By: Keith Kappes
Columnist
Carter County Times
For years, I have resented the intrusion of telemarketers into our daily lives, constantly calling at all hours, trying to sell us stuff we don’t want or need. And I’ll never understand how they got my cell number.
I’ll share two examples of the craziness exhibited by those rude, pushy folks on the phone. My wife was told that her Social Security card had expired. My 96-year-old, legally blind father-in-law was chastised for not renewing the extended warranty of a car he had sold eight years earlier.
We are in the midst of a presidential election year so now another pack of hounds is after us. I’m constantly bombarded by political volunteers asking for more money or taking a survey or asking me to sign an online petition to get someone fired, hired or chased out of town.
I made a modest contribution to one of the national candidates and received more than two dozen calls and e-mails asking for more. I finally told a solicitor that if I received another call or e-mail that I would give twice as much to their guy’s opponent. That slowed down the begging but it didn’t stop completely.
I’m thinking that next year I may follow the example of one of my favorite MSU professors and change my registration to “Whig”. Henry Clay of Kentucky ran for president as a Whig and said he would rather be right than president. The voters of 1840 gave him his wish.
I’ll close with an account of my latest fight with unwanted communications. I shopped online for something trivial but didn’t buy anything. One of the websites I visited that night contacted me more than 50 times before they got tired of my snarky e-mails and informed me that Google was the problem, not them.
They told me how to block unwanted advertising messages and I did so about 100 times before I learned that I was fighting a losing battle.
Lo and behold, those folks at Google reportedly have about eight million advertisers!