Monday, May 28, 2007

Why we regret being nice.

8 comments:

A Paperback Writer said...

This is why I have caller ID. I give where I want to give and ignore the rest.

Anonymous said...

I spent some time pondering the slope of your line, and eventually decided you had it exactly right.


sigh.



Love your site, BTW :)

Katie said...

So true. This very phenomenon has turned me into a very nasty person who crosses charities off her list once she receives a phone call from them...

Mad Monk said...

Canadian content please?

Anonymous said...

Sometimes you make my brain hurt...

Anonymous said...

You want Canadian content? Just give once to MADD. Great concept ruined by aggressive behaviour.

Anonymous said...

LOVE the site. Demetri Martin from the Daily Show is scooping your stuff (sorta, kinda - there's charts, and comedy, I think you could claim precedence).

I've done a little research on this sorta stuff, 'cause we started getting 5-6 calls a day, six days a week, about a year after giving to a firemen's thing of some sort. The calls were all hang-up, or just dead air, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. Googled the phone number on the caller ID, and nothing came up. Tried calling it, and couldn't get a ring.

Here's the scoop:

Xentel had bought the list of previous donators from the Fireman's Charity.
They give the charity a set amount of $$$ (let's say $10,000) for a month of being "in the rotation" for the call center.
Any $$$ over $10,000 Xentel makes, they keep. See why they might get a little pushy?
They also "bulk dial" which means they'll dial 100 phone numbers, and the first X number of people who pick up and say hello get sent through to the call center folks. Any "hello"s after 100 get dead air.
Here's the gross part: You can tell them to take you off their list, and they'll comply, but only for the charity they were calling on behalf of at that moment. It's not uncommon for them to run four or five different charities in a given day.
So, yeah. I can see why they (and groups like them) have been sued by various states over the years.

Me said...

Looks like someone has been biting the hand that feeds it :(

 
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