Courtesy Call, Unsolicited phone advertising

[jimmath]

Is this a familiar phone conversation in your office?

"Good morning. Jim speaking. May I help you?
"This is Fred from [a credit card company]. May I speak to the manager?
"Which business? There are two at this phone number"
"[Company A]"
"I'm sorry. He's out at the moment. May I take a message?"
"We recently sent him an invitation, and are just following up to see if he wishes to accept our offer. The time window for the offer will soon close"
"I'll pass on that message. Was your invitation sent by post, with a reply-paid envelope? Have you received his reply?"
"That's right. No, we haven't received a reply."
"I think you should have taken that fact as his reply. So why are you phoning as well?"
"As I said, I am following up on the letter. This is a courtesy call."
"I find it quite discourteous to have my work interrupted by this fruitless conversation. Please pass on this comment to your supervisor. There is one other thing you you can do for me."
"Yes, what's that?"
"Please have this phone number logged to receive no more promotional calls like this, as specified under ACA rules. Goodbye Fred."

Roll on the day when phone advertising is allowed only at the choice of the receiver!

[Valquez]

I had a long conversation with a woman in India the other day at home who rang up concerning an Australian company's investment programme... when I said I wasn't interested in interest, and pointed out the horrible irony of being rich and offered additional wealth by someone working for a foreign company in a foreign language she abandoned the investment-speak script. It was a good subversion of the communication channel. I said I'd sign up for the seminar if that was a help, although I wouldn't go to it.

Mostly tho, I get on the creaky dialup internet in the evening so as to avoid the inevitable couple of calls from people who think I own the place I rent and that Im in a tax bracket commensurate with the suburb I'm living in

[SFSniper]

On the subject of weasel words to justify our being subjected to unsolicited advertising, I've found one delicious phrase a few times in the course of my Web searches.

I am used to encountering pop-up ad screens that my browser has failed to block, on the way to some business-news article I am trying to access. Usually I can contain my irritation. I know that there is no free lunch, that we pay for our access to information by being made to look at ads, so that it will occur to some of us to buy something. But my irritation blazes forth when the ad page features a click-on button labeled "Skip This Welcome Screen." Such screens don't make me feel particularly welcome, especially when I have to click on the button a large number of times. Sometimes even when I click repeatedly, the screen doesn't seem to go away any faster than it would have spontaneously.