Be gone telemarketers

Recently I have received phone calls from CIBC Visa, TD Canada Trust, Telus, and a few smaller companies asking me to buy things. (I’m not providing links to these companies. They can generate their own markets.)

I would like you to know, if you are a telemarketer, that I don’t like cold calls. I consider it phone spam. If I’m looking for a line of credit, or a cheaper long distance plan or a VISA card with 5000 bonus airmiles, Google and I are perfectly capable of finding it.

So if you do call please be aware that I will subject you to one of the following treatments:

• The phone will be put on my desk while you prattle on and I continue working (the world record for this treatment is a full two minutes from someone soliciting funds from a police benevolent society).
• You will be passed to my three year old and be invited to try selling to him (let’s see how good you REALLY are).
• You will be subjected to an uncontrollable fit of laughing, coughing, sneezing or worse.
• You and I will have a conversation about spam.

I’m not a mean person, trust me. But if you phone me looking to sell me something I don’t need, I will respond to you with the same courtesy. If your company’s products and marketing are so shabby that you have to resort to phone spam, then you are not a step above the emailers who get trapped in my mail filters. The difference between them and you, is that you are on the end of my phone line and I’ll have a word with you before I delete you.

Argh. It drives me crazy how people always figure out the basest uses for the best technologies.