Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!chinacat!telecom-gateway From: bparrish@hprnd.hp.com (Bill Parrish) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Phone Solicitation (Again) Message-ID: Date: 29 Nov 89 17:34:59 GMT Sender: news@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG Lines: 30 Approved: telecom-request@chinacat.lonestar.org X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 541, message 4 of 7 I thought I had heard it all about the various ways phone solicitors can cause grief by calling at inconvenient times, being obnoxious, not seeming to understand the meaning of "no", and so forth. Well, here's a new one. A couple of weeks ago, my wife was assisting in a birth at a local hospital. In the labor rooms, they have telephones, (since mothers- giving-birth aren't ALWAYS having contractions they can sometimes talk on the phone). Anyway, the phones are on CENTREX, and can receive incoming calls. The mother, in this case, didn't speak much English, and she answered the phone.... then got a confused look on her face and said something like "this guy says I can make a lot of money... but I can't understand what he's talking about". My wife took the phone, and heard the end of a recorded pitch selling investments. Apparently a recording machine then takes over and trys to get your name/number, etc. to call back later. My wife left some choice words on the machine and hung up. My feeling is that this kind of thing is gettiing out-of-hand and will have to be dealt with just because of the volume of junk calls. If a woman in labor can't even be free of this kind of peskiness, something legislative is probably called for. Bill Parrish / Hewlett Packard/ Roseville CA (Opinions expressed are my own, not my employers).