Taking matters into our own ears

Does it at all surprise you that despite being on the “no-call” list, you still get phone solicitations?

Me either, and now I understand why.

When it started in 2003, the National Do Not Call Registry promised telephonic peace, quiet and uninterrupted dinners — with the exception of non-peaceful, non-quiet, habitually interrupting charities, pollsters, debt collectors, businesses you’d recently purchased from, political action committees, and political parties who exempted themselves from the rules they set for others.

Nearly 4 million Colorado phone numbers are on the list (administered through the Public Utilities Commission), and some telemarketers actually pay to see who’s on it — people they can’t legally call. Given that the population of Colorado is only 5.35 million, and that some households have one phone number and several residents, the number of Coloradans not on the list must be somewhere around 42.

Law-abiding telemarketers, I thank you. As for the others — the roofing contractors who rain calls on you after hailstorms, the guy who says he’s from Microsoft support, the security companies that say one of your friends recommended you and then demonstrate their security because they won’t tell you the name of the friend or the name of their company — I guess I don’t blame you for trying because there isn’t much downside to doing so.

Supposedly, if the attorney general’s office gets three complaints in a month about you, they’ll look into it. But if you block your number or use fake names or some other subterfuge, you probably don’t have to worry. You probably don’t even have to worry, anyway: The AG’s office says there are no complaints that they know of that have been pursued through litigation.

The scary thing is that it could be worse. If there were no no-call list, we’d probably all be out in the streets burning Alexander Graham Bell in effigy.

Why would a telemarketer ignore the list? Three reasons: It’s cheaper to ignore it, the chances of getting nailed are nil, and telemarketing works. Obviously, if it didn’t work, they wouldn’t call.

So we need to take this problem into our own ears. We need to pledge never, ever under any circumstance will we buy something from someone over the phone.

When a telemarketer calls, seductively ask them what they’re wearing, or discharge an air horn into the phone. Invite them out to your house and give them a fake address. Rattle off something in German. Ask if you can come see them, or call them at their home. Want telemarketers to stop wasting your time? Start wasting theirs.