Make It Stop

How many car warranties do they think I need? If I bought an extended warranty every time my office phone rings and the booming voice tells me my car warranty has run out (how does he know, anyway?), I’d have many more years left on my warranty than on my vehicle. I guess that’s the point. That and they want my money

So it goes with the person who wants to talk about my copier and my phone system, and lately it has been a home security system as well. Let’s not forget my cruise captain, who must be calling me right from the ship as evidenced by the blowing ship’s horn in the background. There certainly are some unscrupulous marketing schemes out there, and they seem intent on two things: interrupting my work and wasting my time.

I went on a personal mission a few months back to wipe out these annoying and unproductive phone calls. I pressed whatever number they gave me to drop me from the list. It didn’t help. I stayed on the line to speak to a representative, who hung up on me as soon as I asked to be deleted from the call list. I even registered for a cruise in order to talk to a human and ask not to be bothered any more. The calls still come.

My company has put out a memo telling us never to give information out to the people who call asking for the serial number from our copier, because it is a scam of some sort. So last week when yet another person wanted to engage me in a conversation about my copier, I laughed and said, “We don’t play that game!” The guy on the phone audibly gasped, then said “IT’S NOT A GAME!” before slamming the phone on my ear. Maybe it’s not from his point of view.

I can’t help thinking that there must be a better way. These marketing operations set up computers that dial numbers all day long. Their success ratio must be extremely low, yet they persist. It is almost impossible to remove a number from the list. The wasted hours per office, per company per year must be staggering. For me, it’s just a source of frustration and exasperation. I want it stopped.

Maybe in addition to our marketing department, we need a new anti-marketing department. If that would help, I’d volunteer for the job.