nds76
11-08-2005, 8:26pm
Have you ever had one of those off-the-wall experiences when you thought, "no one will ever believe this just happened?" Well, Monday was my day in bizarre-o-world.
At 5:30 on Monday afternoon, I stepped into an elevator in a friend's condominium, and the phone started to ring. Not my cell phone, but the emergency phone in the elevator.
That in itself was a bit odd. After all, when was the last time you heard an elevator phone ring? But that’s not the bizarre part.
The unbelievable part happened when I decided to answer the phone that wouldn’t stop ringing. I know that "curiosity killed the cat," but I wanted to know who in the world was calling an elevator.
So I reached down, opened the little door, and picked up the big brown elevator phone. I answered with an inquisitive and slightly tentative "hello." Turns out, it wasn’t a call telling me the building was on fire or that my car was being towed from the parking garage. No, after the brief but heightened anticipation, it turns out it was a solicitation for a credit card!
Has it really come to this? Cold-calling elevators to see if some desperate soul will succumb to yet one more credit card solicitation before reaching the ground floor?
When I told the person on the other end of the line that, "they had just called an elevator," there was dead silence. Imagine that -- I rendered a telemarketer speechless.
While the turn of events was indeed a bit surreal, it reinforces what we already suspect to be true -- that credit card solicitations have reached a new level of annoyance.
In the first quarter of 2005, a record 1.4 billion credit card applications were sent via direct mail, according to a recent story by Bob Sullivan of MSNBC. That's 5.8 applications per household every month.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to locate how many telemarketer calls were made during that same time period. But if my recent experience was any indication, I’m guessing the telemarketer calls were also at record levels.
http://www.nbc5.com/money/5277326/detail.html??z=dp&dpswid=1260382&dppid=65192
At 5:30 on Monday afternoon, I stepped into an elevator in a friend's condominium, and the phone started to ring. Not my cell phone, but the emergency phone in the elevator.
That in itself was a bit odd. After all, when was the last time you heard an elevator phone ring? But that’s not the bizarre part.
The unbelievable part happened when I decided to answer the phone that wouldn’t stop ringing. I know that "curiosity killed the cat," but I wanted to know who in the world was calling an elevator.
So I reached down, opened the little door, and picked up the big brown elevator phone. I answered with an inquisitive and slightly tentative "hello." Turns out, it wasn’t a call telling me the building was on fire or that my car was being towed from the parking garage. No, after the brief but heightened anticipation, it turns out it was a solicitation for a credit card!
Has it really come to this? Cold-calling elevators to see if some desperate soul will succumb to yet one more credit card solicitation before reaching the ground floor?
When I told the person on the other end of the line that, "they had just called an elevator," there was dead silence. Imagine that -- I rendered a telemarketer speechless.
While the turn of events was indeed a bit surreal, it reinforces what we already suspect to be true -- that credit card solicitations have reached a new level of annoyance.
In the first quarter of 2005, a record 1.4 billion credit card applications were sent via direct mail, according to a recent story by Bob Sullivan of MSNBC. That's 5.8 applications per household every month.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to locate how many telemarketer calls were made during that same time period. But if my recent experience was any indication, I’m guessing the telemarketer calls were also at record levels.
http://www.nbc5.com/money/5277326/detail.html??z=dp&dpswid=1260382&dppid=65192