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Ask and ye shall receive. About a month ago, I invited correspondence from anyone who knows how to prevent those nuisance telemarketing calls that always come in the evening when you should be enjoying dinner with your family.
Among the responses was one charming suggestion -- keep a police whistle next to the phone, and deploy it as necessary until the callers get the idea.
Most letters mentioned a federal law I hadn't known about: the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. If you tell a pesky solicitor not to call again, and you continue to suffer from interrupted dinners, then you can take the company to small-claims court and collect $500 for the first infraction and up to $1,000 for subsequent irritations.
One Michael Jacobson, a consumer advocate in Washington, did apply the law. Citibank called to offer credit-card discount services. He told them twice to quit calling. After the third call, he won a $750 settlement.
The important thing, he said, is not to hang up
immediately, but to say Never call me again,
and to
keep records of who called and when, so that you're
prepared to go to court.
If you want to pursue this, Jacobson sells a Stop the
Calls
kit for only $3 from the Center for the Study of
Commercialism, 1875 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 300,
Washington, D.C. 20009. It explains the law, has forms for
recording calls and explains how to use the law without a
lawyer.
To be fair, there are people who enjoy solicitations, and if you're among them, I'll be glad to accommodate you.
Martha and I are starting a local regional magazine
called Colorado Central.
This part of the world --
from Leadville and Fairplay south to Saguache and
Westcliffe -- attracts considerable tourism, but it's not
in the resort belt. It's rural but not especially
agricultural. After a decade as a rather stagnant
backwater, this region is attracting new people and new
enterprises, although nobody seems to know precisely
why.
Change is inevitable, but the emerging directions in the New West offer little comfort. A community can be occupied by the rich and famous, like Aspen, and there's little or no room for anyone else. Or it can fill with galleries and boutiques, like Santa Fe, and lose its practical hardware stores and lumberyards.
It's probably a pipe dream, but we like a mix of espresso bars and honky-tonks, of crystal-fondlers and trappers, of recreationists and ranchers, of galleries and lumberyards, of new-agers and rednecks, of trophy homes and affordable housing.
So why not try to push things in that direction, especially when there are so many good writers hereabouts whose work appears in national publications, but never locally?
Thus our monthly magazine, whose first issue is scheduled for Feb. 1. And this solicitation: Subscriptions are $20 a year from Colorado Central, P.O. Box 946, Salida, Colo. 81201.
Come what may, though, we won't resort to telephone solicitation -- after all, you now know how to sue.
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