There’s a lovely case of the punishment fitting the crime to read about at Dave Barry’s blog.
On Aug 31, Barry wrote a Miami Herald article, describing the menace of what they call in the USA telemarketers, and what we call here junk fd*&%$ing phone calls.
… the telemarketers are claiming they have a constitutional right to call people who do not want to be called. They base this claim on Article VX, Section iii, row 5, seat 2, of the U.S. Constitution, which states: ”If anybody ever invents the telephone, Congress shall pass no law prohibiting salespeople from using it to interrupt dinner.”
And for all I know that is, approximately speaking, what the US Constitution says. Plus, if junk phone calling stopped, lots of junk phonies would be out of their junk jobs. Much the same, Barry pointed out, applies to muggers. Anyway, what’s the answer?
So what’s the answer? Is there a constitutional way that we telephone customers can have our peace, without inconveniencing the people whose livelihoods depend on keeping their legal right to inconvenience us? Maybe we could pay the telemarketing industry not to call us, kind of like paying ”protection money” to organized crime. Or maybe we could actually hire organized crime to explain our position to telemarketing-industry executives, who would then be given a fair opportunity to respond, while the cement was hardening.
Tempting. But then there’s that Constitution again. Apparently, in America, crime isn’t allowed. So Barry carried on thinking aloud:
I’m just thinking out loud here. I’m sure you have a better idea for how we can resolve our differences with the telemarketing industry. If you do, call me. No, wait, I have a better idea: Call the American Teleservices Association, toll-free, at 1-877-779-3974, and tell them what you think. I’m sure they’d love to hear your constitutionally protected views! Be sure to wipe your mouthpiece afterward.
In America, there are so many people, so many of whom will do anything you suggest to them, that of course several million people did ring this toll-free number, 1-877-779-3974, and the junk phonies (“direct marketers”) didn’t like it one bit:
The ATA received no warning about the article from Barry or anyone connected with him, Searcy said. The association first learned about the column when it received calls from fact checkers at about 100 newspapers checking whether the phone number was correct prior to printing the article.
Though meant as a prank, the Barry column has had harmful consequences for the ATA, Searcy said. An ATA staffer has spent about five hours a day for the past six days monitoring the voice mail and clearing out messages.
Nevertheless, Searcy said the effect on the ATA has been minimal and that it hasn’t complained to Barry or taken follow-up action.
Very wise. …
(While I was typing that last sentence, after I’d put “very” and just before I had typed “wise” some wanker phoned to try to sell me a complete graphic design service. Thank goodness I didn’t lose my train of thought.)
… As Barry says at his blog:
Gosh, that must have been awful! Imagine! Receiving unwanted phone calls! Without warning! How could anyone DO such a thing?
The trouble is, you can phone-nuke the “trade association” of these pests, but it just sneaks into the basesment until the radiation passes. Taking out the pests themselves is a lot harder. Barry’s punishment may have fitted the crime, but it wasn’t nearly severe enough and it left the real culprits unpunished, namely all the damn people who are doing this. In his Aug 31 article Barry mentions this new government website they have over there which means you can put yourself on a list of people who don’t like junk phone calls …
(The wanker just called again, this time wanting to talk to someone in my administration, no doubt to offer them a complete graphic design service unimpeded by me telling them to go to hell. How can I be expected to blog with these morons interrupting me? I had to switch off the music as well before answering. A Mendelssohn string quartet, rather nice.)
… full stop. That sentence was actually complete when it was interrupted, but I didn’t realise at the time. Bastards.
Anyway, drop whatever else you may be wanting to do, at once, and answer my questions. What should be done about phoners phoning to sell you rubbish you don’t want at times of maximum inconvenience, just when you are expecting other important incoming calls or about to go out? Should there be any new laws against it? Would that be libertarian? Does that matter – a lot, quite a lot, a bit, not really very much at all, not at all completely? Come on, come on, I haven’t got all day. I’ve got another two thousand intrusive blog postings to write before midnight.
Ah, I remember. But I’m reading your blog from China, where, guess what; THERE IS NO TELEMARKETING! Bwaaa-haa-haha.
There’s something interesting buried in the link. Apparently, Barry published the phone number of the American Teleservices Association and invited readers to call them up. In their response, the ATA said:
So every regional newspaper who runs a syndicated column fact-checks it before publication? The number of newspaper articles that seem to sneak through entirely un-fact-checked, and they’re telling me some bits have been checked a hundred times? Huh. Whaddya know.
Sam_S:
So what you are telling me is that to avoid telemarketers I have to move to the worlds largest penal colony? Hmmmmm. That might just be worth it.
Sam_S,
I like it. Let’s install a totalitarian pseudo-communist government to get rid of telemarketing. Some Samizdata readers might find this a little extreme but there are limitations to democracy.
The answer is very simple. Unsolicited commercial messages — in any medium — are trespassing.
The right to speak freely does not guarantee one an audience, and it is not the state’s responsibility to supply one. Nor does it require private citizens to lisen to said speech in their homes if they do not wish to.
The onus is on the telemarketers to demonstrate in advance that their message is wanted.
Also: telemarketing is bottom-feeding and, even if it can’t be made unlawful, it ought not be encouraged.
Any private action — short of physical assault — taken against telemarketers is, IMHO, fair game.
M
I just thought of a market-based solution. Really, just thought of it mere seconds ago, so it might have some holes in it, but here goes.
A telco provider could offer a deal whereby you have a premium-rate phone number except to people who are on your special “these people may call me cheaply” list. (Perhaps this could be done by having a PIN that your friends dial immediately after your main phone number, but I’m sure there are a myriad technological solutions to this problem.) So telemarketers could still call you, but it’d cost them £1 a minute. Or more. They’d quickly stop calling you. And a service like this would be massively popular, so the telco firm would make a killing by offering it. It’s a classic gap in the market.
Oo, oo, I just thought: you could have a button on your phone that, if you press it, immediately turns the call you’re receiving from a premium-rate call to a normal call, in case it’s a friend on the line.
How can I be expected to blog with these morons interrupting me?
Perhaps you could ask them for their phone number, post it on this blog, and set 5000 angry libertarians on them. It would scare me.
A feasible answer in the UK, at least, is ex-Directory. The only cold-selling calls we had for the last fifteen years are of the random-generated number type and a few existing service providers.
On another note, I am at a loss to understand why a libertarian blog should come over all Tunbridge Wells at this exercise of unrestricted commercial freedom. Samizdatistas should know better than anyone that freedom isn’t freedom for the world to be exactly as you would like it. I think you should all be bloody grateful that the Jehovas don’t telemarket. Jeez, what a pain.
At home we often screen calls – just because a phone rings you don’t have to answer it.
In the US I use an InTeleScreener which sits between the phone and wall, and prevents the phone from ringing if the number is unavailable or blocked. It also has a more restrictive mode, which will be necessary when telemarketers start sending caller-id info, which blocks all calls except those from numbers specifically allowed to pass through. On my blog I wrote a lot about my experiences with it, as wellas with phone company services like call-intercept
Fight fire with fire: when telemarketers call, listen to them for a few minutes and then say “Yes, that is very nice, but have you taken the lord jesus christ into your heart?” It’s amazing how fast they hang up. Plus, your number gets blacklisted.
Best tactics for dealing with telemarketers:
Caller:Hello, could I speak to Mr Harrison please?
Me:Who shall I say is calling?
Caller:This is Acme Market Research
Me:Please bear with me, I’ll just go get him
(puts phone to one side and go back to whatever I was doing)
Five minutes later the poor sap will almost certainly have given up and hung up.
Brian et al,
I count myself as libertarian also and yet have no problem regulating the practice. I have been ex-directory (or unlisted as we call it in the US) but that doesn’t stop a fair number leaking through just the same. I’ve taken to just hanging up in their ears. I figure it is far less rude than their invasion of my privacy.
Megan McArdle of Assymetrical Information wrote on the topic back in July here in a far more convincing (and amusing way) than I could so I’ll let her speak for me.
Laws we don’t need now stinking Laws….
What we need is a court system that will allow for proper tort cases.
Basically a telemarketer is stealing service/time from you. I pay $50 (that’s probably around 25 pounds) for MY use of the phone service. Further if I’m talking to the telemarketer, I’m not working and that also costs me money.
All told I’ve out a good $5 every time I get a call. Now I can see forgiving them on a first offence, but I get constant calls from the same idiots.
I should be able to get together all the people they call, and bring a case against them for damages. Let’s see how that affects their bottom line, and how long before they would pack up and move on to doing something less costly.
Same goes for spam email
Correspondent Nuwen above has the right idea. What is needed is legal recognition of the ordinary citizen’s right to submit a bill for his/her time when it is used by another. Then, if a telemarketer takes your time, you may dial in a billing code and charge the company calling you for your time.
This is also the answer to computer spam and unwanted popups. The time and space used on your computer by spam are now wasted. If the ordinary recipient of such unsolicited emails and adverts could legally respond with a bill for time and space used, the spam problem would lessen, and the receiver would be compensated for any time or memory space occupied by unwanted messages.
I would also like the right to extend to the vicitms of those self-important persons who keep others waiting for long periods when an appointment has been made. It would do my heart good to have the nurse at the dental office tell me that the charge for the filling is such and such, if I could respond by saying the charge for keeping me waiting for 45 minutes extra was so and so.
I doubt any such charges would ever be recognized as valid. The obvious lobbying against such a thing by the banks, insurance companies, auto makers, and anyone else who keeps you waiting on the phone or wading through an interminable series of “if you wish doodly do, push 8” would doom the idea.
But next time you’re listening to “Your call is important to us, so please stay on the line”, amuse yourself with the possible wording of your bill to the time wasters on the other end. Mine always include something like “Since you have already told me 42 times how important I am, you must realize my time is very important also.”
one:
“I have to move to the worlds largest penal colony?”
another:
“totalitarian pseudo-communist government to get rid of telemarketing”
You guys ought to visit: The Communist Party is just the name of the ruling party. On the ground, the politics are more like a strange mix of mercantilism and Confucianism.
When someone wants to open a bicycle repair shop here, they haul their tire pump and wrenches out to the sidewalk and go to work. How many certificates, permits, inspections, special taxes and reports have to be completed to do this where you are? Personal taxes are around 10%. I’m a fairly rabid US patriot, but I don’t delude myself about the actual levels of freedom available.
But this has nothing to do with telemarketing now, so I’ll shut up.
I would support a law that all telemarketers have to send a valid caller ID, which I would view as a perfectly libertarian sort of law. Company letters have to have the address of their registered office on them. Just extend the principle of that law to phone calls. I don’t think one has the right to remain anonymous and uncontactable to people whom one is trying to sell stuff to.
My big problem with most of this discussion is that I have actually bought stuff from telemarketers before. Most of them can piss off, but, just occasionally, one rings up with a genuinely good offer. My first digital mobile phone was the result of such a call, and it was a lovely phone (started my love affair with Nokia) with very low line rental. So I tend to give telemarketers a few seconds to convince me they’re worth talking to. Usually they fail. But not always.
Speaking of spam, over on Airstrip One there’s an amusing take-off of those letters we receive from charming African sons/brothers/cousins of former dictators who are eager to give us $2million for our time and good offices. It begins, “I am George Walker Bush, son of the former president of the United States of America George Herbert Walker Bush, and currently serving as president of the United States of America. This letter might surprise you …” Read it! It’s a hoot!
Verity: weirdly, all the Nigerian Scam variants I’ve gotten have come to the address I use on Samizdata. And I’ve gotten dozens of them, literally. Whereas none of the other addresses I use have gotten any, and I use this address in few other places.
This account gets Nigerian Scam variants, people trying to email me executable attachments and very occasionally a penis enlargement product. I’ve always meant to ask if that’s the general Samizdata experience.
(I almost said “occasional penis enlargement product”, but that sounded too much like a bicycle pump).
Brian:
I watched a great episode of Seinfeld when he gets a call from a telemarketer.
TM: Can I speak to Mr Seinfeld?
JS: I’m kind of busy right now. Why don’t you give me your home telephone number and I’ll call you there later?
TM: I’d rather not give you my number.
JS: Why not? Is it because you don’t like total strangers calling you at home? That’s what I thought. (Jerry hangs up)
I now use this technique myself.
Now, that is brilliant.
Very nice blog