Has this happened to you? You get home from work, tired from the day and the commute and looking forward to spending the only couple hours you have with your infant daughter and your wife. You balance cleaning up the house while getting dinner ready – and the phone rings.
But it’s not someone soliciting a newspaper subscription, or someone trying to get you to take a new credit card. After all, if you’re on the do not call list (https://www.donotcall.gov/) those types of calls are illegal.
No, the call is from one of those groups that are excluded from the do not call rules. From the donotcall web site…
[omitted] calls from or on behalf of political organizations, charities, and telephone surveyors would still be permitted [omitted]
And if you live in New Hampshire and you’ve registered Democratic or Republican, you get upwards of 10 calls a week. Yes, you get calls from any and every media source running some type of poll or survey. So tell me, why should I participate in this survey? I’m not getting paid, and don’t even try to pretend that the people doing the poll aren’t getting any type of financial gain – after all they are taking your data and then selling the service to someone else.
How is that not a commercial gain? Why aren’t these calls restricted? Why is it ok to interrupt my personal time for someone else’s attempt at monetary gain? For one thing, polls and surveys have a tendency to be misleading and in fact, work counter to the democratic process. Do a Google search of the terms political polls misleading and browse through some of the million and a half pages. People hear and view the results of these polls and from that they decide who is most likely to be elected before they decide who they would want to hold the office. This is the same debate that goes on during election night, where the media outlets won’t release preliminary numbers while polls are still open – of course voters in the western states are surely being affected by the return numbers of the eastern states. In the rush for news outlets to be the first to announce the winners (and thereby getting a larger audience and selling for advertising) we’re allowing the sacrifice of the democratic process.
So the other night I’m holding my daughter, spending the little time I have with her, when the phone rings. Except this time it’s not even a person. It’s a recording, of a news persona (Joe Shortsleeve, like that would make me just open up!). So now they don’t even have the decency to talk directly to me…they probably use an auto caller (guessing here) and start the recording when the line is live. I can’t even talk to someone to say don’t call me anymore!
It’s frustrating. I’m all for participating in the political process as a voter. I’ll take literature handed out about candidates (snail mail works great for this). I’ll visit their web sites. And heck, if I’m in a jolly mood and on a news media web site I may even participate in a poll or survey. But the difference here is that *I* decide how and when I’ll communicate…don’t force me to stop what I’m doing to help you profit.
So here’s my suggestion from this point forward: for any call I receive requesting my participation in a survey or poll, I will first “request” from the caller a credit card or paypal account so that I can charge the nominal fee of $1 per minute of the phone call. It’ll be worth the extra paperwork with the IRS when filing taxes to do this ;)
