Hangups

For months, we were hounded by various telemarketing resellers who wanted us to switch from DirecTV to Dish Network. At one point, as many as four different outfits were competing for our business, which one might have won if Dish had a satellite visible from our property.

Currently, we average three calls a week from an automated recording to remind us that our automobile warranty is about to expire. Maybe I can get them to throw in the undercarriage protection?

The latest wave is a reprise from a previous one. I wrote previously about the Countrywide agent who stepped through our stats and humbly admitted there wasn’t a thing he could do to help us in the way of a mortgage refinance. Apparently, he didn’t share the notes with any of the other companies who are desperate to get us to borrow money from them. (I thought credit was tight, didn’t you?)

We’re getting four or five such calls every week now. Today some slick-talking “man of Northeastern persuasion” got my wife on the phone, and proceeded to barrel in Brooklynese right on through the bulk of his boiler-room script, not allowing her the opportunity to interrupt, just as he’d been trained, ya follow me?

Yeah, he said “ya follow me?” every time he got to a part that he assumed my dear, sweet wife didn’t understand. You know, because she’s all Southern and everything.

“But ya know, based on the data we’re seein’ in the areas around you, you’ll never find a better time than now to lock in the lowest rates in a lifetime, ya follow me?“

After the third “ya follow me,” my dear, sweet wife — who, by the way has a triple major, a master’s degree in accounting, and her C.P.A. — said “We’re not interested. Period. Ya follow me?”

And he hung up.