Several months ago, our phone rang and I was excited to see my neighbor’s name come up on the caller ID. I hadn’t heard from her for several months and I wanted to know how she was doing. But I got quite a surprise when I picked up the phone. Instead of hearing my friend’s voice, I heard a recorded message about air-duct cleaning!
I was shocked when this happened, but as time passed, more and more calls came in with our local prefix and a caller’s name, and they turned out to all be robocalls too! It didn’t take long to realize that these local names and numbers were being used to entice me to pick up, thinking that I was going to connect with a friend or neighbor. After a little research, I found out that it’s so commonplace that there’s even a name for it – “spoofing.”
As I began to realize, all I was connecting with was some vendor’s dishonesty and that really upset me. Why would they think that I would even consider talking with them (much less buying their product) when they had used a dishonest tactic to get me to answer the phone? If their product was anything like their sales tactics, I would automatically assume that it was shoddy and unreliable!
So what have their tactics accomplished? Surprisingly enough, they did persuade me to make a purchase, but I don’t think that it’s the sale they were hoping for! I went right out and bought a Call Blocker to stop all these robocalls. We’re now at 142 calls blocked, and the number is growing every day! There’s such a sense of triumph when I push the big red “BLOCK CALLER” button and know that I’ll never have to hear from them again!
Unfortunately, all our contacts won’t always be pleasant. But we can at least learn something from them, shake off our disappointment, and hope that the next call that comes in will be one that we want to take.
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