Thursday, September 25, 2008

Listen up: product idea for techies

I wrote a post about hard-to-deal-with vendors (aka Bad Kitties); I also have a list of Bad Phone Kitties. Remember how we all put our home phones on the national Do Not Call list? And don't you think the number of junky phone calls has lessened? Ahh, but there's no such protection for business phones. At our downtown store, I get about 8-10 junk calls every day, most of them recorded messages. That's one every hour. Or three in one hour, and then a bit of peace. They're as delightful as a fly that won't go away. Some are downright obnoxious (the guy who yells "Listen UP" scares me every time). Some are crafty, e.g., the woman who says, "Hello? Oh hi!" likes she's your old friend. And some are just stupid (yeah, I know you're not calling from Qwest headquarters if caller ID says "private number"). I don't get how this spam dialing could possibly be profitable: I mean, who actually listens to the dumb message and then signs up for a vacation getaway??

All I know is it's turning me into a screaming mimi. I'm busy at the other end of the store, the phone rings, and I run to get it, only to find it's one of the Bad Kitties. Or I'm on the phone and call waiting interrupts with the "Listen Up" dude. It's usually when I'm writing down someone's phone number and the 'boop boop' of the call waiting knocks out some of the info. Or customers are standing there, and they say, oh go ahead and get your phone, because it bothers all of us to hear a phone ringing and ringing. You hate to miss a customer calling, so I get suckered in every time. Except that I've started to consult my bad kitty phone list before I answer. If it's one of "them," I hit the answer key and then the off key to disconnect.

But here's my grand idea for a money-making invention, free for the taking: how about a little device that would call those numbers back and jam their phone lines? Or something that would send a shrieking whistle sound to their phone number? An automated voice that would say, yes, I'm interested in your stupid offer... and then transfers them to phone hell somewhere. Or maybe just a call blocker that would circumvent the calls in the first place. I'd pay for it!

I don't know. Email spam I can handle: the delete button is swift. Phone spam is intrusive, a time waster, and utterly obnoxious. I wonder if big companies are having the same problems, or if they already have magic blockers on their phone lines...

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