Telemarketing

The talk of the town over the weekend today was telemarketing, the scourge of Adelaide down time. We resent the invasion. We see our homes as private when we are home and don't want calls soliciting business. It may well be legal for people to ring us from heaven knows where to ask us about heaven knows what deal, but we are not impressed. Two reasons basically. We don't want people ringing us from underpaid conditions in a "sweatshop" situation. We cannot stand the notion that some poor person somewhere is living and working in such conditions where they find themselves totally uncomfortable and underpaid and will be bullied if they don't get the sales. May or may not be true.It's our perception. Secondly, if we want a new deal on something , we don't want it over the phone with no notice when we can't think and can't consider it properly and the person is working to a script and expects us to play a role...namely, the prospective customer. Oddly enough, since the sale of Telstra has been announced , we have been inundated with calls from communications companies trying to persuade us they have a great deal. When we have a SILENT number, we are even more perturbed we should have calls out of the blue. Happened to me twice and my first question was "Where did you get my number?" They are furnished lists. From where..blah, blah...they didn't really know. I hung up. The best line...because we are swapping ideas of how to deal with this ,as it has reached plague proportions, was:

"Good morning, my name is Anne Smith from Yoyo Internet Company."
"That's nice , dear, and if you keep saying it , I am sure you will remember it."

Click.

If you want us to do deals, advertise on the Net, in the newpaper, on the radio, on TV...not on the phone.