Tired of telemarketers

Most people, nowadays,  prefer cellphones over landlines as landlines are slowly becoming obsolete, especially for personal use. I also don’t see any point in having  landlines when you have a reliable wireless service (unlike in Nepal).

Most people, nowadays, shop online as it’s difficult to allocate time to purchase everything in person, especially when shopping online can get you better deals and you will also get more products to choose from. I also prefer to shop online, unless my wife drags me to the Mall.

When you combine cellphone and online shopping then you get into a big mess: Telemarketers. When you buy a product online you normally have to fill in your phone number, that’s how I believe these telemarketers (somehow) get hold of your number. It’s aggravating to get calls from telemarketers in your landlines, but it’s even more infuriating to get calls (and text) to your cell phones. Especially, when you get the calls in odd hours or you have restriction on minutes usages.

I recently enlisted my number at National Do No Call Registry, the telemarketers are not supposed to call the enlisted numbers, but I still get calls from them. Nowadays I don’t pick up unknown numbers; though the disturbance factor is still there, I am spared of minute usages. I later check my voice mail for genuine calls.

Though these telemarketers, earlier, didn’t leave voice mail; now they have started to do that too (multiple times for the same product they are trying to sell). I just got a voice mail saying that they have offer for a cruise that I was looking for (??) (this prompted me to write this post). Cruise is the last thing in my mind now.

I don’t know how to fix this problem but I have now decided to change my voice mail. On top of my regular greeting; I will add “If you are a telemarketer, my number is listed in National Do Not Call Registry and if you try calling me again I will report your number”. I hope this will keep the telemarketers at bay.