Another topic covered in module 3 is telemarketing. It has happened to us all that we have just sat down to dinner with our family and the phone rings. When answered we are greated with a solicitation for a contribution to a charity or political campaign. I hate these. There has been quite a bit of legislation passed in recent years regaurding telemarketing. The book mentions that there are two basic types of telemarketing. These types are outbound and inbound. With outbound telemarketing the seller calls the account and with inbound telemarketing the account calls the seller. Outbound telemarketing includes the afore mentioned charity call as well as calls from credit card companies, carpet cleaners, and pest controll services. An example of inbound telemarketing is calling the phone number on a postcard that advertises timeshare property. Also worth mentioning here are autodialers. These are machines or recently computer programs that dial a series of phone numbers one after the other and play a recorded message. These can be effective for a telemarketing campaign because it eliminates the need to pay a person to make the outbound calls.
Many people do not like being disturbed by telemarketers. There recently has been laws passed that allow for do not call lists. These lists place restrictins on telemarketers that call individuals on the list. Here are links to both the national list and the Texas list.https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx