Posted on 08/11/2003 8:33:31 PM PDT by xrp
Popular do-not-call list bringing industry to its knees
Aug. 11 — In the past three months, the hallways at Groesbeck-based Tel-A-Sell Marketing Inc. have become a lot less crowded. CEO Edd O’Connor has been forced to trim his telemarketing staff from 72 to 18.
“I WAS RUNNING a full house earlier this year,” said O’Connor, who also serves as president of the American Teleservices Association’s Great Lakes Chapter, which covers Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Michigan.
One of the big reason for the cuts: the chilling effects of the National Do Not Call Registry and other similar efforts in statehouses across the country.
A month into the sign-ups for the federal Do Not Call list, nearly 30 million phone numbers across the United States have been registered for the list. That number could double by the time the list takes effect on Oct. 1.
The ATA, which is challenging the list in court, said the national list could eventually cause more than 2 million lost telemarketing jobs. The ATA estimated that telemarketers are responsible for $660 billion in sales. The combined effects of do-not-call lists and the movement of jobs overseas have left the industry ailing.
“It’s going to cause significant business problems for this industry,” said O’Connor, who said he expects a pickup in business in early fall. “We’ve got to step back and regroup.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
Change is the only constant and their time on earth is over.
If they can't make phone calls, let em go door to door.
Darn. I thought the story would report that telemarketers had decided to embrace the Biblical verses: "Judas went, and hanged himself.... Go, and do thou likewise."
They just pulled it out. One hopes that they were wearing rubber gloves.
Editorial correction for fact-checking and redundancy removal.
How exactly has the Do Not Call list impacted this sector? The people who are on the list (including myself) are there because we DO NOT WANT to be bothered by telemarketers. By definition, we are people who wouldn't be buying anything from these pushy nimrods anyway! If anything, the telemarketers should be seeing IMPROVED returns because their call centers will be wasting less time on calls that wont result in sales!
The dirty little secret of telemarketing is that it depends on the application of high-pressure tactics upon the particularly vulnerable (e.g. people with weak social skills or diminished mental faculties). People who already want your stuff will find you without telepestering. People who don't want your stuff, and will hold their ground, are not affected by telepestering. It is only the existence of people who don't want your stuff, but can be verbally bullied into buying it anyway, that makes telepestering a profitable enterprise.
The telepest industry fears the phone owner's new ability to post a binding NO TRESPASSING sign on his phone line because a vulnerable target can put up a long-term shield with a single action.
Since you think it's OK for someone to collect $1.45/month to insure that your phone line won't be appropriated for someone else's use, do you also think that it's OK for Sicilian gentlemen in ill-fitting suits to ask you to pay (say) $50/month to insure that something unfortunate doesn't happen to your place of business?
That, really, was the last straw, and should have been prosecuted under existing "cracking" laws as a violation of electronic security for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access to someone else's phone line.
If he had, how would anybody notice?
But I tell you what, you keep asking the government to take care of you with all these new laws and when one of them finally comes along that you don't like (and sooner or later it will), I don't want to hear one word from you
Sheesh.
The best part is that the "Opt-In" list could be managed by one guy with a steno pad.
The telemarketers themselves are financing the operation -- which is as it should be (they made the mess, they can pay to clean it up).
Very succinctly put.
But instead of addressing the issue of one more level of government control not needed that could be handled in the free market by a capitalist solution, you insist on throwing boulders that have nothing to do with the subject.
It's already against the law for them to enter your property if you have a posted NO SOLICITORS sign. Now, the same principle has been extended to your phone. This is as it should be.
Yep, and you also have a choice between 1)being a hermit living behind a nailed-shut door, or 2)admitting everyone who might happen to wander to your door -- travelling salesmen, preachers, burglars, whatever.
Or so it would be if the arguments of the telepest apologists had any validity whatsoever.
If you're suggesting that it should be legal to deal with telepests the way one deals with mosquitoes (i.e. kill them), then this is the most sensible notion you've offered so far.
So in your world, it's legal to steal anything that is not essential to life?
Party at xrp's place!
Now if we can only get the "Do Not Lawyer" list up and running...
By helping to protect the privacy of individuals?
Are you serious?
How about all those telemarketers trying to "screw" honest, hardworking citizens by talking them into buying crappy products or services in which they have no interest, all within the privacy of their own homes?
I think you should re-evaluate your position on this and think about how you want to live your own life. Do you honestly like answering the phone once, twice, three or more times an evening from total strangers who have no interest in you other than your money? Even with caller ID and screening, it is a disturbance that people do not need as they are eating dinner, reading to their children, or trying to relax from a stressful day at work.
This has nothing to do with wanting a "big government/nanny state." It has everything to do with the right to privacy in our own homes.
Wonderful advice...if I had just fallen off a turnip truck, I might even buy it.
I don't want the effing phone to ring at all, unless it's a relative calling me to tell me someone's croaked. I work odd hours, and the phone merely ringing pisses me off.
Since it's not an option to have the phone only ring for a family emergency, then the only solution is for the rat-bastards to stop calling me.
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