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It has been Telemarketer Week at our house. The phone rings every half hour or so, mostly with recorded messages trying to sell me satellite TV, new mortgage products, a condo in foreclosure forty miles away, a vacation cruise, or service with a new phone company. Or maybe they’d like me to donate to save the children/whales/spotted owls/people who shop at thrift stores (really, they keep calling and asking for my thrifty goods. If I had some to give away, I wouldn’t wait around for a call).
But my favorite of all is the recorded nasally voice offering me an extended warranty on my car. We get this one every single day lately; at first, they were warning messages: “Your car warranty is about to expire! We’ll sell you a special, unofficial extended warranty—if you act now!”
Then they turned chastising: “You have let your car warranty expire! What kind of irresponsible car owner lets the warranty run out? We’ll reinstate warranty coverage if you call today!”
And now they’re dire: “This is a warning! You are driving a car without a warranty! Act now to remedy this serious failing!”
Except. Except! I’m not driving a car without a warranty (and we’ll ignore the issue of why I would want their off-label warranty product when I have insurance).
That car? The one they keep calling about? It has gone on to a better place. Or to the auto wrecking place. Whatever. It’s gone. And there wasn’t an unofficial extended warranty in the world that could have saved that sucker.
I spent an hour on the phone the other day trying to convince a creditor, for about the hundredth time since we’ve had our new number (that would be six months), that I am not, actually, a burly Irishman named Shawn O’Brien. Shawn (or Sean?), if you’re out there, please pay Nextel so they will leave ME alone.
We don’t have a house phone and I’m so thankful for that! I used to be a telemarketer (I was 16 and they let us smoke in the office) but I was giving away grave yard plots. I can’t tolerate telemarketers now especially robotic ones.
I keep getting calls from some machine looking for a person with the same last name. Only it’s a different person everytime. I feel like calling them and telling them who lives there, seeing if we’re on their list, and just getting the whole shebang over with right then and there. Only that would take effort, and then I wouldn’t have anything to complain about.
We had a creditor looking for someone else just recently– the robotic voice would say, “this is a message for” and then spell the name, “and if you are not” [spelling again], “it is unlawful to continue listening to this private message.”
So how about you quit calling me, then? How’s about that for a plan?