Saturday, November 03, 2007

License to Call

When the "Do Not Call" program started, certain groups were permitted to ignore the restrictions, among them, political advocacy groups.

At the time, this seemed reasonable to me. In fact, it seemed like a good thing. But I now want to propose an additional restriction: automated calls do not qualify for exemption.

I've gotten at least one robo-call every day this week. It would appear that NY Republicans have no other issue to campaign on besides the driver's license nonsense. You want to have a real person call me, fine. But no automated calls.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be opposed to your suggestion, but one thing about robo calls is that they are very easy to hang up on. You know right away by the sound of it that it isn't a live person, so if you don't like them you can just hang up without an argument. Of course there is the annoyance of your phone ringing, but your answering machine can run interference for you and so far at least there aren't that many of them and you can adjust your answers based on whom you think is doing the poll. Say that you're a Republican and you're for universal health insurance and Ron Paul without having to expand on the reasons. Of course there is a certain pleasure in tying up a pollster for as long as you can so they can't go to the next call. With a live person you can ask them to repeat the choices and then explain the choices again and then argue with them about the subtleties of the choices and ask them to go back to the previous question and change your answer to that one etc. Ask who they are working for and all that so that it becomes a tedious and time consuming chore for them. There is a certain pleasure derived from that if killing time is a goal for you.

Sornie said...

I agree that robo calls need to end. I get irate with those and especially the endless begging from political campaigns for a candidate who stands less than a 10% chance, get back to me when you pick the final candidate.

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