Telephone Soliciting- Argh

I ranted about telephone solicitors at a party several years ago. It was an animated, soapbox sort of rant, where I may have even used a mild four-letter-word or two. At the end, one of the parents of a friend of my daughter's said, "I'm a telephone solicitor, and..." I thought he was joking, but unfortunately he was not. Love those moments, right?

I was a telemarketer myself for a couple of months when I was 16, selling papers for the Houston Post at a call center. It was a miserable job for me, because all I could think was how flippin' annoying I was. During training, the main rule of the sell was to keep talking and never hang up before the other person did. That insures that they are literally forced to either purchase the newspaper or hang up on you. Most people feel hanging up on someone is rude, so they won't do it. (Never mind that it was rude of me to call you at home to give you a random sales pitch.) Well, I sold a LOT of papers by following that rule.

Almost every phone call we receive on our land line now is a solicitation call. Most are charities. I have a strict no-donate policy for any charity that asks for donations via telephone. Jeff donates to almost all of them, so they continue calling, and will ask for him and not speak to me at all. That would be fine with me, other than Jeff isn't home most of the time the phone is ringing off the wall. The ones that really piss me off are the ones who say, "Hey! Is Jeff around?" like they're some buddy of his. I used to be fooled and talk to them or hand them off to Jeff. No more. Now I don't answer any call that is from someone I don't know.

I've told most of these charities to stop calling, but they don't. They are not subject to the no-call list, so they just keep calling. Totally annoying. I'm talking almost daily calls from two organizations, along with the countless others.

The other large group of calls are from polling companies, who are also not included in the no-call list. Political groups, mostly.

The remainder are companies who shouldn't be calling me at all. To fix that, I would have to file complaints with the FCC, which requires a ton of paperwork and tracking times, dates, names, etc. (I started that process with Strand Brothers, with their completely obnoxious and constant calls the past couple of years. Jeff didn't think their calls were a big deal, so I had him switch our contact number to his cell phone. Now he's fielding their ridiculous calls. Works for me!)

The real answer to the sales and polling calls? I could eliminate the land line, but then I have to give my cell number to businesses. What's more annoying than sales calls at home? Sales calls on my cell. I'm thinking of turning off the ringers to the land line, and having that number go straight to the answering machine. Maybe I'll do exactly that.

So if you are still calling on my land line, please direct all calls to my cell. Or you can leave a message and I'll get back with you!