> From: Nathan Wajsman <photo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> I am not quite as tolerant of marketers as you,
> and so in many a marketing database there are now records of a 90-year
> old guy with 17 children under age 5 ;-)
Scroll by if you've heard this telephone survey story from me already...
In a former life, I travelled a lot and had a fancy answering machine
that could be remotely played back with a little gizmo with buttons
that you pressed to the microphone of a phone handset. It looked sorta
like a remote control with a suction cup on the back. So you could
call your answering machine and use this device, which emitted a
series of tones, to play back your messages. I didn't use it much,
unless I was going to be gone for a week or more. If you forgot the
device, you could also use a touch-tone phone to get messages.
One time after a weekend away, I came home to see the light on the
answering machine blinking furiously. The incoming message tape, a 90-
minute cassette, was fully wound. "Hmmm... must have been a busy
weekend," I thought as I re-wound the tape, not really looking forward
to listening to 45 minutes of messages.
So I started playing the messages. My mom. (Call her back.) A
potential client. (Made appropriate notes in my journal.) A ski buddy.
(Call him back.)
Then, I heard an automated survey system. The recorded voice explained
the survey, yada, yada, yada, then it came to the first question.
"If you have any children in your household, please press one. BEEP!"
Now as slick as my answering machine was, it wasn't really all that
clever, and it's not too good at telling it's master's remote control
from an automated survey beeper, so it responded with "BEEP!"
The survey continued with, "If you have more than one child in your
household, please press one. BEEP!" to which my machine responded with
"BEEP!" then "If you have more than two children in your household,
please press one. BEEP!" and so on...
This quickly lost its entertainment value, so I fast-forwarded to the
end of the tape, and heard, "If you have more than twelve thousand,
three hundred and ninety six children in your household, please press
one. BEEP!"
I sure would have liked to have seen those survey results.
:::: People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who
are doing it. -- George Bernard Shaw
:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Item/99AQ25-27>
--
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