No Call List
No Call
The Luddite got a phone call from someone purporting to be at a nonprofit. Then he offered to help me with what he said was the terribly-high interest I was being charged for my credit cards the other night. Believe it or not, I had been expecting something like this.
Ever since Colorado put its no-call list into effect in April of 2002, The Luddite has been amusing himself wondering how scoundrels were going to get around the thing. I do that sometimes, something like the way John D. MacDonald used to think up accounting scams for his books.
In case you were busy at the time, Colorado’s legislators put in a law forbidding telemarketers to call anyone in the state unless they purchased a ‘no-call’ list of people who they couldn’t call under any circumstances. They got around to passing this law late in 2001, even though telemarketers had been interrupting people’s supper long before then. How bad was this problem? Well, the first week of eligibility for the list, 500,000 people wanted to sign up. You didn’t read that wrong. It was 500 thousand. Any misgivings The Luddite has ever had for the loathing that people in this country have for telemarketers was dispelled when I read that stat. If I’m overreacting, I’ve got lots of company. I wonder how much money the state will collect in fines.
Naturally, there were exceptions. Non-profits, newspapers, police associations. The very presence of exceptions made me wonder how long it was going to take for someone to figure out a way around the no-call list. The Luddite got a junk call from one of the exceptions on June 19, 2002. That’s about nine months since the no-call list was passed by the legislature. I’m not doctrinaire; I just think the whole point of the bill is to prevent interruptions. How is an exception not an interruption? I can barely wait to see what they come up with to ‘thwart’ spam.
If you think The Luddite despises telemarketers, you would be right. I’m on the no-call list; even though I didn’t think it would work. I have waged a long and unsuccessful battle against these thugs, which I will recount to anyone unfortunate enough to get within earshot. During this battle, I have pretended to be a befuddled old lady and a man with a hearing problem, all to no avail. I don’t hang up on them because I am convinced that as a species, we have a duty to keep these guys on the line as long as possible without buying anything, thereby giving them less time to annoy our fellow man.
In this long and bitter struggle, the only thing that has worked for me is telling them you have had a stroke. To my amazement, The Luddite heard the unmistakable sound of turning pages, a heartfelt apology and then a dial tone. Apparently they have no entry under ‘life-threatening illness’ in their script, yet they feel they have to say SOMEthing, so they fall back on ‘I’m sorry.’ The only bad thing about this approach is that you still have to answer the phone. Thus, my presence on the no-call list. Even though I was pessimistic about the thing working, hope sprang eternal. It might turn out to be another club in our bag, so to speak.
Now telemarketers use machines. The Luddite is now used to getting machines on the phone, but one calling me is still a novel experience. I guess somewhere in this land there are people so desperate for a call or so confused that they will pick up the phone and listen to a machine; even a sales pitch from a machine. What really freaks The Luddite out is that once on my answering machine there was a call from ANOTHER machine.
Oh I forgot. This wasn’t a sales pitch. It was a call from a nonprofit with an 800 number offering to help me reduce my interest rate if I just called them. Yeah, sure.
The Luddite got a phone call from someone purporting to be at a nonprofit. Then he offered to help me with what he said was the terribly-high interest I was being charged for my credit cards the other night. Believe it or not, I had been expecting something like this.
Ever since Colorado put its no-call list into effect in April of 2002, The Luddite has been amusing himself wondering how scoundrels were going to get around the thing. I do that sometimes, something like the way John D. MacDonald used to think up accounting scams for his books.
In case you were busy at the time, Colorado’s legislators put in a law forbidding telemarketers to call anyone in the state unless they purchased a ‘no-call’ list of people who they couldn’t call under any circumstances. They got around to passing this law late in 2001, even though telemarketers had been interrupting people’s supper long before then. How bad was this problem? Well, the first week of eligibility for the list, 500,000 people wanted to sign up. You didn’t read that wrong. It was 500 thousand. Any misgivings The Luddite has ever had for the loathing that people in this country have for telemarketers was dispelled when I read that stat. If I’m overreacting, I’ve got lots of company. I wonder how much money the state will collect in fines.
Naturally, there were exceptions. Non-profits, newspapers, police associations. The very presence of exceptions made me wonder how long it was going to take for someone to figure out a way around the no-call list. The Luddite got a junk call from one of the exceptions on June 19, 2002. That’s about nine months since the no-call list was passed by the legislature. I’m not doctrinaire; I just think the whole point of the bill is to prevent interruptions. How is an exception not an interruption? I can barely wait to see what they come up with to ‘thwart’ spam.
If you think The Luddite despises telemarketers, you would be right. I’m on the no-call list; even though I didn’t think it would work. I have waged a long and unsuccessful battle against these thugs, which I will recount to anyone unfortunate enough to get within earshot. During this battle, I have pretended to be a befuddled old lady and a man with a hearing problem, all to no avail. I don’t hang up on them because I am convinced that as a species, we have a duty to keep these guys on the line as long as possible without buying anything, thereby giving them less time to annoy our fellow man.
In this long and bitter struggle, the only thing that has worked for me is telling them you have had a stroke. To my amazement, The Luddite heard the unmistakable sound of turning pages, a heartfelt apology and then a dial tone. Apparently they have no entry under ‘life-threatening illness’ in their script, yet they feel they have to say SOMEthing, so they fall back on ‘I’m sorry.’ The only bad thing about this approach is that you still have to answer the phone. Thus, my presence on the no-call list. Even though I was pessimistic about the thing working, hope sprang eternal. It might turn out to be another club in our bag, so to speak.
Now telemarketers use machines. The Luddite is now used to getting machines on the phone, but one calling me is still a novel experience. I guess somewhere in this land there are people so desperate for a call or so confused that they will pick up the phone and listen to a machine; even a sales pitch from a machine. What really freaks The Luddite out is that once on my answering machine there was a call from ANOTHER machine.
Oh I forgot. This wasn’t a sales pitch. It was a call from a nonprofit with an 800 number offering to help me reduce my interest rate if I just called them. Yeah, sure.
posted by S. Olson at 3:45 PM
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