The Number You Have Reached Is Not Giving Money At This Time

I have said it again and again:  I cannot stand receiving solicitation phone calls.  I am beyond angry.  I have crossed over into unabashed rudeness and am teetering perilously close to a pre-emptive strike.

We all get these calls.  At first I was just barely tolerant, realizing that it is never good karma to shoot the messenger.  These people are just doing their jobs, after all.  Perhaps one of my own children might be desperate enough to take a job making these calls.  No!  I would pay them out of my own pocket to do nothing before I would permit such a thing!

There is a category of calls that I suffer silently.  Take the assortment of almae mater, for example, that call in the fall and the spring between 7 and 9pm.  Alumni canvassing is their biggest source of fund-raising.  It is true that when they send me the annual fund card in the mail, I have a tendency to push it to the side until I am writing checks.  But with online banking, how often do I write checks these days?  Almost never.  I chalk this one up to my own folly.  If I responded promptly it is likely I would not receive the call.

Then there are the home service providers.  This includes the gutter-cleaners, window-washers, chimney-sweep, and sprinkler guy who provide annual services seasonally.  I consider it a convenience that at the end of winter, my chimney sweep calls to clean the fireplace for the summer, inspecting the flu for any birds or winter damage and leaving me with a pristine area in which to display plants or candles.  Same for the window people who come every spring to clean three stories of windows inside and out, also cleaning and replacing all the screens.  Even the fall appearance of the sprinkler guy, who shuts off the water supply and drains the pipes for the cold New England winter, is someone who would never cross my Florida-born mind.  I forgive the solicitousness of their calls, as I could not survive without their just-in-time interventions.

Stray off this narrow line and the calls turn from helpful to obnoxious.  My husband and I have four degrees from three “schools” in the same University.  When I replace the phone from one call only to have it ring again immediately, the same guy now asking for my husband, I am justifiable annoyed.  Then there is the school where my husband spent only his freshman year before transferring to, and graduating from, a different institution.  I am not certain how his name ended up on a list of their alumni, but no amount of begging to be removed seems to work.

There are a few remedies to this situation.  First, I check caller ID before answering the phone.  Any call placed from an 800 number is likely a solicitation.  I also avoided blocked and private calls for a while, until I realized that I was missing calls from my husband’s back office phone line.  I have registered our house landline and all of our family’s cell phones on the National “Do Not Call” registry (www.donotcall.gov).  This cut down the calls enough to allow our family to eat dinner in peace most nights.  We also purchased a “telezapper” at Radio Shack.  This is a gadget that you install on your phone line.  When a computer dials your number automatically from a database, it emits a sound telling the computer that your phone is out of order.  This will normally erase your number from that source.

I find that the undesirable calls fall into a few predictable “types.”  First, is the arguer.  I have a few contribution rules, including that I do not give money over the phone (it is sound practice to refuse to give out a credit card over the phone), and that all of our giving to our alma mater is done in one transaction through a single source.  Rather than appreciating our support, some student will invariably launch into an argument about why I should also give just a small contribution ($10, $25) to the special interest group for which he is calling.  After saying ‘no’ one, two, or three times I usually have no choice but to hang up.

The next type I call the familiar.  These are the ones who not only address you by your first name, they act during the first 5-10 seconds of the call as if they are intimate friends.  I have received calls that begin with, “Hey, how is it going?” or “Boy, it sure is a nice day, isn’t it?”  They turn out to be hawking roofing or duct cleaning.  One of the most obnoxious is our local police department.  They call from a blocked number, use my first name, and identify themselves as the police.  They remind me that they are the respondents when my security alarm goes off.  Our police force is a well-funded community service; the money they are soliciting is for their social events, not basic needs.  Once, when I used my usual “I don’t give money over the phone” tactic, a police car pulled up to my front door a minute later with an envelope!

The third type is the retaliator.  These are the ones who feel that their position as an unwelcome presence in your home is their right.  They are personally offended at your unwillingness to contribute to their productivity statistics.  They want revenge.  I have seen this take two forms.  There was one caller who was offended that I would not let him execute his rather lengthy and inflexible script.  I asked twice that he stop reading and tell me what he was calling about.  When he would not, I simply hung up the phone.   A minute later, the same guy called back and shouted, “You #&%$ing b*itch! How dare you hang up on me!”  I was able to report the number to the police, concerned not only that I was getting an abusive call, but also that the caller had direct access to our home number.  A more subtle form of retaliation is computer manipulation.  There is a particular number that is calling me now.  The first time I received a call from them, I said I was not interested and asked to be removed from their database.  Instead, they have now programmed my number into a dialing machine that calls me first thing in the morning and several times during the day.  When I answer, I can hear that it is a computer call, but it hangs up after a second or two with no message or personal greeting.  Through my caller ID I can tell that these calls are coming from the same source.  When I have tried to call this number back, it is not a number that can be accessed.

A new telemarketing scam is from “Credit Services” claiming to have important information about your accounts.  It is actually an attempt to elicit your valid credit card numbers under the ruse of reducing your interest rates.  Another interesting fact is that companies that market these services to you are first doing credit checks.  So not only are they inconveniencing you while you are putting dinner on the table, they are also invading your privacy and lowering your credit rating, too.

I am not certain how these companies maneuver around the law to continue calling homes that are registered on the do not call list.  I do not know what technology flies in the face of the latest Telezapper gadget.  But I will make this solemn pledge:  I will dedicate myself to the election of any candidate who makes the elimination of telemarketers the centerpiece of his or her campaign.