All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.



Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

9/26/2012

Random

It seems like just yesterday that I posted that last bad joke Wednesday joke. It's hard to believe that an entire week went by. When I started blogging I thought I'd post once or twice a day and develop a bit of skill working on the internet and writing. I thought that commenting on the various news articles would help me develop some skills that I could use elsewhere. Then, without warning, life happened and now I bog more to keep in touch with friends. On occasion some things still happen that draw my fire, like:

Telemarketers. I’m on the national DO NOT CALL list. I have been ever since I got my own personal phone line several decades ago. In all that time I HAVE NEVER bought or signed up for, or donated money to ANYONE who called for ANY REASON, EVER. Not ever, ever, ever, nor will I. Buying stuff only encourages idiots to call. I don’t do it. There is a company that has been ringing the phone off the hook for the last year or so. It’s some credit card offer about lowering my rate. The way I normally handle this is to ask them to put me on their “do not call” list. That generally works. Most companies don’t want to call you when they know you’re not going to buy what they are selling.

Except this time it didn’t work, even after asking them for 3 months to stop calling. So last August I tried something new, every time they called I tried to get them to sign me up. This of course just pissed off the poor employee working the phone. Apparently for them to make any money, you have to have a balance on your credit card to transfer to their credit card.. Since I pay my credit card in full each month, there isn’t a balance to transfer. I had a couple of their employees slam the phone in my ear.

I’m fairly sure that my credit card company is behind this fiasco. For about the last six weeks the calls have stopped. Then this last month I had several expense that I charged on the credit card. I needed new tires, bought a new toy and had a ton of gas charged. Not a big deal since I have the money to pay for all of this and will when the payment is due in a couple of weeks. The calls have started again and they won’t leave me alone.

I’m considering changing my entire political philosophy and voting for anyone who will make telemarketing a capital offense.

6 comments:

  1. I don't get telemarketing calls. I have a co-worker that loves to screw with them. That seems to work.

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  2. WaterBoy3:15 PM

    If they are your own credit card company, they are "allowed" to call you since you do business with them. The thing to do then is to close that card and open another with a different company. If you time it right, you can even do a balance transfer and keep earning interest on your payment amount for another month.

    If they are not your existing company, they are breaking the law and they owe you money. File a complaint with the FTC or whoever it is that regulates the CC companies.

    If you want to mess with them, just breath into the phone without saying anything, or set the phone down without hanging up. At the very least, you are delaying them from calling another person; even if it's a robocaller, it still ties up one of their lines. Enough delays add up eventually to fewer calls for everyone!

    You can also install a call screener that directs the caller to hang up and add your number to their DNC list if they are a telemarketer or press 1 to continue the call; my mother has this, and it never annoys me to wait a few seconds before I can press 1 since I know it's doing her some good.

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  3. Res Ipsa5:48 PM

    I think its my credit card company beacuse they quit calling for awhile and then as soon as I racked up a big bill, which I'll pay off at the due date, they started calling again. How else would they know that I had a balance?

    I wish there was a fool proof way to nail them for the $1,000 fine for calling me. I don't know how to document it or process the claim.

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  4. WaterBoy7:01 PM

    "How else would they know that I had a balance?"

    Credit report. Outstanding balances are used to calculate your score as a percentage of your total credit limit. Credit card companies can get a list of people who are "prequalified" so they can send offers; if this list includes that kind of information, they can pretty easily determine if you already have a credit card balance.

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  5. Res Ipsa5:38 PM

    I understand that, but the balance is less than 15 days old.

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  6. Billy D7:59 AM

    Had several companies calling me about my neighbors debt, for well over a year. I'd flip out, they'd tell me it wouldn't happen again, but every time that account was sold to another company, that company would then call me. They'd actually ask me to go ask them to call these guys to settle the debt. It finally stopped when my neighbor filed for bankruptcy. Amazing. No idea how they got my name/home number...

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