570 Phone Calls

570 Phone Calls

The phone doesn't ring too often these days. In fact, most of the calls come from "entities" with which a "prior business relationship exists," which is well within the law governing the Do Not Call list. Most of those can be blown off with a hangup (for the robo versions,) or a polite "thank you but I'm not interested" when there's a live humanoid on the other end of the line.

Sometimes the humanoid -- who is, after all, merely doing his job and probably hating it -- will take a request that he stop calling. This usually draws a response like this: "You realize that if we stop calling you, you won't get any future word on exciting money saving and special event offers we may be making?" Nature's answer to this is "Yep. Not interested in your exciting money saving and special event offers which always end up costing more than whatever you're getting now." Nature's answer to THAT is "it may take four to six weeks for your request to be processed, please understand we may call you before we're able to move you off the list."

Yeah. It takes six weeks to unplug a name from a call list. Sure.

True to their word, the half dozen companies who received that request have stopped calling. So it's more effective than the old ploy which was to tell the caller ".. oh, he died. In fact, I'm just watching the house while his widow is at the funeral." Nature's reply to that generally is something like "...well, is there anyone else available who might like to take advantage of our free HBO for six weeks offer?"

Not even an "I'm sorry to hear of your loss..." let alone an "I'm sorry to have bothered you."

Getting back to that lack of calls, and a glorious lack it is, thank you: the only time people who count seem to call is when the house is empty -- which doesn't happen a lot.

"You have 16 new messages. First message...."

It's like people know when you're not home and call then.

Hey, wait. That's not a bad idea. Turn it around and use it to leave messages for people you have to call but you don't really want to talk to.

Shrapnel:

--How's the tap water in Bundanoon, Australia? It better be decent, because that's all the water you can get there. The town has banned sales of bottled water, hoping to save the earth and some bucks.

--We learn the above from the Bundanoon Daily News newspaper. It's going along with eco-project by printing on both sides of paper so thin you can use it instead of Glad Wrap. The problem comes when you try to read it.

--Have you noticed that the cell companies no longer give you free phones? At least two of them have. But mail-in rebates remain if you are very very very patient and fill out the proper forms in the proper way.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®

©WJR 2009