Just Let It Ring! - A heartfelt Hello to everyone! - Most likely this is nothing new to you, but every other time we all seem to be forgetting about it. The stupid home telephone rings, and you really get going as to still get the call, right? What for, I wonder? The people you call friends, family and colleagues can leave a message, and all those who don't know you but call you anyway can frankly speaking goof off. I truly regret the day we had Time Warner come in and set up their over- priced triple package service including Internet, TV and phone. Actually I had been the one pushing for a land line because where we live our cell phones simply slack too much in terms of reception as to be permanently relying on a potential three- bar- connectivity on good days. Okay, the very same day that Time Warner technician left, the first call came in from a tele- marketer. Within the 21 months that we've been here, we must have approximately received 1500 cold calls, as they are called here. Computers randomly dial registered land line phone numbers and distribute these to all kinds of companies, institutions, marketing offices, etc., etc. The list is indeed endlessly long as there are more cold callers on their way in to inundate our privacy. There's sucker born every minute is what pops into my mind right away as the reasons for calling are just as manifold to possibly fall for. The range of motives spans from harmless but annoying marketing, survey and general informative career calls to fiercely competitive offers in fields such as alternative sources of power to relentlessly imposed custom service choices with respect to home improvement, landscaping, insurance quotes of all sorts to even ill- reputed, dubious or fake authority gimmick attempts to scam and exploit naive and preferably old and female victims. I honestly and whole- heartedly despise every single one of them and will never get used to it. Where I come from we don't know such yet, and I can only hope that this bad habit is not taken over there any time soon. As unthinkable as a lack of spamming and phishing has become in the electronic world of today, as much have cold calls turned into a fixed part of nowadays' telephone communication. What really bothers me most though, some call centers keep pestering and harassing you in a most cocky and undeterred manner by just switching their callers! Many times I have asked and even implored to unidentified and anonymous callers to please take our names off their lists and finally let go of us to no avail whatsoever! Sure, there are ways to block certain phone numbers, but this is often only of temporary help. Just think, all those big telephone companies sell your phone numbers right from the get- go and still shamelessly rack in high monthly fees on top! There's just no way to win the battle ever, let alone the whole war. Now Google and other huge businesses have started to strike on our cell phones as well which makes it rather impossible to enjoy telephoning altogether. The only way out of this zoo - except for the audible molestation maybe - is to get yourself an answering machine and ignore all incoming calls from now on. Most cold callers don't leave a message and are likely to stop calling you again if nobody ever answers their calls as there would clearly be no more gains for them this way. Just like one of our most recent calls only revealing a two- word fragment of their message, I would like to encourage you to say "Good- bye" and just let it ring!
Buy small and local Hi everybody! - Coming from a tiny country like Austria, one might assume that globalisation is just a phenomenon tailored for larger nations, but no, it has also been affecting us all across Europe. Globalisation itself is of complex nature, and even though I'm not planning to write about globalisation per se today, it somehow dictates our overall shopping behavior by bringing in more and more big box chain stores worldwide which sets the general trend for methodically and eventually putting local small family- run as well as individualists' shops out of business. In the 70ies I remember mom and dad taking us along to a wide range of stores from the baker to the butcher, the grocer's, the florist, the hard ware place, the electrician, the tobacco store, etc. What great memories our weekly trips to the market created for us. There we would hand- pick fresh fruit, produce, and other delicacies. Sometimes we would even get a piece of fruit or a carrot fo...
i agree i have called the opt out number but still get them annoying calls...i just hang up when i know it is a tele marketer after telling them to take me off their list....should be a law against calls like that and when they do not take no for a answer!!
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