Earlier this week our house smoke alarm went off in the night, we awoke to smell something burning, so we called 911 to get it double-checked by the fire department. In the end, it wasn’t a live fire and everything was ok, just issues with our HVAC
But here’s the weird part…
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Around 9am someone knocks on our door. A guy says he’s from a fire company and my spouse thought it was an alarm company rep. I say “but we don’t have an alarm company account.”
We realize it’s an ambulance chaser from a disaster cleanup company…
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4hrs after the local fire department left our house, a pushy salesman from Servpro was at our door dropping pamphlets and trying to get hired.
Do these fuckers listen to police scanners? Then send out reps?
What a disgusting business model, trying to seem deeply caring while aggressively chasing customers
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I’m honestly wondering how they took 911 calls and turned them into sales leads. How does Servpro get access to 911 call logs? Are there public feeds of 911 requests?
Moral of the story: Servpro is a disgusting company that uses invasive sales tactics and should be avoided.
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@mathowie Or maybe the county sells the call data in real time?
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@chrisod @mathowie Or the provider of the dispatch call center software sells the addresses. I could totally see that as a thing.
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@mathowie Well, apps like PulsePoint show all emergency services calls for participating departments. I automatically grab it when I hear a siren to see if it's something in my neighborhood.
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@genecowan yep this looks like the source. Never heard of pulse point but I see it lists full addresses of 911 calls. My local fire agency’s own site looks like a pulse point marketing site too. I bet they offer free sites for agencies to funnel new customers.
Capitalism is a hell of a drug.
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@mathowie My local fire department (Fairfax County, VA) has starting withholding precise addresses for residential calls, just lists the street now. I guess that's a win?
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@mathowie @genecowan Full addresses of calls? I doubt we have this in Czechia, and I hope it doesn't exist anywhere else in Europe either (I don't believe that would even be legal, GDPR existing and all.) America is a hell of a place (or a place out of hell).
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@mathowie One possibility is they are monitoring apps like PulsePoint. That gives the addresses of fires and other emergencies. Only slightly less worse than if they're getting it directly from 911. And yes, what a disgusting way to do business.
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@mathowie In 1991, my parents ran a store a couple doors down from a greasy spoon that had a fire in the middle of the night. I was the closest one to the store, and I got there as quickly as I could. By the time I arrived, there were two board-up guys already there, vying for my business.
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@mathowie
Hey, @ai6yr, you monitor the computer-aided dispatch for your area - any chance that's where this information could be coming from?
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@kc2ihx @mathowie These guys listen to the scanner feeds and basically ambulance chase. Definitely be wary of these folks, esp. that particularly company. When I had an issue at my house I called my insurer to get their preferred vendor for the immediate remediation (to avoid these kinds of issues... no guarantee of course, but at least you won't be fighting your insurer over getting payment).
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@mathowie I don't know about your jurisdiction, but here, FD dispatch and radio comms are done in the clear, and anyone with a tuned handset can listen. Even if that weren't the case, the stations themselves have speakers that announce the dispatch before the truck rolls.
They do this because hindering access to communication in a disaster is never good, as they've found out a couple of times.
It suuuuucks that ambulance chasers like the ones you describe exploit it, tho. They're the worst.
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@mathowie They probably use a public data feed provided by your city. Here in Cincinnati, the city provides tons of different data feeds for public safety calls, building permits, etc. The data feed for Fire/EMS runs is updated daily. If your area provides a similar service, but doesn't anonymize the data properly, Servpro could just farm that feed and get your address.
https://data.cincinnati-oh.gov/browse?sortBy=relevance&page=1&pageSize=20
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@mathowie At least in Seattle it's public with dispatch address https://web.seattle.gov/sfd/realtime911/getRecsForDatePub.asp?action=Today&incDate=&rad1=des I didn't think about someone looking at it though!
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@mathowie @petes_bread_eqn_xls ServPro, pay extra for our stupid tv advertising.
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@mathowie holy shit
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