, is for the victim to say anything about it.

In view of all the trouble GVT has caused me without ever entering into any rela­tionship with it, I shudder to imagine what woes would befall me were I ever to do so. And this is why GVT is, at least for me, well and truly off the list. I am given to understand that GVT was bought by the ISP Vivo. That put Vivo well and truly off the list too!

© August 2007 to January 2015 Robert John Morton