At 10:11 AM 9/21/01 -0500, Joel Hammer wrote:
>i sent an email rather forcefully asking the "spammers" from the previous
>threads to cease & desist immediately. ...not a bit of it since. be it
>right, wrong or otherwise in anyone's eyes, that worked for me.
Of course it worked. Legitimate companies don't want to offend; the mail in
question included instructions as to how to get off the list; further, the
mailing was clearly directed to people in the specific industry involved;
essentially, it was a PCB industry newsletter. At the end of the newsletter
was the following:
Cafe News is a service for Design Automation professionals. PCBCafe
respects your online time and Internet privacy. If you would prefer not to
receive this type of email, please click here . You will be automatically
removed from the subscription list.
If you clicked on the link, you went to a simple subscription control page;
to unsubscribe one needed to enter one's email address and then reply to
the unsubscription confirmation.
Normally, responding to spam is simply an invitation to more spam, since
the response confirms the e-mail address; maybe that same spammer won't
mail to you gain -- maybe -- but he is not about to waste a perfectly good
email address, he'll sell it to another spammer. The business model of spam
requires that *no* time be spent dealing with the angry mail that comes
back, it just goes to filters; thus he can sell your address for a penny
and still make money.
If you really want to do more with spam than set your own filter,
complaints to ISPs are the way to go, but most spammers use throwaway
accounts or spoof return addresses; it used to be that a good way to
mailbomb someone was to send out spam with his address. By responding to
the spam one was simply playing into its purpose.
Spam is a terrible problem, cold-calling is not a problem, it is a social
benefit *when it is directed to a business number.* Junk phone calls to
residences are a modern scourge, especially if the caller is a computer.
I'd place severe legal penalties on those who waste a billion hours a year,
I don't think I am exaggerating at all, calling us at home.
If you've got a home business and use the same phone for business and
personal calls, well, that is one of the negatives of having a home business.
>now i don't want to get off on a tangent here. but...
>
>if i need your service, i'll look you and your competition up.
Certainly you think that way, and maybe you will truly behave that way
(though I suspect that if someone happens to call you with exactly what you
want close enough to when you want it, you will consider buying it). But
cold-calling requires a relatively expensive human being to set at a phone;
quite obviously, enough people respond to cold calls to make them
worthwhile. I've certainly made my share of cold calls to electronics
companies, trying to reach those in the company who would buy design
services, and many of my clients have come from those calls. Not most; most
of my business comes from referral. But one new client can mean many
thousands of dollars over the years to come, just as one job placement for
a headhunter can mean many thousands of dollars.
Opt-in systems (no uninvited contacts) may work from the public side, but
they do not work well at all from the advertiser or cold-caller side;
opt-out systems are desirable to the latter; i.e., if you don't want to
receive calls (business or otherwise) there should be a very easy way for a
potential caller to find out. Right now there is no such way. There should be.
> all of these
>companies would be better served spending their time & money on making
>certain their present customers are happy and able to contact them when they
>have a problem. instead of trying to establish a client base from people who
>are simply trying to work better and/or faster and use the net to contact
>the people they know is willing and able to help.
I've not known anyone who was dissatisfied with his or her current job who
got upset when a headhunter called.... Even when we are not dissatisfied,
it's nice to know that we have options. Fifty percent of my business last
year came because a headhunter (job shop variety) called me looking for
someone who could do Protel design. He actually called me a year before,
looking on behalf of one client; we talked for some time and I even talked
to the client but the client never went for the contract. But a year later
the same requirement came up and the client acceded to remote work instead
of on-site, which probably saved them many thousands of dollars with little
or no effect on delivery and quality -- in fact, because I can assign the
work to any of a number of expert designers, they definitely got better
service, exactly when they needed it, without paying a designer to sit
around waiting for the engineers to make up their minds what they wanted.
So I definitely don't mind when a headhunter calls me, especially if what
he wants is more or less what I can sell, and, while I am not particularly
thrilled when someone calls me who wants to design my web site, especially
when I can tell that this is a boiler-room operation, I recognize this as
part of the cost of having a business phone; I just tell them "No" as
quickly as possible and if they won't take no for an answer, then I simply
hang up. If it is an individual simply trying to find work, I'll give him
or her much more of my time if it is wanted.
No one who makes cold calls wants to offend the people being called. But,
by definition, the cold caller has no way to know that you don't want to be
called. If that was known, you would not be called!
At home, when the local newspaper calls for the twentieth time to try to
"give" me a "free" Sunday paper, I'm often not so polite.... But I've come
to think that the problem is not the literally poor person on the other end
of the line, people don't do this kind of work unless they must. The
problem is the lack of laws to regulate phone solicitation.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Abdulrahman Lomax
Easthampton, Massachusetts USA
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*
* To leave this list visit:
* http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html
*
* Contact the list manager:
* mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*
* Forum Guidelines Rules:
* http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html
*
* Browse or Search previous postings:
* http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
