Junk Phone Calls From Charities – What Makes You Think I Want to Donate After You Have Royally Pissed Me Off?



National Do Not Call Registry
_________

It happens again today.
I’m sound asleep, and my land line phone rings.
A woman from a major charity (so she says) starts in with a scripted appeal for a donation for her “good cause.”
I don’t know about you, but (1) I despise these calls because (2) I don’t trust them, (3) and they’re intrusive and annoying. They always seem to come at the wrong time.
Groggy and upset at being awakened, I ask to be removed from her calling list, but she keeps saying that if I donate just this one time, she’ll make sure that my name is removed.
Yeah, right.
I can’t seem to make her understand that I don’t want to donate over the phone; I simply don’t trust her or her motives.
Furthermore, I have no wish to continue this conversation.
We get into a bit of a snarkfest as I try to tell her (nicely) to get lost.
She doesn’t hear a word I’m saying as she robotically attempts getting back on her script.
While she’s still talking (yak, yak, yak), I finally end the call by saying, “I’m sorry, I’m not interested, but have a good day.” And then I hang up.
Then as I stomp into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, it occurs to me: “Why didn’t I just hang up on her from the get-go?”
And Have a nice day?
Are you freaking kidding me? I really want her to have a stinking rotten day for starting mine off on the wrong foot.
But I’m from a generation that was taught to mind our manners, and that extended to how we conducted ourselves on the telephone, even with annoying salespeople.
I don’t remember too many sales calls back then, but I’m sure they existed and bedeviled my grandparents, but we were never to be rude to them because behind the voice was a real human being with friends and loved ones who was just trying to make a living or volunteering for a good cause.
Fair enough.
But I have had enough of these uninvited vultures who use emotional blackmail to make you feel guilty and won’t take “no” for an answer, even when you are adamant.
Life is too short to engage with these people.
As far as I am concerned, these are junk phone calls, and like junk mail, I have the right to dispose of them as I see fit.
You come uninvited into my home, I have the right to throw you out in no uncertain terms.
If you, a stranger, do not have bonafide business with me and you persist in your appeals or try to wiggle your way into my home, I do not have to be nice to you when I ask you to leave my property.
So why does my boomer generation feel as though we must be nice to vultures on the telephone?
Maybe it’s time to take back our privacy and our time.
On a similar topic: in recent months I have noticed receiving robo-calls from Medic Alert, a known scammer, although I had signed up for Pennsylvania’s “Do-not-call” list.
Except that I didn’t know that Pennsylvania’s listing expires after five years.
My question to Pennsylvania: “What makes you think I would ever want to be removed from a list that protects me from receiving junk phone calls?”
I re-signed up, but it won’t take effect until the end of January, 2014.
Really? You want businesses to continue pestering me while you fiddle around updating your damn lists?
So I then went to the National Do Not Call Registry website and signed up there. Already, I have noticed fewer of these calls, although I still receive some because a little ‘ole list isn’t going to thwart scammers from their nefarious deeds. By the way, once you sign up on the national list, you remain on that list forever, unless you change phone numbers. 
At least one doesn’t have to worry about being rude to robo callers – you can just hang up.
I recommend signing up for both state (if available) and national do-not-call lists.
It takes only a few minutes and will dramatically make your dinnertime a lot more pleasant and junk-call free.
Unfortunately, these do-not-call lists won’t protect you from non-profits or political organizations, and scammers know this, so they often operate in a gray area; anyone can set up a non-profit organization without too much difficulty.

My message here:

You do not have to be polite to strangers who intrude on your personal life with incessant appeals for money.


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