Gallowglass

I am not so sure that it will be a bloodbath for telemarketers. I think it is reasonable to assume that those who sign the do-not-call list most likely never bought anything from a telemarketer to begin with. So, it seems to me that removing them from the list would allow telemarketers to reach those callers who are still on the list who may be more likely to purchase the crap that they sell. I believe the logic behind my argument too be pretty sound, but please let me know if you disagree.

I’ve read though that telemarketers actually prize the customers who make it difficult to contact them; very often these customers make it hard precisely because they know that they are soft sells, and likely to give in once a telemarketer nails them on the phone. This is on the level of urban myth though - don’t know if it really counts as countervailing evidence.

The FTC’s do-not-call list excludes calls made on behalf of political organizations, solicitations for charitable donations, or calls to conduct surveys. I don’t know about you, but the last two make up the bulk of my unwanted calls.

There’s a lot of money in the charitable solicitation business. The companies which do this kind of work - like Xentel, which is prominent in Canada and the US - often take 60-80% of the donation as a fee. That’s one reason why I won’t give to charities which use telemarketing to raise funds.

Worst job I ever had was doing telemarketing for charitable donations, one long, hot and hungry summer in Toronto. The best bits were when an elderly person living in the middle of nowhere would pick up and want to chat, which happened a lot more often than you’d think. Luckily, that was before supervisors listened in on calls to ‘monitor performance’. Then there were the moments when the random person on the other end broke into my hokey script to announce that a relative of theirs had died of X disease. At first, I used to just feel sad for them, but soon I realised they were prime targets to be pumped for a big donation. I’d like to say it was crossing this moral line that led me to leave. But I didn’t actually chuck it in until I’d moved up the food chain to a part-time dishwashing job.

So, responding to antirealist, I don’t have a whole lot of time for this kind of fund-raising either. OTOH, I also temped for a UK charity at another time, and I’m never sure which way to go on the conundrum of knowing that, even if the telemarketers hoover up big percentages, they still raise money the charities wouldn’t have had otherwise.

In any case, the subject of low overhead and voluntary fundraising cannot be visited without at least a mention of Eszter Hargittai’s participation in the 2003 blogathon:http://campuscgi.princeton.edu/~eszter/weblog/blogathon03/ . Plug plug.

Very nice blog