CommentsVOICES - Stop with the telemarketing calls, already. They are a plague on our society - invasive, abusive, and waking people who need their sleep. Annoying to the point of affecting many people’s health.
I’ve been on the DoNotCall list from its first month and still my phones keep ringing with telemarketers offering me everything from fixing my credit card debt to cleaning my air conditioning (I have neither).
The current flavor is Vanessa from The Car Dealer Service, pointing out my car is out of warranty and offering to reinstate it. Except I haven’t had a car warranty in this millennium.
I wonder how much she would charge to reinstate a non-existent warranty?
Don’t dismiss that concept out of hand. When I was being harassed with 4 am calls by a law firm who had bought the debt incurred through identity theft, I found out the company had been banned in three states for bullying innocent people into paying them off just to stop the incessant aggressive calls.
Why do we allow telemarketers to continue invading our homes and our lives? Does anyone WANT their calls?
If anyone does, surely an affirmative opt-in system would be more satisfying to all concerned.
Or perhaps telemarketers could hand out dedicated phones to those who welcome the rapid patter of hyped-up sales people as a change of flavor from an insipid day.
Evan better, there could be a sliding scale of payments for the privilege of invading people’s privacy.
I wonder how much Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos would cost? The reverse-equity aspect of this plan would be that those who might need the money are probably the least likely targets of the vulture telemarketers.
Every watered-down control has been just a blip on the path for savvy salespeople; work-arounds have spread cancerously. Robo-calls designed to increase worker efficiency mean you have to push a key or wait on line for the satisfaction of berating them. Exclusions and ignorance reign. Go away!
And don’t try to sell anybody on the valuable jobs these creeps create. If they actually pay, it’s a pittance – minimum wage is $7.25 an hour in many states – and how much abuse can these poor call center workers put up with from those they call before they have a nervous breakdown?
Obviously, someone is making money off these calls but at what cost? Threats and lies to coerce retirees and those less fiscally sophisticated to part with their limited funds amounts to elder abuse and fraud. The calls at all hours are not only an invasion of privacy but active trespass into our lives.
I am sure the interconnected marketeers and the finance industry who rake in fees and interest from these browbeaten victims have sophisticated lawyers to claim “It ain’t so”, but I can smell a rat even camouflaged in a Brooks Brothers’ suit.
The Twisted Sister song from which I took the title of this piece also contains in its lyrics: “we’ve got the right to choose it”, “this is our life”, and “we’ll fight the powers that be”.
Forward this to all your family and friends. Your enemies, as well, to show them you do share some views in common. And then start calling every one of your elected officials demanding an end to ALL cold calls.
Even if your favorite Congressman or Senator is indifferent at first, or even resists the concept while counting up the cash they can leverage out of lobbyists for all those well-heeled industry groups, you will immediately have the attention of the staffer answering your call and every person in that office.
Remember, there may be 100,000 lobbyists in Washington (although over 85% of them claim different designations to avoid regulation), but there are almost 350 million of We-the-People.
Ultimately, the elected official will have to listen to reason. The staffers won’t let go because they are suffering also, and when they take the issue home their family members are sure to chime in. And not in support of the telemarketers.
(Liz Amsden is an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
