Unabashed

I just got two consecutive automated telemarketing calls. Automated. As in, you answer the phone and they respond with a recording advising you to listen to their important message. And then one of them tried to sell me a carpet cleaning (which I don’t need or want). The other one tried to sell me health insurance (which I already have and likewise don’t need or want). I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this is infuriating. But what’s even worse, I listened to the spiel through to the end so I could politely ask them to remove me from their call list and both times, when it reached the end and said “Press one to connect to our operators” the call was ended. They didn’t know I was about to go postal on them, for all they knew I might have been a potential customer, but I never even had the chance to purchase their services. It went to static and then to a deadline and then: the fated dial tone. In both cases I tried the callback number as displayed on my caller ID, but the call went nowhere. Deadend.

I am on the donotcall list, proudly. Once I was added to that list my telemarketing calls dropped totally away. But now I’m starting to get them again, despite re-registering with donotcall.gov a year ago. I’ve gotten the call from the carpet cleaning joint three or four times now, and until today I’d just hang up when I realized who–or what–it was. But, you know, you get tired of it, and it is essentially harassment. I don’t buy anything from telemarketers. I never have and I can with all confidence say that I never will, which, of course, compounds my own frustration with the entire telemarketing industry. I’d just like them all to know that I am a dead end that will never result in a single sale. Ever. And yet, I believe they still would call.

It’s very much like spam. This site gets about thirty spam comments per day, as filtered by Akismet, a tool I thank the stars for. Like telemarketers, I’ve never purchased anything from spam, nor so much as clicked a link in a spam email. Again, I am a dead end, with no hope of ever procuring a sale. As for email, well, email is much easier. I just keep changing email addresses. Every time the spammers get wise to an address of mine, I abandon it and get a new one, usually via Yahoo! or Gmail, or I can just set one up through my hosting service. And I never use my primary email to register for anything. I use one of the old emails that already get slammed with spam. It amazes me how many sites I’ve registered for that have clear “We will use your email only for registration purposes” or “We will never sell your email address or send you unwanted emails” in their reg page text, that within 24 or 48 hours of registering I see a trickle of spam start hitting my inbox. Amazes me.

So it is with great joy today that I find that the notorious spammer Eddie Davidson is going to get 21 months of prison time in which I hope–I hope–that he is introduced as “the new girl” to the admiring prison deviant society.