Looks like you're a new visitor to phonelosers.org! Or maybe you just haven't been here in awhile. In any case, welcome to the site! There's lots of things to read, watch and listen to here. The Phone Losers of America have been around for a really long time now (just read the history if you don't believe me) Below is a list of things that you'll probably enjoy here.
The Adventures of Dino Allsman and his Cordless Phone: A man named Dino was innocently threatening his wife on his cordless phone one night, completely unaware that some weirdo a block away was listening to his phone calls on a police scanner. This is the story of what happened to Dino throughout the rest of that night.
Remotely Hijacking a Store's Overhead Paging System: In 1995 we discovered a small security hole in the phone system of our local Fred Meyer store. It allowed us to call into the store and broadcast whatever we wanted to on the overhead paging system for hours at a time. And there seemed to be nothing they could do about it.
Drive-thru Shenanigans: We trick dozens of fast food customers into singing songs and telling jokes by taping a sign onto drive-thru speakers, promising them a free meal for their efforts. Here's a collection of some of the better jokes and songs.
Pizza Pranks: Our job at a pizza delivery shop didn't last very long since we call customers nazis, refuse to put meat products on their pizza because we're vegetarians, and come clean about our roach problems. Here's a recording of those calls.
Wal-Mart Pranks: Not only does our Wal-Mart page show you how to have fun in a Wal-Mart at the expense of other customers an employees, but it also features some recordings of call from customers from when we picked up the outside lines in the stores.
Hotel Pranks: Whenever we call up a hotel and connect ourselves to a random room and then claim to be the front desk guy, a peculiar thing happens - the guest who answers the phone almost always believes us. We can say just about anything we want and theyll still think were the front desk workers. Especially when were calling late at night and waking them from their sleep. Dont believe me? Just take a listen to these calls...
Recording Telephone Calls: There are a lot of different reasons you might want to record your phone calls. Whether you want to record your hilarious prank phone calls or you just want to keep a record of your calls, this is the page that will teach you how to do it. We'll cover the laws on recording calls, the equipment you need, and even how to tell if your own phone is tapped. We'll even give you some ideas on recording your calls from pay phones or your cell phone.
Identifying Phone Numbers: Every so often you have a phone number and you want to know who it belongs to. Maybe it keeps showing up on your caller ID and you want to know why. Maybe it's showing up on your spouses phone bill. You run it through a bunch of free internet reverse-search directories and search engines but nothing will pull up any current information on them. Most people just give up, but you don't have to. This article will give you a few more ideas on getting information from an unlisted phone number. It will also give you ideas on keeping your own number a little more anonymous.
PLA Radio: All the stuff from the PLA that you know and love is now in podcast form. Listen to songs, skits, commercials, parodies, prank calls, stories and more.
PLA Forums: Once you're done reading about all these insane pranks, you'll probably want to drop by the forums to pay your respects to the people that have made it all possible.
That should keep you busy for now. But don't quit once you've finished all of that. There is much more on this site to keep you busy if you keep looking. Enjoy your stay!
There’s a new technology that some of you may have heard of by now, called “compact discs,” which you can now purchase to listen to a tiny portion of our prank phone calls. We’re pretty sure these are the next big thing, so get ready to start re-purchasing all that music you’ve been buying as mp3 files these past few years. Anyway, a brand new PLA CD, titled “Can I Help You?” is now available for you to buy. This CD features calls by murd0c, Carlito from Madhouse, RBCP and The Spessas. You’ll get to hear about 73 minutes of our customer service calls from the past 10 years.
Yes, these calls are all available already on our website and from the PLA Media Pack torrent. You won’t be getting anything new or unavailable by buying this CD, aside from a cool CD with original artwork on it. If you want to download the full album for free, click here. If people like the CD and buy enough of them, that will motivate me to put together a few more of them soon. I’m mainly making these for the same reason I made the newer PLA ‘zine archive book – because some people will think this sort of thing is neat to have.
Click on the PayPal button above to buy this CD directly from me for $5.00, or click here to buy it from our supplier with PayPal or click here to buy it from our supplier with a credit card. The supplier charges too much for shipping, but at least I don’t get your address and your CD isn’t all sticky with my DNA.
Thanks, whoever made that Futurama photo. I think it was Trevor, but I’m probably wrong. Speaking of Trevor, though, he uploaded Tabachi’s billions of edited prank calls from our 24-hour prank call marathon to YouTube a few days ago, denying my request to leave out the one where I made a girl cry. Click here to join the 2012 Marathon Facebook page, which I assume will eventually contain information about next year’s 24-hour prank call marathon. (Click here to watch my video of Trevor’s videos.)
One last thing – because I’m incapable of making a post without mentioning Rappy McRapperson these days, I should mention that he visited my house last week and he accidentally left a bunch of his stuff behind so I created a blog called Comics From Space where I will display scans of the pile of drawings I have here, before throwing them in the trash. Starting next week, I will begin selling articles of his clothing on eBay. Also, me and him put together a pretty good music video for a song from his new album, called Punch The Wall. I’ve embedded it below.
Earlier this week, I was having a nice romantic dinner with Rappy McRapperson at Red Robin, and we noticed an advertisement on the table encouraging everyone to tweet with the hashtag of #banzailoveyou to win free meals and other prizes. Rappy, who was clearly a victim of my bad influence over the past few days, immediately suggested that we tweet something horrible about Red Robin, using their hashtag. A few moments later, using all 3 of my Twitter accounts on my smartphone and then Rappy’s, the following twats were posted.
Now, I have nothing against Red Robin and I think their food is awesome. I eat there with my kids and my friends several times a year and have had nothing but great experiences there. So please, don’t think that my tweets are out of retaliation for poor service or rude staff. Red Robin is a great place and I highly recommend them to everyone that reads this. I’m just an asshole, though, and I think the idea of writing horrible things about them is hilarious. So I started a thread on the PLA Forums, encouraging others to join in the fun and tweet crazy things.
You’ll notice that these first few tweets have two i’s in the hashtag. This apparently is incorrect, as you’ll see on the official contest page, but I swear there were two i’s on the card we saw on the table. I had to look at it each time I made a new tweet from the restaurant and there’s just no way I made the exact same mistake all three times. Legitimate customers were tweeting with 2 i’s too, so it’s not just me. No really!
Right around here is when things got completely out of control. Our wacky tweets are now outnumbering the legitimate contest tweets. Prepare yourself for a gigantic list of hilarious tweets, all by people who noticed our tweets and began writing things 500 times more awesome than we could come up with.
As all of these hilarious tweets were coming in yesterday, keeping me and Rappy LOLing most of the day, Carlito began messaging me from a Red Robin in Pennsylvania. He just happened to be eating there and managed to get an awesome picture of him and the Red Robin mascot. Then he sent me the picture of his Banzai burger, which you saw at the beginning of this post.
Having pictures coming in from Carlito as all of these tweets were happening just added to the hilarity for me and Rappy. The tweets are still continuing today and show no sign of slowing down yet. So a ton of thanks goes out to all the people who’ve given us nonstop lulz these past 48 hours.
I’m not going to say you all should continue doing this, but the contest does last for another month, until February 19th, and it sure is making a lot of people laugh. We’re fairly certain that even the Red Robin corporate people are snickering about it in their corporate meetings (you guys are welcome for that!). If you’d like to enter Red Robin’s contest, all you have to do is follow @redrobinburgers and then tweet something (the contest rules don’t specify what should be tweeted) with the hashtag of #banzailoveyou. You can read all about the contest at redrobin.com/banzailoveyou.
Once again, RED ROBIN IS AWESOME! Don’t believe any of the craziness that you’ve read above. Well, except for the part about the staff stealing my wallet and shooting my wife in the foot – that shit is totally true. If our silliness is making you laugh, though, then you should definitely go eat some overpriced food at the Red Robin nearest you.
Thanks to Rappy McRapperson for making this happen and to Carlito from Madhouse Live for the pictures. Most of all, thanks to all the Twitter users that have given me and us other PLA’ers lots of hysterical laughter these past 48 hours!
Below is a live Twitter feed of all current #banzailoveyou posts.
January 17th Update! Just a day after posting this entry on phonelosers.org, Red Robin suddenly began heavily promoting their Banzai Burger contest by emailing people on their mailing list and encouraging them to tweet with #banzailoveyou. They also began constantly tweeting, “Put your tweets where your mouth is. Head to Red Robin, enjoy a Banzai Burger & Tweet the love! #BanzaiLoveYou” to get people to respond with the hashtag. As a result, our crazy tweets have been quickly scrolling away for days now, making it pointless to even do it anymore. Well played, Red Robin. Well played.
Another odd thing – when we started doing this, the description on the Red Robin Twitter account had the name of the guy who ran it. As in, the personal name of the guy in their public relations department, or whoever runs it in corporate Red Robin Land. But as soon as they started fighting back at us, his name disappeared from the description. Now it just says “Official Home of Insanely Delicious Gourmet Burgers.” We’re not sure if taking the name off had anything to do with us, but we’re going to pretend it did because we’re such scary people and he just didn’t want any trouble.
Happy 2012, everyone! It’s time to start your year with a brand new episode of the PLA Radio podcast! This episode tells you all about our adventures of irritating Target shoppers during the 2011 holiday season. Prepare to be surprised at how easy it is to create your own cordless phone extension at your local Target store so that you can answer calls for customers. After that you’ll hear some of our old car ding calls that we were doing way back this past November. Here are the show notes.
13:10 Walkie talkies were Motorola CLS1810T (UHF). Frequencies were 467.750, 467.775, 467.875 and 467.900. Click here to listen to extended Target security shit-talking.
13:45 Voicemail background song is Technical Writer by The Doubleclicks
17:00 Leave a voicemail by dialing 814-422-5309
17:20 Car dings video link. If you leave your own notes, only use this phone number for it: 425-243-7565.
21:50 This car ding call is by Samantha. Say hi to her on Facebook and Twitter.
26:25 This car ding call is by Carltio, from Madhouse Live.
Dear Arby,
i got in touch with you a while ago about becoming a affiliate with the PLA site because im in the first steps of starting my own show/site. im new to phone pranking really and im still trying to find my bearings with everything. but one of the things that has become an issue for me and my cohort for the site is the legality of prank calling. ive read a lot on the site and in your book and i know you have had some troubles from calling people. so im wondering what pointers you can share that generally keeps the law off your ass. i know in california it becomes harassment if the calls exceeds 4 calls in a 2 week span, but really i need helpful advice from someone who has been at it for long enough to know whats what. also, how do you record calls without problems? oh and i remember you referencing a kind of code of ethics that the PLA stands behind, i would like to follow that so a rundown would be very helpful in these first times with getting content for the site.
also, i have a fiend who runs an embroidery company out of her home and i was wondering if you would be interested in making some sew on PLA patches. you have buttons, shirts, hats and books so something else that can have the PLA logo would be awesome! it would also bring some well needed incoming orders for my friend. im thinking about having her make one and send you a picture of it if it would help.
Love,
Chris
Hi Chris! I’m far from being a lawyer or a cop, so keep that in mind when listening to my legal advice. A few months ago, I wrote an article on how to keep prank calls legal, which should answer most of your legal questions about prank calling. Basically, it says that you should never prank locally, you shouldn’t make threats, you shouldn’t impersonate government employees and you shouldn’t prank someone more than a couple of times. I really need to add that article to the sidebar of this site so that people can easily find it.
I’ve also written an article on how to record phone calls, which mostly deals with cellular phones and land lines. I need to update that page to include Skype recording, because Skype is about the only thing I ever use anymore for prank calling. I don’t even know how to begin to explain how I have things set up in the Cacti Radio studio, but it involves broadcasting software, a mixer and 2 sound cards hooked together in a loop that should explode the universe, but doesn’t. When I’m not on the air, though, I use mp3 Skype Recorder, which is a free program that automatically records all of your Skype calls. It sucks and it has issues and I will replace it one of these days when I feel like testing out other options, but for now it does the job. Sort of.
Finally, about your friend who makes embroidered stuff – tell her I would love for her to make a ton of PLA shit! Here’s the thing about PLA merchandise – I make barely any money at all from it. In fact, between all the time I spend packaging things up and driving to the post office and all the free stuff I include with orders and all the PLA stuff that I give away because I’m such a nice guy, I’m sure I lose money in the end. Luckily, phonelosers.org supports itself with the advertisements on this page, so I don’t really lose money at PLA.
Here’s what I’m getting at, though – I would like your friend to make any cool things she can think of that would be related to the PLA. She can use the PLA logo or PLA quotes or cacti or anything she wants. She can send me links to things she makes and I will help her sell them, using phonelosers.org and the PLA Facebook page. And here’s the best part – she can charge whatever she wants and keep all the profits for herself!
Samantha had this great idea a month or two ago – she wanted to knit things with PLA symbols on them, such as gloves or hats or whatever. I loved the idea and told her to go for it, but knowing how lazy Samantha is, I immediately set about creating a competitive market for her knitting by contacting random ETSY shop owners and suggesting to them that they make PLA things and sell them.
The image you see here is the first result of that. This is a cell phone cozy, made by MarikaHandKnits in Toronto. She makes custom party wristbands, fingerless gloves, iphone cases and more. Ideally, the etsy owner would put the item up for sale so that I could link people to it and they could easily buy it, but for whatever reason, this shop owner didn’t do that and didn’t tell me how much this cell phone cozy costs, so all I can do is tell readers to visit her shop and ask to buy the PLA cell phone cozy.
I would like for everyone to do this! If you know someone who makes things and sells it on sites like etsy.com, tell them to make PLA things! I want to see PLA hats, gloves, sweaters and underwear! I can’t guarantee that anyone will buy these things, but I will do my best to link to their PLA merchandise from this site. I’d like to even set up a section on the PLA Store page for things that other people make. Do this, people!
Every once in awhile, I post a Phone Show episode to the PLA feed, just to remind you people who dearly miss PLA Radio why I hate baby Jesus.
But my secret ulterior motive for posting this today is to tell everyone that Rappy McRapperson is having his album release party on Cacti Radio this Saturday! At 7:00pm Pacific / 10:00pm Eastern, Rappy will join RBCP for a 2 hour live interview as we play his new album, Live at the Amway Arena. We’ll be talking about Rappy’s new album, taking your phone calls, and maybe even making some prank calls. You can preorder an autographed physical CD at rappymcrapperson.com or you can just steal the album from the internet when it comes out on Saturday.
Rappy McRapperson is having an album release party this Saturday, December 17th at 7:00pm on Cacti Radio. The new album is called Live at the Amway Arena and you can preorder CDs or digital albums at rappymcrapperson.com.
Holy crap, it’s Christmas! Do you want a Christmas gift? I want to give you a Christmas gift, so here’s the deal…email me your address and I’ll give you a special PLA button that you’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen it either, because I just thought of this dumb idea, but chances are it will be holiday-themed and it might have a cactus on it or a PLA bell or some boobs or something. You know you want one.
This offer is good until the end of December 2011 and just so it doesn’t get out of hand, I’m going to limit this to just the first 50 people who email me. One per person, please. If I reach the limit of 50, I will post here that I’m out of them.
If you want to get yourself a nice Christmas present, I suggest buying a PLA Harley shirt or anything else from the PLA store as soon as possible so you get it by Christmas.
Chris S. from California, webmaster of The Octoshow, suckered some girl named Alyson Bender to draw this awesome rendition of Grouchy Old Man. Thanks, Chris and Alyson! You can view more of Alyson’s artwork on her DevArt page.
Earlier this week, Trevor became the first person on Earth to declare “PLA 4 LYFE!” by having a PLA bell logo tattooed on his butt his arm. Those of you who hang out on PLA’s Tinychat often enough have probably run across Trevor, also known as rasterdragon, from time to time. Trevor often runs PLA Movie Night whenever RBCP is too strung-out to do it himself.
Not since Dear Arby Volume 1 have I made a post with so many letters to…me. In this edition you’re going to see an exciting array of the things that have arrived in my P.O. box, which is my sad an obvious attempt to cause more things to show up in my P.O. box.
The above postcard is a good example of how I would prefer people not send me mail – by tracking down my home address and sending a “I FOUND YOU” card to my home without a signature. Quit it! Use the P.O. Box, please.
A guy named z09 was a regular on the PLA Forums and the inspiration for the Blockbuster episode of PLA Radio. He was also really into stalking me using the methods he learned from phonelosers.org. He loved sending me pizzas and taxis and even talked my local Blockbuster Video out of my account information. He once sent lunchmeat to me and Countykid in the mail, and soon after that he sent me this letter with a $20 bill enclosed.
z09 didn’t include his home address so that I could send him a PLA shirt, so I was able to blow his $20 on cheap hookers without having to give anything back. Soon after this I stalked him back, which seemed to freak him out and caused him to disappear from our community forever. I thought about sending a shirt to his address, but he seemed so unhappy at being exposed that I decided against it since I didn’t want to get him in trouble at home. If you ever see this, z09, tell me where to send a book or a shirt!
Earlier this year I received this strange letter. It was from overseas with no return address. Inside was a single dollar bill so crisp that I suspected it was counterfeit. In place of George Washington’s face was a sticker of a man identified as Bonn Scott. With the dollar was an extra Bonn Scott sticker, which I stuck on another dollar bill of mine before spending them both.
I had to Google who Bonn Scott was online and I ended up finding several other pictures of dollar bills with this same defacement. I also found this website that sells the Bonn Scott stickers. Maybe it was all just a ploy to get me to advertise that site. But from overseas? God, you PLA people are weird.
Finally there’s the extremely nice gift that Darkstranger sent me this week – a book of Sir John Hargrave’s Prank The Monkey, the book from the awesome website zug.com. I’ve been reading it all week and it’s awesome. Thanks, Darkstranger!
I swear I’m not fishing for gifts, but it’d be awesome if you decided to send weird postcards or drawings or other non-valuable things to my P.O. box so that I can post them in a future update. To write to me, just track down my home address write to PLA (or Brad Carter) at P.O. Box 465, Albany, OR, 97321.
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Having pictures coming in from Carlito as all of these tweets were happening just added to the hilarity for me and Rappy. The tweets are still continuing today and show no sign of slowing down yet. So a ton of thanks goes out to all the people who’ve given us nonstop lulz these past 48 hours.
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The image you see here is the first result of that. This is a cell phone cozy, made by 
Every once in awhile, I post a 
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