Sure to make you think twice before responding to the next sales call you receive, this volume explores why telephone boiler rooms and other scams thrive and how fraudulent and deceptive techniques migrate to and from conventional businesses. The book is grounded in the nine years Robert Stevenson spent working covertly as a "participant-observer" in telephone rooms. It examines these operations both as work settings and as deviant scenes.

You'll marvel at Stevenson's insider knowledge of product houses, service shops, and other aspects of a major industry in which both employees and customers are in daily peril - the former of losing their jobs, and the latter of losing their money. In an epilogue, Stevenson discusses ethical issues involved when researchers conduct covert fieldwork in natural settings.

This book will appeal to students of sociology, deviance, or business - indeed, to anyone who's ever picked up a telephone and been asked to buy a product or a service.