robot sales?

Does anyone actually listen to prerecorded telemarketing calls?

You would think that telemarketing companies would "get a clue" when people hang up after the first few seconds of a call, but instead they persistently call day after day. I guess that it is a cheap alternative to actually paying people to call you, though. So instead of paying actual people to make phonecalls with a success rate of, let's say 10%, they instead call people with a machine and get a success rate of 0.1%. However, since they are using a machine, and telephone calls are free, they can afford to let the machine run as long as they like. There's no recruiting, training, human resources, payroll, or benefits to be concerned with. It's no wonder that more and more corporations are turning to modern speak-and-spell sales tactics to try and sell product.

It reminds me of that episode of the Simpson's where Homer started his own telemarketing scam when he finds an autodialer machine in a back-alley dumpster. Personally, I believe that telemarketers should only be allowed to make phonecalls to an "opt-in" list of people. Telemarketing firms insist that this would be a violation of their rights, and that if an opt-in list was used, nobody would choose to be on it. But if that is true, then we should just get rid of telemarketing altogether. After all, this is a democracy, and if the majority of consumers don't want telemarketers to call them, then we should be able to make it so. What about our rights as consumers? What about our time? Time is money and telemarketing wastes it. It would be interesting to calculate the amount of time (on average) that a person wastes in their life responding to persistent telemarketers. Assuming a 2 minute telemarketing call every other week, and an average lifespan of eighty years, that's a total of about 70 hours, or almost three days wasted. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have that chunk of time to spend with loved ones when I'm on my deathbed.

That's why I have no reservations about hanging up in their face. I don't even wait for them to start their spiel. As soon as I have said hello twice to dead air, and they then ask for me by my full name, I hang up in their face. The sad part is this - if everyone did this, telemarketing *would* just go away. After all, if it was never profitable, then it wouldn't be worth it. But there must be some people out there who take the bait and accept their offers. I wish it would just go away. Granted, that would eliminate lots of telemarketing jobs, but so be it. Nobody should have to live their life doing that type of work anyways, in my humble opinion. It's demeaning, and a waste of everyone's time.