My, it's quiet.
The telephone has simply stopped ringing, even at 9 a.m. on Saturday, which is the time that telemarketers usually like to call my house.
I haven't gotten a call in days. And I haven't even signed up for the FTC's national do-not-call list.
Does this mean the great medium of outbound telemarketing has been stilled?
Well, probably not yet. But the day may be coming, for the American people seem to be opting out en masse. And that's sad, although I can't go along with critics who say it's the end of civilization.
The American Telemarketing Association is probably right when it predicts that 2 million people will lose their jobs (give or take a million) because of the national do-not-call registry. But that argument is not likely to dissuade Congress and the great regulatory agencies.
In their minds, the suffering of call center employees will not outweigh the annoyance caused by outbound calling. Everyone is tired of the intrusiveness, the abandoned messages, the sheer rudeness of it all.
That includes me, although I write about direct marketing for a living and feel a wage slave's sympathy for my fellow wage slaves.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for the people at MCI, who were nasty when I was a customer but who now hound me incessantly to win me back?
Are we to worry about the chumps who worked for crooked outfits like Triad Marketing? Burglars have to eat too, but that doesn't mean we want them in our homes.
In 1901, when telephones were still a novelty to many people, a writer observed that “the merchant in a city with a prosperous telephone system has an opportunity for effective advertising which he seldom uses to his advantage.” But he warned: “Like other advertising, misrepresentation would ruin it, and if overworked it might be a nuisance.”
Hundreds of companies have failed to heed those words in the 50 or so years that mass outbound telemarketing has been around.
But let's end on a note of hope. Telemarketing will live.
First of all, the critics of outbound calling will have been defanged by creation of the registry. Remedies will be in place. That's why the Direct Marketing Association generally supports the do-not-call list, although it has several concerns about how the FTC is going about it.
Then, too, the registry will hit a plateau at some point. And the people who do not sign up for it will become a valuable and receptive audience, at least for responsible companies. By not opting out, they will have opted in.
I, for one, am looking forward to it.
Feel free to ring me up.
