Escaping Unsolicited Telemarketing Intrusions Isn’t Getting Any Easier

It’s dinner time at the Mayer house, and right on schedule - ring! - a telemarketer’s call arrives between the grilled chicken and fresh corn on the cob. What’s a person to do?

Well, if anyone should know how to escape those unsolicited phone calls that interrupt my peas and quiet, it ought to be Douglas E. Palley, president of Unitel Corp., a small but rapidly growing telemarketing company headquartered in McLean, Md.

The 6-year-old firm can handle 50,000 calls an hour, selling all sorts of consumer items, from exercise machines and vitamins to health insurance and financial services.

So what does a telemarketing executive do when telemarketers pester him at home? Nothing subtle here. Often, Palley says, “I tell them, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Palley died.”’

Nowadays, dying may be the only way to avoid telemarketers. They have become more invasive than the door-to-door salesmen.

“The reason telemarketing works is you get a chance to speak directly to people,” says one magazine executive who declined to be named. “When you mail something, many people may never ever take a look at it. But there’s a dynamic with the phone that’s very funny. We know from research that many people like to have people call them, that many like to buy from telemarketing solicitations and that some people just can’t say no to someone on the phone.”

The sales rates confirm those findings, the executive adds. “If you’re selling a $20 magazine subscription and you send 100 pieces of mail, you may get two subscriptions,” he says. But with 100 phone calls, you’ll get about 15. Of course, he notes, there’s a larger cancellation rate from subscribers who order by phone - but not enough to put a halt to telemarketing.

So, says Palley, “until it’s not cost effective, this business will continue to flourish and consumers will continue to receive calls. That’s the free-enterprise system of America.”

In fact, Palley cautions, the assault has just begun. “The next wave is going to be your utility companies” - competing to sell you electricity once deregulation is approved.

But why is dinner time so vulnerable to telephonic invasion?

It’s inevitable, Palley says. Federal rules forbid telemarketers from making calls after 9 p.m. “That gives us a three-hour window,” says Palley, to catch people at home after work but before the 9 o’clock cut-off, and there’s a good chance that in one of those three hours you’ll either be making or eating dinner.

You can try telling the callers that you want to be placed on their “do-not-call list.” However, while such a request may get you off one or another of the lists, it won’t remove your name from all.

For one thing, non-profit organizations are not required to keep “do not call” lists. Also, in some cases, telemarketers call all numbers in a certain neighborhood or telephone exchange which market research has determined to be rich with affluent consumers who are likely to buy products over the phone.

New computerized technology may provide some relief for consumers, said Ric Rickertsen, a partner with Thayer Capital Partners, which owns the telemarketing firm, IQI Marketing Solutions.

Calls “used to be more random, like a shotgun, but have now become much more targeted,” said Rickertsen. “Hopefully that should be better for consumers.”