Phone Spam
We live in a world of spam - first it was junk mail polluting your physical mail box (which has never really bothered me much), then the unabating tide of email spam, then blog spam - but now phone spam is becoming an increasingly worse problem.
Now we have an unlisted phone number to stop crazy patients calling me up and harassing me at odd hours - actually at any hour - when I’m not at work I am off limits as a doctor (aside from my obstetric work and of course for family and friends etc). But anyway, even though we have a silent number it hasn’t stopped us getting several calls a week from mass marketers, usually with an Indian accent and poor conversational skills. They usually manage to call right on dinner time, and often get very ticked off when we tell them we are not interested and not to call again.
Fortunately, there is a glimmer of hope for this problem. The government has passed a law forming a register where you can opt-out of receiving all marketing calls, with a risk of prosecution of companies that do not comply. And until that law comes into force, you can register online with the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) to stop calls from their members, which may help somewhat. Apparently it takes a few weeks for the calls to stop so we’ll have to wait and see how effective it is … don’t know how many firms in Bombay and Madras are members of ADMA?
[hat-tip to Rodney for this useful information]
Categories : Australia, News | 0 Comments
