If there is any part of "our freedoms" that must be defended more than the right to risk irreparable disaster for profit, the right to sell fraudulent securities, bogus debt reduction plans and to buy election results, it's the right to harass people at all hours of the day and night in their homes, in their cars and at work in the process of fleecing them.
Yes, there are laws regulating telemarketing: no call lists, restrictions on times called, restrictions on robocalls that tie up the line until they're through telling you how evil Nancy Pelosi is or how they can get you out of debt by lending you more money at 400% interest. These laws are scrupulously ignored and lawbreakers are carefully protected by the phone companies who in turn are allowed to buy the privilege of ignoring not only the law, but common decency. Virtually all these calls, including the call that woke me at 3:33 this morning are untraceable. "Hell-O - are you late in your mortgage payments???" I was ready to kill someone, but thanks to an FCC that is owned by the telecommunications industry, I'm not allowed to do what I would be allowed to do if someone in a black ski mask showed up in my bedroom at the same hour. That I don't have a mortgage and am not in debt adds a certain edge to the anger. That I only got 4 hours of sleep hasn't allowed it to dissipate.
I may have to give up my land line. Even in a non-election year, I average about 8 telemarketing calls every day, usually most frequent at 8 O'clock AM, again around dinner time with a late peak at 9 to 10 PM. It rings when I'm in the shower, in the pool, up on a ladder trimming trees or under my car changing the oil. Of course it's nearly twice as bad this year.
My number is registered on that most pathetic of places, the Federal no-call list. I wonder why I bothered to register it. So is my cell phone and yet every loan shark and financial con man sends me text messages and calls me at the most inopportune times, so I have to remain unreachable, which largely defeats the purpose of owning one. Yes, this continues when one is overseas and for some reason, candidates all over the country continue to call me even when I demand to be removed.
Of course, I'm just a crank with no knowledge of how evil Liberals are and no proof that the ever further to the right corporate shills still calling themselves Republicans aren't the cause of our woes. After all, it's just freedom I'm objecting to and the will of the proletariat is that the will of the corporations be the law -- and isn't it typical of loser liberals like me to promote such Communo/Fascist ideas like a right to be left alone by scam hawkers and sleazemongers and political flim flam artists who have a far greater right to use a service I pay for than I do.
I was visiting a friend this afternoon who was dying to show me a movie she'd fallen in love with. During that movie, her land line rang five times (shows up on her TV screen with a name she doesn't know). Her answering system was on the fritz and she didn't answer, so they just kept calling. They also rang her cell phone numerous times. After the movie, she did a reverse look-up on the number: The Woodmen of the World calling to tell her about their big annual yard sale. She has no connection to WOW.
ReplyDeleteWhen you figure out how to do to the telemarketers and "non-profits" what you'd do to prowlers, please pass that secret along.
It took me about 8 months to get the old folks in the habit of calling our cell phones.
ReplyDeleteOnce that was accomplished our phone was delegated as a back up fax for our business.
All unwanted calls get a fax buzz. Most people I know no longer maintain land lines.
I only use my cell. If I don't recognize the caller, I don't answer. If it's a recording, I delete. Peace.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I'm not a technophobe. Hell my office here looks like NORAD and I'm always building some sort of electronic gizmo, but I hate cellphones.
ReplyDeleteI was the first kid on the block with a car phone some 30 years ago but in my wife's car for safety reasons. Like many Hams, by the 1970's I was making calls from my car using a 2 meter mobile rig patching through a club repeater, but of course it wasn't basically a tool for other people to rip you off and harass you at your own expense.
I don't have one and don't want one. I'm more likely to carry one of my tri-band handy talkies because my car and my boat is my sanctuary and one of the few places you're away from the grasp of Mammon.
The idea of being forced to give up a real telephone, being forced to pay money to support my status as a sheep to be fleeced by every scam artist, greedy corporation, bogus charity and dimwit politician is repugnant and it's not much different from having to leave your door open so that people can come in to peddle shit while you're eating dinner or trying to sleep.
The sad thing is that it doesn't have to be that way, but the government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the telecommunications industry and tele-scammers are a big source of income who don't give s shit that the robo-caller won't relinquish the line so that you can call that ambulance. They make more money from your mobile phone than they do with a land-line and that's the bottom line.
My wife's cell phone is almost always turned off -- on purpose. I constantly have to tell people that it's not our real phone and not to leave messages that I might not pick up for a week, but it's a losing battle in a world where people can't shut up and don't want to and would rather die than be out of constant contact.
Oh, by the way, I did file an FCC complaint against the caller -- a legal referral service posing as a not for profit and in the business of steering victims to usurious lenders, but that no-call list the politicians promoted as being the solution is universally ignored, full of loopholes as is the restriction on midnight telemarketing.
They don't do this shit in the Bahamas.
I only receive 1 or 2 calls a day, but that is plenty! More than plenty. A few more during this lovely political season. I don't receive the calls on my cell though and I don't answer anything at my house that I do not recognize. STILL, 3AM?? That is the most assinine thing I have heard in a while. I get pissed when they call my house before 10AM!
ReplyDeleteOf course I screen my calls. I have a talking caller ID so I don't have to run to see who it is every 45 minutes, but it always rings at the worst times or when I'm too far away to hear the robo voice intoning "toll free NUMber"
ReplyDeleteEverything is choking to death with sales and advertising.
Yes, I get them on the cell phone too and that's one of the reasons it's usually off. Of course that's illegal and of course it doesn't matter because we live in the sweet land of corporatocracy -- of thee I sing.