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From: bcsaic!carroll@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Jeff Carroll)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Sierra Club Considered Harmful!
Message-ID: <12183@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 15 Sep 90 02:09:13 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 648, Message 6 of 11


In article <11883@accuvax.nwu.edu> twinsun!coleman@uunet.uu.net (Mike
Coleman) writes:

>>[Moderator's Note: I can't help but wonder if the Sierra Club was
>>doing this or if they had farmed it out to some telemarketing
>>organization. If the latter, you really should not take it out on the
>>Sierra Club until you are sure they are aware of, and approve of the
>>techniques being used. The organization may have not known how
>>obnoxious their agents were on the phone.   PAT]

>From the standpoint of the call recipient, it's completely irrelevant
>that the call is coming from an agent of the SC rather than then SC.
>If I were to receive the kind of treatment the original author
>describes, I might well cut them off forever with a letter describing
>the reason, and that would be more than fair.

	A couple of years ago I received a call at 3:30 AM from a
young lady who asked me if my refrigerator was running. Incredulous, I
replied something to the effect that it was none of her ****ing
business, and did she realize that it was three-thirty in the morning.
I asked her why the hell she would call people in the middle of the
night to ask them stupid questions.

	She seemed somewhat surprised that I was angry at having been
awakened at 3:30 to answer the phone. She claimed to be representing
General Electric, but gave me a local phone number and the name of her
supervisor, which name I still remember and could be persuaded to post
here should someone feel a strong need for justice to be done.

	The supervisor was conveniently away from the office (probably
at home in bed with the phone unplugged), but I summoned enough
presence of mind to remember that GE has a 24-hour toll-free number
for comprehensive customer service for the entire GE consumer product
line.  I have no idea where I pulled up the number (possibly from
1-800-555-1212), but I called GE and reported to the polite gentleman
who answered the phone that someone was waking people in the middle if
the night in Bellevue, WA, in the name of General Electric; and I gave
the name and phone number of the supervisor.

	I was going to call him myself, but the urgency had somehow
gone out of it by the next morning.


Jeff Carroll
carroll@atc.boeing.com


[Moderator's Note: I think you were the victim of a joke. Typically,
when a child or very young person calls and asks 'is the refrigerator
running?' they are leading up to to an answer that (if you say yes,
and you nearly always will) goes, 'well then you better hurry and
catch it before it gets away.' Funny? Not very, except to young
children. Many of them assume you will be dim-witted enough to
actually go in the kitchen to find out and report back to them on the
phone, leading up to their response, mentioned above. Why this one
chose to elaborate, making reference to GE is a mystery. Chances are the
'supervisor' she mentioned was some other hapless soul. Had you called
that number, waking them up at 3:35 AM -- asking if they were 'the
supervisor for the phone solicitor who just called' -- then you would
have unwittingly perpetuated the prank, to the delight of the person
who called you first.  PAT]