About four months ago, we started getting telemarketing calls from a “Terrell,” who didn’t seem to understand that we were on the Do Not Call list, and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

At first he told us he was calling for my son Tim, alleging he had entered a contest online. Terrell was pleased to tell us that our son had won a Cadillac Escalade.

Well, Tim talked to the guy for awhile and figured it was a scam (for one thing, he couldn’t remember entering any such contest), so he told him he wasn’t interested. But still the calls continued.

Terrell seemed quite insistent. No matter how we tried to get it across to him that we wanted him to go away, he would call back.

And when I say “call back,” I mean that if you told him to stop calling and hung up the phone, he would call right back, repeatedly, each time getting madder and madder.

Eventually he would angrily demand that he be allowed to leave a message on the answering machine, after which he would go away for a few weeks, and then the cycle would be repeated.

I talked to the guy, and it sounded totally bogus to me. He would only identify himself as being from “The Awards and Claim Center,” and insisted that Tim had won one of five prizes, ranging from an Escalade to a flatscreen TV. All that was required was for Tim to attend an “awards ceremony.” This was not a telemarketing call, he said, and had nothing to do with timeshares.

This all sounded pretty dodgy. Telemarketers are supposed to identify what company they work for, and “The Awards and Claims Center” doesn’t cut it, among other things.

Eventually he gave up on Tim, and then turned his attention to me and my wife, saying that the prize had transferred to us. (Oh, lucky us!) And so the calls continued, for months. Nothing we could do would get this guy to stop calling.

One day he got my wife on the phone, insisting that she and I come to this “awards ceremony,” and in a weak moment she tentatively agreed, but added that I would have to approve it. Well, when she told me about it, I hit the roof. She had even given him my email address so they could send directions to the “award ceremony.”

She then called the guy’s voice mail and left a message saying we were cancelling.

At that point he got my daughter over the phone and demanded that she give him my wife’s cellphone number. When she resisted, he badgered her, saying “This is very important time-sensitive information, young lady!” She gave in and gave him the number.

So now we had him calling the home phone number and my wife’s cellphone. If she hung up on him, he would call back, again, and again, and again. The guy scared her to death, and she vowed she just wouldn’t answer her cell if it was him on the caller ID.

But then we got a break. They emailed me information on the upcoming meeting, which identified the company involved as “Global Escapes.” This is an outfit that tries to sell a website service for finding timeshare and other vacation opportunities, with a branch in nearby Eden Prairie.

Shortly after that, my wife and I had just driven home, and she was getting out of the car when the cellphone rang. Without thinking, she flipped her phone open, thinking it was our son Joel. Then… “Oh my God, it’s HIM!” she screamed, and flipped the phone closed, hanging up.

Immediately, the cellphone rang again, and I took it from her. “Terrell” began his spiel once again, and I cut in with “STOP CALLING US. STOP CALLING US.” I then hung up.

The cellphone rang again, and so I turned it off. This enabled him to leave a message on voice mail, which smugly ended with “…and have a GREAT day!”

That was the day I filed a complaint with the Minnesota Attorney General’s office.

He called a few more times, but eventually he stopped calling, and of course you can guess why. It turns out the AG’s office called up the CEO of Global Escapes, they had a friendly little chat, and Global Escapes agreed to stop calling me.

Global Escapes wrote a nice little letter, saying that oh, yes, they comply with all Do Not Call lists, they do not do telemarketing directly but contract it out, we have no idea how this happened, etc, etc.

Is the service Global Escapes is selling worthwhile? I am unqualified to have an opinion on that. However, I can tell you from experience that their telemarketing practices suck.