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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