Marketing Follies
Sep. 30th, 2008 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqReading a friend's (f-locked) blog on the National Do-Not-Call List, and the fact that so many people have attempted to register themselves that the system crashed. I had a few thoughts about it and decided to post them here.
What surprises me more is not the near-universal hatred for telemarketers (and computer spam), it's the fact that business keeps using it. Business is purely pragmatic and would not continue with these marketing tactics if they didn't work. Somebody out there is getting their carpets cleaned based on a cold call and someone else is sending away for the magic penis pills based on a random email. We need to gather all these people together (spammers and victims) and put them on spaceship #3.
My treatment of telemarketers depends on my mood. The default position is to interrupt them at the first opportunity and say "I'mnotinterestedthankyougoodbye" then hand up.
If I'm more playful, I'll string them along making vague affirmative noises until I eventually just put the phone down and wander off. I consider this a public service - as long as they're on the phone with me, they're not bothering someone else.
I'm still waiting for these clowns to call back so I can try to convince the operator to quit. I suspect they know I'm a lost cause for their scam.
When I was still in High School, I worked (for a grand total of four hours) as a telemarketer. Half that time was training - basically listening to one of the old hands give his pitch and how to operate the phone system. The next two hours were cold calling people from a list of numbers.
It wasn't the hang-ups or the harsh language that drove me from the job. Nope, it was this one guy - some pathetically lonely guy. He would do anything, say anything, agree to anything, so long as I'd keep talking to him. He was so cut off from normal human contact that he'd let himself be ripped off by someone. That scared me. Any job I take now I think of him - is this a job where I'm going to take advantage of someone like that? Is that something I can live with? So far the answer has been "no". Thankfully my jobs since then haven't involved anything like that (the closest being my job in Computer Sales for OD - and even there, my position was that OD wasn't paying me enough to lie to anyone, so I didn't).
So the end of my shift occurred and I left and never came back (to their credit they send me my one and only pay cheque a couple weeks later - $20 for 4 hours work at the then minimum wage of $5/hour). I learned a valuable lesson - you can just walk away from a job. I've done it since then and I've never regretted backing out of sketchy employment.
What surprises me more is not the near-universal hatred for telemarketers (and computer spam), it's the fact that business keeps using it. Business is purely pragmatic and would not continue with these marketing tactics if they didn't work. Somebody out there is getting their carpets cleaned based on a cold call and someone else is sending away for the magic penis pills based on a random email. We need to gather all these people together (spammers and victims) and put them on spaceship #3.
My treatment of telemarketers depends on my mood. The default position is to interrupt them at the first opportunity and say "I'mnotinterestedthankyougoodbye" then hand up.
If I'm more playful, I'll string them along making vague affirmative noises until I eventually just put the phone down and wander off. I consider this a public service - as long as they're on the phone with me, they're not bothering someone else.
I'm still waiting for these clowns to call back so I can try to convince the operator to quit. I suspect they know I'm a lost cause for their scam.
When I was still in High School, I worked (for a grand total of four hours) as a telemarketer. Half that time was training - basically listening to one of the old hands give his pitch and how to operate the phone system. The next two hours were cold calling people from a list of numbers.
It wasn't the hang-ups or the harsh language that drove me from the job. Nope, it was this one guy - some pathetically lonely guy. He would do anything, say anything, agree to anything, so long as I'd keep talking to him. He was so cut off from normal human contact that he'd let himself be ripped off by someone. That scared me. Any job I take now I think of him - is this a job where I'm going to take advantage of someone like that? Is that something I can live with? So far the answer has been "no". Thankfully my jobs since then haven't involved anything like that (the closest being my job in Computer Sales for OD - and even there, my position was that OD wasn't paying me enough to lie to anyone, so I didn't).
So the end of my shift occurred and I left and never came back (to their credit they send me my one and only pay cheque a couple weeks later - $20 for 4 hours work at the then minimum wage of $5/hour). I learned a valuable lesson - you can just walk away from a job. I've done it since then and I've never regretted backing out of sketchy employment.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-30 10:53 pm (UTC)Since I don't have too much trouble except with Shaw it's not worth me registering yet. Interesting read though.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 03:36 pm (UTC)My knee jerk reaction is to let them go through their spiel and when they come up for air say that I am not interested and to please take this number off their lists. Usually they try to hang up as quickly as possible after you say that you're not interested so they don't get the "please take my number off your list."
Though Henry Rollins has a more interesting way of dealing with it:
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/51507/detail/
(I believe this is the sketch, I don't have sound on my computer at work.)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-01 11:15 pm (UTC)I get about 60 calls a month that aren't from a real person, where there is no one answering the phone if I call the number back to complain. A little over a third of those leave messages on my answering service.