1998-09-19
A man named Bob Trottier, who worked for a telemarketing firm a few months this spring, wrote an article for today's Kitchener Waterloo Record defending Telemarketers. "Businesses and many other services have to use telemarketing because it works, whether you grit your teeth at the intruding phone calls or not".
This is one big piece of horse manure. Nobody has to use telemarketing. Telemarketing didn't even exist thirty years ago, and nobody was the wiser. What Trottier really wants us to believe is that telemarketing creates new demand for products. This is good for the economy, you see. In fact, the advantage of telemarketing probably only lasts as long as it takes until a competitor with the same product starts to use telemarketing. It's like Sunday shopping. Where's the advantage if all the stores are open on Sunday? Thus we are led by the nose by our own short-sightedness.
The biggest mistake you can make with a telemarketer is to listen. The simplest, most effective thing to do is hang up, immediately. Don't listen. Don't wait for the telemarketer to shut-up, don't ask yourself if you might actually want what they're selling (believe me, you don't).
I don't necessarily believe that telemarketing should be banned. I think it would be more effective to make a law that says that the owners of a telemarketing firm must spend at least eight hours a day doing the same thing his employees are doing, calling people and pestering them in their homes. They should hear what people really think of pests.
© Copyright 1998 Bill Van Dyk