We’ll miss the warm glow of the cold call

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/25/cold-call-crackdown-nuisance

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Legal changes will make it easier for the information commissioner to fine cold callers. I assume the only people objecting to this will be the cold callers themselves, and perhaps even they will not be wholeheartedly disapproving, since after a long, hard day of cold calling people it must be irritating to come home and be cold-called yourself.

Last year 175,000 people complained to the information commissioner about cold calls. I was not among them, but I have been thinking of getting rid of my land line because it seems I only have two uses for it: to answer what turn out to be cold calls, and to phone my mobile to check its whereabouts.

When it comes to cold calls, iniquity is piled on iniquity. A lot of us were missold payment protection insurance, which in turn triggered cold calls offering dubious routes to compensation.

When a cold caller rings my mobile, this is designated as coming from a private number, yet my own number is apparently not private. I state these familiar grievances to establish my credentials as someone who is against cold calls.

But given that there seems very little prospect of the new regime actually stopping cold calls, it’s worth trying to see the upside of them, which is easier in the case of the non-automated ones.

According to the digital economy minister, Ed Vaizey, the UK has a “legitimate direct marketing industry”, and I suppose he may have a point. The other day I was cold-called by a man suggesting I renew a subscription to a magazine. He was offering me six issues of this magazine, which retails at £3.10, for £1.

Naturally, I was on my guard. “What’s in it for the magazine?” I asked. His answer – “We want to show our advertisers that we’ve got a lot of subscribers” – seemed irrefutable. He then asked for my bank account number and sort code to create a direct debit, and there I drew the line.

My policy was always to be rude unless they were calling from India in which case postcolonial guilt would check me

But as I put the phone down, I couldn’t help thinking he had a point when he said, despairingly, “But you give out those details every time you write a cheque.”

My policy with more provocative cold callers was always to be rude, unless they were calling from India, in which case postcolonial guilt – the liberal white man’s burden – would check me.

I was once called by an echoing man from, I think, Mumbai, whose opening gambit was: “Sir, I am betting you receive a lot of annoying nuisance calls.” If I would give him certain personal details, he could stop these, in his capacity as “a representative of a completely official and pukka British government body”. I quite enjoyed talking to him. He was a character.

But with British callers, I would bluster, “I can’t talk. I am extremely busy at the moment.” I would slam down the phone, only for a little recriminatory voice in my head to pipe up. “Come on, then,” it would say: “if you’re so busy, start doing something.”

Sometimes I would blurt, “Fuck off.” I would then sit, braced for them to call me back and tell me to fuck off. This happened only once, and it was almost a relief because then I could “move on”. In a way, it was worse when they didn’t reciprocate, because the insult I’d delivered would echo in my head for the next two hours.

Sometimes I would try to outwit the cold caller. In an episode of Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld fields a cold call by saying: “Sorry, can’t talk now, but give me your home number and I’ll call you back later.”

The cold caller says he can’t do that. Seinfeld says: “That’s because you don’t like being called at home, right? Well, now you know how I feel.” I’ve tried that line, but the rapturous studio audience cheers and laughter that greet the Seinfeld coup are conspicuous by their absence.

(And don’t try winding up the cold-caller by saying yes to everything he says, because then he’ll ask: “and you’re a moron, right?”)

The rule I have developed is as follows: don’t deal with cold callers in such a way that you waste even more time by worrying afterwards about what you said. Be terse, if necessary, but polite. Be grateful, if you’re a man, that here is somebody addressing you as mister. The call is also a reminder that you are rich enough to have a telephone, and possibly enough money to make it worth trying to scam you.

Finally, a cold call is a real-time vocal interaction with a genuine stranger. There are many colder phenomena in the modern world.