Phone Pollution
I have been watching this entire election, from a distance really because I haven’t read any news articles, we turned the cable off again about six months ago. I am so thankful because I would have sat here mesmerized only to listen to the pundits drivel on about every nuance of certain candidates.
For once, I wasn’t the only person complaining. Many of the people I spoke to, were so sick of the phone calls and constant bombardment that they decided to simply stay home and not vote. I seriously considered it myself and I am the first person to encourage others to vote. I’ve been known to taunt anyone within earshot with, “If you don’t vote, you don’t have any complaints coming, so be sure to keep your mouth shut if you don’t like the way things are being run.” or more colorful words to that effect.
I am holding Ron Paul personally responsible for my coming completely unglued this week. I couldn’t figure out why on earth we were getting so many political phone calls and so much political mail this year. Every piece of political material I looked at with great concern. Most candidates were chatting up how we need to cut spending, be more fiscally responsible, all the while spending millions of dollars, wasting tons of trees for huge advertising campaigns.
With every new avalanche of mail, I could only shake my head and wonder how on earth they could run a fiscally responsible state, when they couldn’t even run a thrifty campaign.
Then I wondered what I had done to deserve so many political phone calls. My husband and I work from home and basically work around the clock on many occasions. We squeeze every dollar, so our home phone is our business phone. Our phone rang on average 6 times a day with political ads and those under-handed Republican sponsored “surveys” that really weren’t surveys. I find that kind of stuff very distasteful, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I can remember one evening, when we were on a scheduled conference call with a client, and were about ten minutes into our conference, when the Steve Poizner’s campaign computers were set to autodial our telephone. He interrupted our conference call six times. I was so angry when I hung up that I immediately tried to contact his staff but was only able to find an email or answering machine.
I finally was able to reach someone on his staff the following day, and they apologized “but it could take up to 12-hours to stop the calls.” I voiced my opinion then resigned myself to having to wait another 12-hours, only to have yet another call come in from his team two-days later. And three more yesterday.
I tried using my call blocking service (that I pay for) to block Steve Poizner from calling, after all, it was a regular (916) area code, not an 800 number but AT&T’s phone system would not allow me to block his calls.
In all the years I have been old enough to vote, I have never had this much mail or this many telephone calls and I couldn’t figure out why, until I realized, I had changed my voter designation from Libertarian to Republican, so that I could endorse, then vote for Ron Paul in the last presidential election. I guess since I registered as a Republican the party feels I am fair game.
I called AT&T to complain about the telephone calls, which on some days numbered over a dozen. AT&T couldn’t or wouldn’t help me. I tried to find contact information for the FCC to file a complaint but they have changed their system once again and I wasn’t able to find the proper link again.
I have singled out Steve Poizner because he was by far the worse offender, as far as making me lose my mind this month but he wasn’t alone. Meg Whitman team called way too much as well.
AT&T provides our local services, we have a wonderful package with all the bells and whistles, which we pay dearly for (over $250.00 per month). I want to know why if I am paying for this phone service and I have paid for call blocking, why I am not getting the services I am paying for? It’s my telephone! I pay my bill, each and every month! Can someone tell me why I can’t block any telephone number that I want, it’s certainly not because we don’t have the technology to do so?
My only wish is that I had kept a log of all the calls. I am sure I could get the list of incoming calls from AT&T some how.
Are you sick of the campaign calls? The wasteful mailings. You should see how HUGE they are. I’ve never seen anything like it.