Lope - 07/15/03 01:11 AM
Leave it to Salon.com to make a case for Telemarketing. Here's one paragraph:
"Telemarketing is an enormous business that hires millions of people and contributes to billions in commerce every year, but it is suddenly reeling under what insiders describe as a politically expedient bit of regulation. It surprises and offends telemarketers that, of all the scourges we suffer, lawmakers made this one a priority. Telemarketing is an annoyance, but that's all it is, people in the industry insist. Unsolicited sales calls won't give you cancer or heart disease or make you fat. Telemarketing doesn't damage the environment. It doesn't cause car accidents. Telemarketers don't hurt kids or animals. They aren't suspected of harboring weapons of mass destruction. Yet politicians of every stripe are united behind the issue, and they've come up with a solution -- the do-not-call list -- that experts say will devastate telemarketing."
The article goes on to quote these questionable statistics:
"On average, says Searcy of the American Teleservices Association, an American household makes three purchases per year in response to sales calls. In 2001, according to the WEFA Group, telemarketing purchases represented 4 percent of all sales to consumers in the United States, an enormous slice of economic activity. Before the imposition of the do-not-call list, WEFA estimated that by 2006, about $403 billion in sales would be made by telemarketers."
Having NEVER made a purchase from a telemarketer in twenty years and only being slammed by a phone company once (Sprint), I don't see how these numbers can be correct. Or to extrapolate it, if 60 million Americans are expected to sign up on the DO NOT CALL list by October 1st, presumably because they DON'T buy from telemarketers, how much stuff must the other millions of Americans be buying? And if this is the case, how many calls must these folks endure a day?? Don't bother with the math. Since these are industry numbers, they're probably inflated.
The new legislation goes further than a DO NOT CALL list, tho..
"The commission ordered telemarketers to set their predictive dialers to "abandon" -- that is, hang up on -- no more than 3 percent of the calls made, and it prohibits call centers from masking their phone numbers from caller I.D. devices, which has been a common practice in the industry.""
Typically, I'm tied in conflicting knots after reading the article. I want to err on the side of free-enterprise and capitalism but it occurs to me that free-enterprise gave us the institution of slavery which ultimately required Gov't intervention. Or, hmm.. if owning a phone isn't a right, then no one has the right to call you on the phone. Hell, I dunno. Comments are welcome - no, comments are required!
Category: Fall of Western Civilization
Comments (9) top link me
IpurchasemyphoneandpayfortheserviceforMYconvenience,nottheirs.Iseethosecallsas"stealing"mytimeandpaid-for-service.IlookatitthesameasIwouldsomeonetryingtousemycarwithoutmypermission.
BTW,I_am_putting_spaces_in_the_text._Why_don't_they_show_up?
I hate telemarketers, have never bought anything thru them and really, really hate all the hang ups I endure!
Send me a card in the mail; if I'm interested I will call you - if not, not.
Posted by: bogie at July 15, 2003 5:49 AMTelemarketing is not stealing. It is not the same as junk faxes or email where recipients are forced to pay for the resources. Given that people don't pay for the added telephone calls, making the case that telemarketing is "stealing" your phone service doesn't hold water.
What I don't understand is why telemarketers are complaining. Assuming that "do not call" listees don't want to be called, they are making telemarketers jobs much easier. Why waste resources on people that wouldn't buy anything from you any way? The only reason is if you are into high pressure and misleading sales that could "change some minds". That is, if you make your living from preying on weak minded people that can easily be convinced to part with their money. Then you want as many fish in the pond as you can get.
Speaking as someone who worked in sales, and didn't want a lot of the products I sold to be returned, someone weeding out non-purchasers is a blessing.
Rav,
The reason the telemarketers are complaining is that the "easy marks" who don't know how to say no to salesmen are presumably going to sign up for that list. It's a demonstration that they are not a group of businessmen that are actually selling things to people that they would otherwise want, instead they get it out of high pressure selling tactics.
Second, time is money. If I have to get out of my chair repeatedly to answer the phone because it might be someone I want to talk to and it's just a salesman, that costs me time.
You certainly have to pay for the email address, but then you also have to pay for the phone line. In neither case do you pay for each reception, though, so it strikes me odd as you make a distinction there in favor of telemarketers (I make the distinction the other way cause it's a lot easier to delete an email while you're already at the computer than it is to answer the telephone and hang up, depending on where you are when it goes off).
Posted by: RAW at July 15, 2003 8:10 PMWhy not just chalk it up to "the right to be left alone"...and even a Libertarian ought to applaud when the government takes action to support that right.
Posted by: hope at July 15, 2003 11:07 PM"free-enterprise gave us the institution of slavery"
Slavery was very much a govt sponsored institution, and still is. Paid any taxes lately? Would you have paid them if it was voluntary?
Posted by: todd at July 16, 2003 12:14 PMRaw,
First, bulk email has very little cost to the sender, whereas telemarketing has a huge cost to the sender.
On the consumer side, there is the cost of weeding through the "noise" to get to your real messages. On this level, the two don't even compare directly.
First of all, volume of spam and volume of telemarketing calls are completely different. If you had 100 voice mails a day from telemarketers, and your phone rang every five minutes, MAYBE you could directly compare the two.
Even then it would be a stretch, because bulk email is so anonymous and one-way. When you answer the phone, you are talking to a live person. (except in those rare instances where machines deliver automated messages) Also, it is very easy to be removed from a telemarketing list, whereas it is almost impossible to be removed from a bulk email list.
Posted by: Ravenwood at July 16, 2003 8:08 PMRav - I've got out of state guests that want to catch salmon so excuse me for this late entry.
I disagree with your analogy equating telemarketing with theft. I think the more appropriate analogy is the civil recourse available in pollution cases. If you poison the stream on my property from upstream I can respond through the courts. Or if you blacken the air that drifts across or through my property you are diminishing the value of my property.
Tom,
I think you mean Raw. I never equated it with theft. In fact, I made just the opposite case.
Posted by: Ravenwood at July 18, 2003 2:30 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
