No, I Said Do Not Call!
I’m constantly amazed at the sheer audacity of companies that call people at home at all hours of the day with absolutely no forethought or consideration. Even though our number appears on the National Do Not Call Registry, we still get calls at all hours hawking one thing or another. While the registry restricts calls from telemarketers, there are a number of exceptions that allow political or charity organizations to continue to call. Now, if I were a charity, I think I’d be asking myself if someone who went to the trouble of putting themselves on the Do Not Call list is interested in being contacted by political or charity organizations.
That is, of course, not the case at all.
Every day, our answering machine bristles with a half-dozen “hang ups” from organizations whose automated systems call us each day and then hang up when no one answers the line. I don’t mind those calls – they’re screened, and I don’t have to deal with them. I do, however, mind the calls at 10:00 on a Saturday morning (a dignified snoozing hour, I might add) for Tom and Jerry’s Charity Organization for the Preservation of Something or Other. I don’t care. No one I know would call me at this hour. They’ve all learned to know better.
This phenomenon is not limited to anonymous charity callers, but to regular business that probe and intrude in the interest of the upsell (legitimate business contact is allowed even if you’re on the Do Not Call list). Our bank, in fact, called three different times inside of two weeks to try to upsell Ashley to a Visa Gold Card. We already have a Visa Gold Card. With our bank! A hospital in Charlotte called at 5:45am today to discuss billing for a recent hospital stay. Given they know me inside and out (literally), why didn’t they notice that I live three time zones away? Argh!
Yes, I’m feeling grumpy. But come on, this isn’t that hard to figure out.
You do know the most simple way out of this entire issue: get cell phones. Telemarketing, charities, pollsters and the lot are not allowed to call you unless it is required (eg. “someone” just transferred ten thousand swiss francs to a Bermuda bank account and they want to be sure it was me).
I had a cell phone in Vancouver for 4.5 years and never once had to deal with any of your above complaints.
Now, I realize you have luddite fears of cell phones but on the flip side my RSS reader would remain silent if you (and Ashley) got mobiles!
Well, first you need to understand that I never had this problem in BC either. Down here, there’s major amounts of telelmarketing, aggressive customer upsellling, etc. And although I do have a cell phone now, I can’t actually get rid of my landline – I need a landline to buzz people into my building! D’oh!
Actually a cell phone does not solve the answer here. Verizon has published a directory for cell phones. There are no laws, last I heard of, in the US that prohibit solicitation on cell phones. You have to register your cell phone on the Do Not Call list as well. I recieved 3 telemarketer calls on my cell phone before I did that.
My secret is to move so often they can’t keep up with me…
On another note, I don’t like how you just have a number in your WordPress theme for the ‘comments’ link. I’m a Clever Cucumber and I figured it out. But this is not good useability or web design.
If your goal is to get a lot of active participation on your blog you might want to fix this.
I blogged about Jakob Neilsen (spelling?) recently has he released his top 10 Blog design useability mistakes. I’ve read Jakob’s book, but I much prefer Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think.
I’d ‘quote’ it but I don’t know where the quotation character is on the Chinese keyboard I’m using. I miss my Mac…
Agreed – the use of a number for the comments could be improved. Keep in mind this is a stock template I’m using. It’s actually a beta version of the template, and there’s a number of places where it could be improved. I was just eager to get off MovableType and move hosting providers. I’ll improve it as time progresses.
Re : buzzing into the building.
Naw, Ash had the same issue in his apartment; you just called as you were walking up and he would open the door for you. Just like a hotel doorman….
Maybe it is some sort of flaw in Opera or an easily fixable thing in the CSS. Because when I hold my mouse over the ‘5’ the words “comments” appears right after it. I don’t know if this is deliberate to be cool or some sort of bug.
Lately people have been inferring Opera isn’t the best for CSS support, but they take it very seriously so I still stick with them. Plus they were the first to have tabs or among the first and I’ve gotten used to it. There is some javascript or some other crap that sometimes crashes it, plus sites that plain don’t want anything but IE on Windows, but you can spoof them to a degree if you or determined. Or just surf another site. I’m the frickin’ consumer. I spend money online. I will be in a very valuable demorgraphic if I am not already, let them do without me for a change…
I’ve been dicking with my own template, it still has a far more serious bug than yours when viewed in IE on windows. I hope to fix it this weekend, but I have so very much to do and so many problems that affect my motivation.