Telemarketing On-Demand

Here's something interesting, although it may use a definition of "interesting" hitherto unknown to humankind...

I keep getting calls to my mobile phone from the phone number 518-242-8975. They average about four a day, never a message--but then no one ever leaves a message (makes me wonder if I pay extra for voicemail--if so, I should just get rid of it). I really only ever have my mobile on vibrate mode (actually, I did have the ringer on once and when someone called I didn't recognize the ringtone and thought it was a noise on the TV...doh!) and rarely answer it unless my caller ID recognizes the caller. So when I am out and check e-mail using my iPhone, I find these missed calls. Usually I don't care, since I have found that, on the rare occasion when I am motivated to answer an identified call, 99% of them are people asking me for money. I once gave $25 to a charity, ended up on some list somewhere, and now suddenly I find myself in the middle of Dickensian London. Most of the major organs have called me (Heart Association, Lung Association, etc.) as has every disease known to man. Let's not even bring up the Democratic Party, which has telephonic stalking down to a science.

Most people I hang out and/or work with have learned over the years that e-mail, text messages, and Instant Messaging (in that order) tend to be the best ways to get in touch with me. In case you were curious. It's not that I'm antisocial...well, actually, yes, it is.

Anyway, I was morbidly curious, and decided to try to figure out who it was--without actually calling the number (I sure as hell wasn't going to do that, lest it encourage them in some way). On a hunch, I googled "518-242" thinking that maybe I can find out in what town the 242 exchange is located. Interestingly, I turned up a whole user discussion forum about the full number 518-242-8975. Turns out, it is actually Time-Warner Cable. Which is curious, because the number on my Time-Warner account is my landline number, and my land phone correctly identifies them on the rare occasion they call me. So I assume the 242 number is the telemarketing arm of Time-Warner, trying to sell me more channels I would never watch in a million years. On the day when I can purchase cable channels a la carte, I will upgrade from the 24 channels I currently get. Until then, paying for a larger package would just be money down the toilet, since I very rarely watch TV anymore that's not a DVD. Sports are about it, and even then the vile, loathsome commercials keep me from watching at any great length. (Quite frankly, I'd rather read books.)

On the subject of how the telephone has become an instrument of torture and aggravation, I have noticed that I get a lot of calls on my landline (which may not be on the Do Not Call registry, now that I think about it) that are from machines. That's no fun--how can I torture telemarketers the way I used to?

When I lived in California, back before Caller ID and the Do Not Call list, they used to call me all the time when I was cooking dinner (this was when I had a proper job and conventional business hours--ugh), so I used to harass them mercilessly. My favorite thing to do was hold the phone right down into a loudly sizzling frying pan and tell them I can't hear them over the sound of my dinner burning. Once I morally offended someone who was trying to sell me American Express's death insurance (or whatever it was called). (Apparently, if I die, the plan ensures that AmEx gets paid. Um, if I die, AmEx is on its own.) Anyway, the telemarketer told me I could sign up for a free 30-day trial membership--to which I laughed and responded, quite logically, I thought, "You mean if I die in the next 30 days, I can be assured that this plan works? What a deal!" Seemed innocent enough, but she launched into arias about how it was nothing to joke about. I assured her that it was, in fact, something to joke about, and hung up. I must have developed a reputation among the telemarketing community because the calls started to peter out of their own accord.

But I digress...anyway, back to the machines. Perhaps it's the early stages of the robot apocalypse, I don't know. But now I just get inundated by them. So if legitimate people call me and wonder why I choose to ignore the phone ringing (which is really quite distracting when you're trying to write something), it's because 9 times out of 10, it's someone or something annoying. Makes you want to go back in time and beat Alexander Graham Bell senseless with a cordless handset.