PhoneSpam and the awesome power of the Do Not Call Registry…

SOMEONE must be profiting from these brute force attacks on our time, and our every communication channel – just don’t let it be your company.

Like you, we get E-mail Spam, Fax Spam, Snail-mail Spam, and, yes, Phone Spam. And like you, we tried to fight back – at first. Remember “unsubscribe links” that did??? (There’s one to tell your disbelieving grandchildren!)

Then came the fall from innocence: “So wait… when I click on ‘unsubscribe’, most of the time a spammer is overjoyed because they now know my e-mail is valid, and it will  (*sob*) INCREASE my volume of spam???”

Then there was the National Do Not Call Registry, with its promise of quiet phones. We registered in 2003, and for a while, it helped. Lately, though, we’ve been inundated by waves of pre-recorded, auto-dialing sales pitches thinly disguised as surveys or contests.  We have 4 lines here, and sometimes ALL of them will ring at once. It would follow that Phone Spammers now use the registry as a ready-made whom to call list.

It happened again today – all lines ringing – and I snapped.

I answered 2 of the lines (sure enough, from the same company), triggered their recorded messages, pushed the conference button on my phone connecting the two cyber-salesmen – and went for a coffee.

Once I calmed down, I went to the Do Not Call Registry and registered a complaint. I used the Caller ID number to report them, but since they, too, are faked all the time (I’m sorry, Virginia, but it is true…), I really have no idea if the perp will be brought to justice, or if a legitimate company has been framed by some offshore phone spammer.

The business moral of the story – one we practice, ourselves, and drum into all our clients – is to never, never contact a prospect who hasn’t explicitly invited marketing or sales contact. That goes double for any automated, mechanical means of contact. If you do, be prepared to become a lightning rod for all the pent-up frustration the spammed hold for their hidden antagonists.

A word to the wise…