Tirade Tuesday: telemarketers and Bellsouth's "Privacy Director"

jmvannoy · 2006-07-04T17:08:41+00:00

OK I have one for Tirade Tuesday. Bellsouth has thisanti-telemarketing thing called privacy director (folks here in thegroup may know about it). Anyway the idea is when someone calls whosephone does not transmit their name or phone number via caller ID, theircall is answered by an automated service that asks for their name andcompany name; after they give it, then my phone rings; when I answer,the automated service replays the person's name and company name thatwas just recorded seconds ago. I can now press 1 to accept the call orpress 2 to reject the call. If I reject, the caller gets a pleasantautomated voice saying "the party has rejected your call."OK, so far it sounds great. But there is this one company that keepscalling me, and I keep rejecting their call. They call about 2 times aday, and so far they're up to about 15 calls. What do these peoplethink, if they bug the living hell out of me, I'll eventually accepttheir call? And if I do, what kind of mood am I going to be in - willI sit and happily listen to their sales pitch and then buy their crappyproduct? Chances of that are very low. That's it.John

Jul 04, 2006 21 Replies

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jmvannoy 20 years ago

That's what we wound up doing. We had to accept the call and tell them in person to stop calling. Unfortunately, that's what the Privacy Director is supposed to do - insulate you from having to talk directly to them. You press 2 to reject the call and that should be enough. In the case of Arbitron, they took the reject to mean "maybe; call me later."

Arbitron is officially on my *crap* list.

John

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