Speak Up

I'm well aware that there are a couple of things which make me an anomaly in today's society. The first is that I prefer to pay for things with cash. I know it is probably not the most efficient way to go about my day but I take comfort in knowing that every place I go will take cash, which is not always the case with debit cards. Also, given all the security breaches which can happen when you pay electronically (I'm looking at you, Target), the case could be made that cash is the safest way to proceed with a transaction. The other thing which makes me look as though I am the last guy advocating for the 8-track is that I still have a landline in my house and use it as my preferred way to make phone calls. Currently most people have become overly attached to their cellphones and figure they will save themselves some money by eliminating their landlines, to the point still having a landline in your house is seen as so last-century. I guess that would work for a lot of people but I have never been that fond of talking on a cellphone. Not only have I never had a phone which fits comfortably to my large noggin, I am chatty, which quickly makes battery life an issue. But more than that is the fact that my cellphones get notoriously bad service in my house... or any house for that matter. It is one thing to not be able to get a signal when you are out and about because that is the vault of whatever store you happen to be in at that moment. Not getting a signal in your own home is a much bigger problem because not only does it make you look like you didn't research the company's coverage area before buying, it is a problem that will keep happening. Besides, I like the peace of mind that comes with a landline. Call me paranoid, but if I am on an important phone call I want to be sure that all my words are coming through clearly. It would be a shame to lose out something important because my call got dropped halfway through a sentence and I kept on blabbering like an idiot.

Now, I've had to come around on the "paying by card" thing mostly because my bank has incredibly inconvenient ATM locations. (I may like paying with cash but not enough to drive 20 minutes in the opposite direction of where I want to end up just to do so.) I've also started to come around on using my cellphone more because of an equally important innovation - standard-issue caller ID. Now, my landline offers caller ID services but you have to be using a phone which comes equipped with it and not every phone in my house is quite as fancy as some others. The one phone which has caller ID will loudly announce who is calling but this means that sometimes I will be in another room, have a phone in my hand and still have to wait until the one phone with caller ID tells me who is calling before I can answer it. Frankly, it makes me feel kind of dumb. However, that is not an issue with my cellphone because every call which comes through that line gets displayed on the screen, at which point I am given the option to take the call, silence it or decline it, which is so much faster. It used to be that I would give most people who asked my home line and only a select few were given my cellphone number. Thanks to the convenience of my cellphone this policy has now flipped and my cellphone is the number given to businesses. However, it has also brought to my attention just how many companies have bought or sold my cellphone number through the years because my cellphone is getting more random calls than ever before. The other day it also became clear that some of the people who bought my number off another company's list must have paid a lot of money for it and as such they had no money left for the actual call.

I immediately knew something was up when I didn't recognize the number because anyone that I would want to talk to on my cellphone should already be in there as a contact. Suspicions were further raised when the number started with an 888. I know cellphone companies have started to get a little creative with the area codes in heavily populated areas but I don't think they have gone that far down the list just yet. Now, whenever a number comes up that I do not recognize I have a half-second internal struggle with whether or not to answer the call. On the one hand, I am roughly 90% sure the person on the other end of the line will try and sell me a product I never wanted to buy. On the other, I occasionally give out my cellphone for business and having to call clients back 20 seconds after they leave you a message looks unprofessional. (It scream, "I was screening my phone calls" and why would a reputable person ever do that?) On this one occasion I decided to throw caution to the wind and answer the phone - something I immediately came to regret. After that half-second telltale pause which lets you know the pre-recorded message is about to start I was straining to hear a sales pitch which was either trying to sell me solar panels or my own Doppler radar, I couldn't tell. Even stranger was the fact that I could hear noises in the background, as if they were coming from between the phone and person talking. It is a sound that any child of the 80s knows all to well as it was the same kind of echo you would hear when your friend tried to play a song they had recorded for you through the phone. This leads me to assume the phone call was taking place at a busy call center and the person was simply holding the phone up to a tape recorder. I don't care how bad the caller's English may have been, this method was worse. As you probably guessed, I hung up rather quickly.

I've always thought the random, automated cold-call was a terrible way to get new business but at least there was something admirable about a group of employees gathering together in a room to call a list of total strangers in the hope of drumming up some business, knowing full well that they would be hung up on by about 95% of the people they called and the other 5% would scream at them and then hang up. I hate calling strangers on the phone even when they are expecting me, so the concept that these people called 500 random numbers every day without knowing who is on the other end of the line is downright heroic to me. (Though, not heroic enough to buy anything from them.) By contrast this new method of calling with a recorded message is not only just as ineffective, it feels much lazier. Also, I would contend it is actually a worse way to do business as most people are polite enough to let a real human speak for a few seconds before hanging up but will hang up on a recording immediately. Those few seconds may not mean a lot to you or me but it is more than enough time to get your company name out there. It probably isn't my place to tell these other companies how to run their businesses but if they want the slightest chance to success they either need to hire people who are willing to read the script or spend a little money on the production value for the message because there is no way I would buy anything over the phone from what sounds like a robot at the bottom of a well. Oh, and they should try and focus on calling people without caller ID because even though I occasionally take the plunge most people are too smart to answer the phone when it is a number they don't recognize.