Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: wolf paul Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Phone Solicitations (Ag Message-ID: <1745@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 2 Dec 89 22:30:07 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria Lines: 39 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 545, message 3 of 7 In TELECOM Digest 9/541, Bill Parrish discusses Phone Solicitation in a hospital labor room and goes on to comment: > My feeling is that this kind of thing is getting 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. The reason she can't be free from this kind of peskiness is the way this industry works. A friend of mine who complained at being called at an inopportune time and wanted to be excempted from future calls was told that they just call numbers in sequence, without even knowing in advance what type of subscriber is on the other end -- a residence, a business, a hospital, etc. And that is the thing which needs to be outlawed -- it should be prohibited to place calls to random numbers. If the direct marketers want to use the telephone, let them research their prospective customers, and call only numbers where they know at least the name of the private individual (if that's their target) or business (another legitimate target) who happens to be the subscriber. Hospital patient lines are not legitimate targets, nor are payphones in high schools, etc. -- there are certain groups of people, and certain environments, which should be protected from this nuisance. And it should be possible to get one's name struck from the lists of phone subscribers thus compiled. But I suspect that this is all to idealistic, and nothing will happen to change the way the marketing industry works. Wolf N. Paul, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Schloss Laxenburg, Schlossplatz 1, A - 2361 Laxenburg, Austria, Europe Phone: (Office) [43] (2236) 71521-465 (Home) [43] (1) 22-46-913 UUCP: uunet!mcvax!tuvie!iiasa!wnp DOMAIN: iiasa!wnp@tuvie.at