Who among us has not been touched by those sugar-sweet phone folk who seem to have knack for waking us up/getting us out of the shower/interrupting a quiet dinner/stifling a romantic interlude?

And all for the sake of droning on about a product or service we: (a) already have; (b) don't want; or (c) don't need. Unfortunately, saying no to your average telemarketer is no guarantee the conversation will come to a merciful conclusion.

If you can't reason with them, what can you do when it comes to fighting back? There are a few creative ways of taking revenge on telemarketers. And sometimes, vengeance can prove quite lucrative.

That's what Robert Bulmash of Naperville, Ill., discovered more than a decade ago. Mr. Bulmash is the driving force behind a grassroots anti-telemarketing group called Private Citizen Inc. (www.private-citizen.com) and his methods for striking back at telemarketers have made him a hero to thousands of consumers who also hate "junk calls."

At the same time, he has emerged as the telemarketing industry's biggest headache.

In a nutshell, Mr. Bulmash strikes back at telemarketing firms (or their clients) for infringing upon his time. Typically, he sends an invoice for US$100 or more seeking compensation for the offending call.

But here's the amazing part: Many companies -- ranging from Sears Roebuck to Chem-Lawn Services -- have paid up, no questions asked.

Those companies that refuse to pay are taken to small claims court. Once it gets to that stage, the offending company typically settles out of court or goes down to defeat before a judge. (Mr. Bulmash claims that neither he nor any of the 7,000 members of Private Citizen has yet to taste defeat.)

"The vast majority of cases are settled out of court," says Mr. Bulmash, a former robotics salesman with two years of law school experience.

"Why? Because they will lose. We know the law [Telephone Consumer Protection Law] better than they do."

Would Private Citizen's legal game plan work in Canada? Arnold Schwisberg, a Toronto commercial lawyer, believes it would.

"On basic contract principals [sic], what he is doing is very clever and an excellent argument can be made that what he is doing is legally enforceable in Canada," says Mr. Schwisberg.

"The fundamental principles of contract law -- offer, acceptance, consideration -- are the same in Canada as they are in the U.S."

Mr. Schwisberg says Private Citizen's methods are "ingenious because they're so simple in terms of the legal precepts involved ... I think what he is doing is socially useful and I would like to see it tried in Canada before a small claims judge."

What motivated Mr. Bulmash to make life miserable for telemarketers? It was an attitude problem -- on the telemarketers' part.

"I wasn't upset with the number of calls I was receiving or the intrusion; I got upset with the philosophical nature of the calls," he says.

It all began when Mr. Bulmash started receiving phone calls in the late 1980s from a firm employed by Citibank. The bank's telemarketers always requested to speak to a Mr. Jackson -- though no one at Mr. Bulmash's home goes by the name.

Alas, whenever a Citibank telemarketer was informed that he or she had the wrong information and was told to please stop calling, Mr. Bulmash says the response was: "We don't work for you, we work for Citibank." Mr. Bulmash was told to contact Citibank directly to get off the calling list.

"I thought their attitude was absurd, but, nevertheless, you can't speak rationally to what is nothing more than a commercial process."

The story did not end there. When Mr. Bulmash contacted Citibank and requested the telemarketers be called off, he was told he would have to wait up to six months for his number to be removed from the list. In the meantime, that list was being sold to other telemarketing firms, which increased the number of annoying calls.

"They said this [long wait time] was their 'policy.' Well, the Nazis probably had a policy as well," says Mr. Bulmash.

By the time Plan-O-Soft Water Conditioning Co. placed a junk call to his residence, Mr. Bulmash was seething. He told the caller in no uncertain terms to stop pestering him. The telemarketer's response? "He said if I wanted the calls to stop, I would have to take my name out of the phone book."

Mr. Bulmash had had enough. He told the Plan-O-Soft mouthpiece that if the cost of his privacy was US$12.50 (the annual fee to the phone company for an unlisted number) he would sue Plan-O-Soft for that amount should the firm ever call back.

Of course, Plan-O-Soft phoned back. Mr. Bulmash made good on his promise and filed a small claims lawsuit.

When the case went to trial, Mr. Bulmash was vindicated. "The judge stood up as the defendant was giving his shtick and said, 'Listen, I was called twice last night during the football game by guys just like you!'" says Mr. Bulmash.

He then picked up US$100 from Sears in an out-of-court settlement. "I sent them a letter [after a telemarketer's call] and said if you call me for commercial purposes, you owe me US$100. They called; I sent them a bill; they paid me US$100 uncontested."

In the past five years, Private Citizen members say they have collected more than US$1-million from telemarketing firms or clients. To date, Mr. Bulmash says he has personally collected more than $US13,000.

Private Citizen has notified more than 1,500 telemarketing-related firms across the U.S. that if a Private Citizen member if called, the member will gladly accept the call on a for-hire basis for the standard fee of US$500.

If Mr. Bulmash is feeling more mischievous than litigious, he'll have fun with telemarketers. For example, he'll answer the phone pretending he's a radio station disc jockey and tell the telemarketer calling that he or she has won a major prize. "I'll say, 'Congratulations! You have just called KQED and if you can name the first president of the U.S., you will win $25,000.'"

The giddy telemarketer is told to rush home to receive a "confirmation call" in one hour -- a call that never comes.

Other times, Mr. Bulmash will play a chime (which can be downloaded from the Private Citizen Web site) that indicates his phone number is no longer in service.

Kevin Brosnahan, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based American Tele-Services Association, says his members are aware of Private Citizen, though he dismisses its methods as guerilla tactics.

"From my experience, it doesn't take more than five seconds to answer the phone and say you are not interested. I don't think there are many companies intentionally harassing people with calls."

John Gustavson, president of the Toronto-based Canadian Marketing Association, says he has yet to hear of a Canadian telemarketing firm being invoiced or sued by a disgruntled consumer.

But like his American counterpart, he thinks Mr. Bulmash and his members are being extreme. Mr. Gustavson says that people shouldn't answer their telephones if they don't want to be disturbed by telemarketers.

Failing that, consumers can write to the CMA and ask to be placed on its "do not call" list for three years.

Amazingly, Mr. Bulmash still receives about three telemarketing calls a month at his Chicago area home.

The day FP Money called, he was putting together a small claims lawsuit against a telemarketing company that had previously called trying to sell him burial insurance.

Mr. Bulmash says he will be seeking US$6,000 but expects to settle out of court for US$1,500.

"Some people never learn," he says with a laugh.