Stay out of my phone
Posted on | March 10, 2010 | 1 Comment
Sorry. This one’s a rant. I’ve had the flu, so think of the following as a kind of therapeutic blowing off of steam. You have been warned.
I don’t like getting unsolicited junk mail from people, no matter whether it’s delivered to my real world letterbox, one of my email in-boxes or to any of the various accounts I hold online in this brave new 2.0 world. What’s more, I don’t care if it comes from somebody I’ve purchased things from in the past. Unless I have specifically given you my details for the purpose of trying to sell me more of your shit, I don’t want to hear from you about your big sale, hot new product, or cool new upgrade.
I’m sure this a common sentiment.
But one method of contact more than any other makes my blood boil. Mr, Mrs and Ms Marketer, listen up. Let me tell you now plainly and simply: If you ever ring my phone or send me an SMS with any kind of sales message, you and I will never do business. Ever. I don’t care if I’ve bought from you in the past. I don’t care if I’ve been your loyal customer for 10 years. I NEVER give out my phone number to any business or individual and tick the little contact me by phone with special awsome offers box.
But why is the phone such a sensitive spot for me? To be honest I’m not entirely sure that I can say.
Maybe it’s because it seems somehow more personal, an intrusion into my very local space. The internet, well that’s out in the void somewhere. Sure my email is sucked down the magic pipes right into my computers at work and home and, yes, even onto my phone, but it still feels remote and distant. I will give my email address to a stranger far more readily than my phone number for just this reason, even though it makes no real sense these days. And stuffing things in my letterbox doesn’t really phase me other than it’s a pointless waste of good trees when we clearly have a “no junk mail” sign on the fence.
But the phone gets me every time. It gets me in just the same way as that time when somebody snuck a catalog under my door. They walked past the street-accessible letterbox, opened my gate, walked onto my property, and put a fucking imitation tupperware catalog right under my door to lie on my hallway floor INSIDE MY HOUSE. Irrationally, this felt to me like a total invasion and i feel the same every time somebody SMS’s 140 characters of crap into my pants like a kind of reverse pickpocket.
Short of speaking in person, my phone is the most intimate way i have to communicate. It’s connected to my personal space in a way that email or even the slot of my letterbox simply is not. The vast majority of people I speak to on the phone are friends and family. And while most of the others are from my work, even then it’s colleagues that I see daily. These are people I know, and know well. When my phone rings or blurps an sms blurp, I know that it’s either somebody who matters to me personally or who is connected to my work and wouldn’t be calling me unless it was important. So when it turns out to be some dick tyying to sell me something i don’t want, that dick relinquishes all chance of seeing my cash.
Which brings me to today. Today I received an SMS from Marshall (you know, the car battery guys). They had my mobile number because about 12 months ago I needed my battery replaced. I was stranded and so i did what the ads said, and I hollered*. I gave them my number at the time because no doubt they needed a contact phone in case their mobile driver had trouble finding me.
Now, a year later, I get an SMS advertising their services and telling me the number I can call if I’m ever stuck with a flat battery. I read it, annoyed as always by the intrusion into my phone of an ad, and think “well yes, I know your number and what you do because I AM A FUCKING CUSTOMER,” and wondering why they would bother to piss off a previously satisfied client. And then, half an hour later, they send me the same message again. Which was probably just a database error or glitch or something, but came across as pushy, needy and stupid.
So: Fuck you, Marshall. You just converted a satisfied customer who would no doubt have used you again into a pissed off dude who will look at any and every other option first before turning to you.
This rant is over.
*Totally excellent brand positioning, by the way. I remembered that little ripper from way back into my youth and it still made them top of mind in my hour of need. But that’s another topic.
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One Response to “Stay out of my phone”
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March 10th, 2010 @ 4:01 am
Fuckn A.
Here in consumer capital of SE asia they include an unsub number. So I play along and unsub. 3 months later I get more SMS spam, and I think hang on I think I unsubbed from that but maybe not, so I text the unsub code to the number and sure enough trusty iPhone shows I’ve done this before to the same number just with a different code! Cunts!