What’s up with the telemarketing business? In the space of three hours this morning, I got no less than six telemarketing calls. Five of those calls were for refi or home equity loan offers. The sixth was for a credit card. Maybe it’s partially my fault …

Problem is, I can see the telemarketers out of one eye, but not the other.

While I have Caller ID on my home office line (it’s provided free-of-charge with my VOIP plan, as it is with most), I don’t have it on the house line (my local phone company kindly charges seven bucks per month for the service). Idiot that I am, I pick up all of the calls that come into the house … just in case it might be an important call. More often then not, those calls are from a predictive dialer wielding telemarketer.

I signed up for the federal government’s Do Not Call program ages ago. While I can’t say that it hasn’t done a bit of good, it didn’t seem to do much to keep the telemarketers at bay this morning.

Although I’ve never bought anything from an outbound telemarketer’s call, I do acknowledge their right (and their need) to exist. I only wish they would honor that darn Do Not Call list.

I have empathy for the folks that man those lines. But the purveyors of telemarketing lists? Fughettaboutit!

VOIP’s killer app to come: the intelligent virtual phone butler …

Press #1 for Alfred the Butler,
Press #2 for C3P0,
Press #3 for Krusty the Clown, or
Press #4 for the Nuclear Option (a.k.a.: the endless Black Hole of voicemail loops)

[tags]telemarketing lists[/tags]