Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

While our president and Congress try to tell us how wonderful they are going to make our lives, none seem to mention one of the most annoying things citizens face on a daily, heck, hourly basis: robo calls.

Those are the calls that come to your phone from all kind of places that are placed by a computer. If you answer “hello” the computer then turns the call over to a salesperson, who, after a pause, tries to sell you something.

On an average day lately I get 15-20 such calls. On our trip out east recent I got around 40 calls per day. Why it was more out there baffles me since all the calls said they were from the 320 area code.

We had signed up for the Do Not Call list years ago for our land line so I went online and checked. If you haven’t done that you can do so by going to www.donotcall.gov. I discovered I had forgotten to list our cell phone numbers so I did that right away. Within 24 hours the number of calls dropped somewhat.

However I have to wonder why I am still getting many calls. Clearly there is some loophole in the do not call rules. Or the rules are not enforced.

There was a time when I used to harass the callers. By harassing them I mean I would string them along for a while and then say, “no.”

My brother-in-law was a master at this. I was at his house one day when he got a call from a person trying to sell Direct TV. My brother-in-law said he did not have electricity and asked if it would it work with his wood-fired TV.

The caller said he didn’t know and said he would talk with his supervisor!

He then returned and replied that it would not work with a wood-fired TV.

Once when a caller asked if I was home I answered saying I was his son cleaning up the house because the person being called had just died.

It was after I had done that, and the caller responded with sincere sympathy, I stopped doing that. I started thinking about the poor people who are making these calls.

I’ve read over the years that these types of sales calls get a response rate of two to three percent. That means a person making the calls is going to get two or three “sales” out of every 100 calls.

I cannot imagine making 100 calls and getting 97 rejections. What kind of a job would that be? I would suspect that there is a high turnover rate in these call centers because of the constant rejection.

And I imagine that many of the people they call give them worse responses than I gave them. I didn’t swear at or threaten anybody.

A lot of calls seem to come from the same places, Rush City is a big one. But there also calls from Hinckley, Bird Island, Ortonville and Cold Spring. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean the calls are coming from those towns.

Some come labeled “potential spam” from all over the country.

By accident I have touched the “call back” feature on the phone a few times. If the call is from a call center you get a message that “this call cannot be completed, please check the number and dial again.”

That’s another clue that the caller is likely from a call center. They need keep lines open for outgoing calls. Or the numbers are spoofed and there really isn’t anyone to answer to that number.

On my cell phone I did find a solution of sorts. A person can have all calls from numbers not in the phone’s contacts list sent to voicemail. I figure that anybody who really wants to talk to me can leave a message. And that seems to be working.

But it is still frustrating to see how many calls are piling up in my voicemail box. I would hope the people working in these centers could get better jobs for both of our sakes!