I really dislike getting phone calls that turn out to be recorded messages. If the call is for a product, I go out of my way to not buy that product. This week, I’ve received two recorded calls from my MPP. I hung up the first time after taking note of whose recorded voice was calling me. The second time, tonight, I stayed on the line just long enough to find out that I could participate by phone on some kind of live session about the provincial budget. Guess what? We’re having a provincial election and my MPP lost my vote by calling me twice with recorded messages. It was just that easy. I may have voted for her but she blew the mission.
Note to politicians: if you want to lose my vote, have a recorded message call me. To drive a nail in the coffin, do it at dinner time just to make sure I don’t forget. Look, if you want to talk to me, feel free to give me a call personally or drop by the house. I always have a few minutes to talk to people running for office. Convince me to vote for you. Maybe I will. Maybe I have preconceived ideas about these things, but try to convince me. You might just succeed. But if some daft communications guy on your campaign comes up with the bright annoying and disrespectful idea of auto-calling constituents, just say NO.
I might add that I never ever buy anything from telemarketers or donate to any charity over the phone. For charities, I give them a fighting chance. I suggest they send me something with details about the organization and I’ll consider it. Almost without exception they tell me they can’t do that. Too bad. I don’t really mind getting the odd call from telemarketers because it helps me make choices. If I need duct cleaning or windows or whatever it is, I know who not to call.
There, I feel better now. What bugs you?
27th Street 
This is interesting I think. I made a mistake today and went into a Zehrs store. I say mistake because their prices are so high that it is astonishing. I only bought 4 items and when the cashier asked if I wanted a bag I said yes please. “A bag is 6 cents thanks to Dalton McGinty and his HST” she said. That is actually the 3rd time I have heard that line from a cashier and it leads me to believe that the grocery stores are telling their staff to blame poor Dalton for the fact that their endless greed has led them to charge customers a nickel for a bag. Well I pretty much lost it right there. First of all if the bastards that ran the stores werent so greedy the bags would be free. The Loblaws chain has to have among the highest margins of any grocery store on the planet and there is flat out no excuse for them charging for a bag when a chain like Walmart can charge 25% less for their groceries and still find a way to provide free bags. Greed. Pure unbridled greed. And please dont tell me that charging for bags is somehow good for the environment. Paper bags would be good for the environment but you cant get a paper bag at Zehrs since they discovered they could charge for plastic ones. This annoys me so much that I now do 99% of my grocery shopping at Walmart where I get a free bag. I point and laugh as I drive past Zehrs. They have lost me as a customer forever.
Then there is the issue of politics at the cash register. I don’t for one second believe these cashiers are blaming poor Dalton on their own. Maybe they are but I don’t believe it. I believe they are being told to blame him and his party in an effort to both deflect scrutiny of their greed and to influence the voters in the next election. Shame on you Zehrs.
Ok so the HST adds a penny to the cost of a 5 cent bag. Big deal. Wait a minute. That is 20%. What kind of cash grab is that? 20% ? Shouldn’t somebody go to jail for that? Surely there needs to be a minimum purchase below which no tax is charged. Why is it that when a cash grab gets discovered everyone has to pile on?
I’m not even sure why I bother to have a phone anymore. The only calls we get are from telemarketers, 75% of them being recorded calls.
I am with you all the way on the recorded telemarketer thing. That is about as close to being pond scum as you can get. For quite a while I used Bell call answer as an message taking system. It was ok because if folks called and I was on the phone or using my dial up internet it would reasonably competently take a message. After a while I noticed that a disproportionate number of my messages were recordings left by telemarketers on my recording system. Soon I was getting 3-5 of these recorded ads every day and if I wanted to use the phone I had to sit through listening to the damn things. Then one day the light bulb lit. Bell was selling my number to folks with recordings. In fact I suggest they went even further by loading paid for messages to my message system without the need for the telemarketers to even bother phoning. Bastards. I called up the phone company in a rage to cancel the service. I accused them of being sleazeballs in cahoots with the folks with recorded messages. They were unable to deny this. Miraculously once I cancelled call answer all of the recorded telemarketers vanished and now I get maybe one a month instead of 3-5 a day.
The other thing that totally infuriates me is that the telemarketers have become so cheap that they outsource their call centers to some other country where English is a 3rd or 4th language. That results in people from India or some other far off place phoning me and attempting to sell something using English that is so poor I cant understand them. This has led me to be totally intolerant of even the slightest accent and I invariably say something like “Im sorry your English is so bad I cant understand you may I speak with your supervisor or someone else who can speak English” That really puts them on the spot because they dont want to tell their supervisor that they can not be understood so usually they just hang up but sometimes I get to speak with the boss and give him a thorough tongue lashing.
And then there is the misleading grocery store advertising… Oooooh God dont get me started…