No doubt, everyone with a telephone has experienced the scource of the telemarketer. Well, pehaps those on cellphones may not have but most everyone else has. Email spam almost has the telemarketer beat for sheer disruption factors.
Traditionally, telemarketers would have a human being on the other end of the telephone. This makes it possible for the annoyed recipient of the telephone call to interrupt the sales pitch and demand to be placed on the caller’s "Do Not Call" list. Since I learned of this trick, I have been continually making this request and, lo, the volume of telemarketing calls I receive has plummetted. It should be noted that most of them will simply ignore any request that does not use the specific term "do not call&qhot;.
Of course, there are a few who simply will not accept that you have no interest in their product and that calling you repeatedly will not change your mind. Some of them even ignore the request to be placed on the do not call list. At one point, I had to threaten AT&T with a harrassment lawsuit before they stopped calling, sometimes multiple times in a single week, to sell me long distance service. And a local newspaper called me like clockwork every Friday for six months before I got frustrated and made a similar threat. Interestingly, in both cases, I was INSTANTLY removed from their lists and I have never received a call from them since. This seems to indicate that there is no excuse for the "do not call" requests to take up to six weeks to be processed.
All of this is, of course, relatively easy to deal with. After all, you have a human with whom you can argue. The current plaque seems to be autodialers with voice records on them. You pick of the telephone and get this recording. You cannot cut off the recording. You cannot demand to be placed on its do not call list. You can only hang up on it. And hope that you do not get a repeat call. While I have not been receiving a large volume of these calls, they are on the rise. Soon, I’ll have a much more disruptive set of spam from these telephone clowns than in my email where I can take remarkably effective steps to prevent even having to see it in many cases.
To all of you out there who think voice recording on autodialers are a good way to solicit business, think again! All it does is piss people off. If you feel you must telephone me, do so in person. Even if you use an autodialer, at least have the courtessy to have a human being on the other end of the line.
There’s one more thing that is truly annoying, however. If you are going to telemarket me, at least have the courtessy to speak the predominant language of the area you are calling. In my case, that is English. I don’t mean merely being able to recognize a few words like "yes". I mean have the courtessy to have someone fluent in English calling me. And, make certain that person does not have an accent that is so thick as to be incomprehensible. That means do not have someone with a heavy Portugese accent calling people in Alberta. And it goes the other way, too. Don’t have someone with a heavy English (pick your variety) accent calling people in China! After all, if I can’t understand your sales pitch, what’s the point of calling me anyway?
Even better, don’t bother telemarketing me at all. I never buy anything that is telemarketed. Well, I might, but not because of the telephone call. I will never say yes on the telemarketing call. After all, how do I know you are who you say you are?