Trying to be clever, or too dumb to know?
I’m leaving work (and it was light again!), and taking the elevator down 11 stories when the phone in the elevator starts talking to me. There’s a brain-damaged phone in there in case the one guy other than me in LA without a cell phone manages to get himself or herself stuck. It’s a one-button, programmed-to-dial-the-elevator-company, speaker phone. Apparently it will also take calls.
Now, here’s the thing: the company that called the elevator phone (the voice I was hearing was obviously taped) was selling mortages. I spent the 45 seconds I was heading downstairs listening to some company’s mortage pitch. Note that “hang up” is not an obvious choice of actions this phone can take. Nor should it be. If I’m delivering someone’s baby in a stuck elevator, I don’t want to bump the thing and disconnect myself.
So this is either some diabolical company who knows that people are going to stay in the elevator and can’t hang up, so calling the speaker phone at the end of normal business hours gives them free advertising, or it’s some bozo who isn’t being very careful with their wardialer (don’t they have to have elevator phones on a do-not-call list?).
I suppose there’s also the possibility that this is one of the mortage company’s competitors trying to discredit them by placing false heinous ads in their name. I think that unlikely, because I can’t have any worse opinion of mortage companies involved in any kind of direct mailings, but I could be wrong.
I do want all of you to sue these bastards blind if their intrusive advertising gets me so upset that I have a heart attack and can’t call out of my elevator because they’re selling me a mortage on the emergency phone.