Blessed by the Potato

There’s one thing that’s been bugging me for a long time about telemarketing: how does it work? That is, how is it remotely profitable for companies to hire people, even below-minimum-wage offshore workers, to call people in their homes to sell them things? The theory is of course that a lot of the attempts will fail, but a few will succeed. This works for spam email: all it takes is one stupid son of a bitch in a hundred thousand to fall for the spam and it’s worthwhile, because sending spam is essentially free (especially these days with zombie botnets responsible for much of the load). I have trouble believing that the latest generation of spam ever works — random character strings without any kind of message, sometimes an image without a link — but that might be as much about de-training filters as it is about sales. Ditto for comment spam.

However human telemarketers have to get paid. Even if they’re only paid $5/hour, they’d probably only be able to pitch to 100 or so people an hour. How much is a hit worth to those hiring them? Rogers calls me once a month, at least, so it’s not even like they’re reaching 100 unique people each hour. What would their success rate have to be to make this a worthwhile venture? That depends partly on what landing a moron is worth — if getting a new subscriber to home phone is only worth $5 to Rogers (or the call centre), then they need to land one every hour, or every 100 attempts, but at $50 then it’s “only” one in 1000. Me, I have a hard time believing that telemarketing has anywhere close to a 1 in 1000 success rate. I have a policy — and everyone who hates telemarketing should too — that I will not, under any circumstances, buy something from a telemarketer. That handy policy also helps protect you from a large amount of fraud. Even for those who don’t, is having someone calling you during dinner to pitch the same thing you just got 3 direct mailings and saw 15 TV ads about going to suddenly change your mind? Who is telemarketing going to work on that those other cheaper, less annoying methods of marketing won’t?

To get telemarketing to stop, all we have to do is make it not worth their while, to bring the success rate down below about 0.1% (or even below 1%). I would have guessed that it was already below that… but according to a quick Google search, it’s actually above 5%, which just blows my mind. [Sorry, no references that appeared valid/unbiased enough to cite]

The Do Not Call List sounds like a decent idea on the surface, but unfortunately it’s been reported that signing up might not really help you, and that offshore telemarketers might have taken the list so now people who signed up are getting called more. Me, I found a slight decrease in calls after signing up, but I already had a lot of telemarketers calling my (listed) home line. I did not sign up my cell phone, since I figured that the list getting leaked was a possibility, and there were already very few people who called that number, so why bother? If you’re not presently swamped by calls, don’t sign your number up.

Anyhow, a post in the Freakonomics blog rang true with me: this has to be the worst list to steal/buy. Even if the do-not-call list doesn’t work through its original intended fashion (using the law to stop telemarketers), it should still work in an economics fashion: this is a list of people who don’t want to be called. If you call them, they will likely not buy your shit. In fact, they’re people who were aware enough of the telemarketing issue to go out of their way to sign up for a do-not-call list, and so they’ll probably be pissed if you do call. Stealing this list and calling people on it should be expected to lose money for the underhanded telemarketer. The Canadian do-not-call list is full of loopholes, for charities and political parties for example. If any of those excepted companies call, remind them that you’re on the do-not-call list. If they say that they’re an exception, then tell them that you don’t care about the legalities, but rather that you won’t give your money to an organization dumb enough to waste resources calling people who don’t want to be called.

On the other hand, some commenters in that post indicated that the do not call list is just the opposite: a collection of people who are gullible and vulnerable to telemarketers, so they need the protection of that list, or at the very least it is a list of working numbers answered by humans… making it the perfect list of people to call.

This year our family thought briefly about “cancelling” Potatomas due to the stock market downturn, and also the realization that a lot of the time we feel so obligated to get something, anything that we get a lot of useless, overpriced stuff for each other, some of which never gets used. So this year there was a big focus on getting useful things for each other. My dad gave each of us a cheque, perhaps the most useful thing to get in any situation, if not the most creative. I also got an eliminator emergency car starter for my car. Since my car is getting old I’ve been considering getting one of these myself — I’ve never had to use my jumper cables yet, but it would be even more convenient to not have to worry about flagging down someone else to help me with a jump, to have a spare battery to do it on my own. In addition, it comes with a 110 V AC inverter, so I can use it to charge my cellphone without having to get a car adapter, or to power my laptop if needed, which is very handy when combined with MS Streets & Trips loaded on there for maps — though without a GPS I still have to be able to figure out where I am on my own (which on marked roads is not that hard).

Wayfare’s family is insane at xmess, getting each other “billions” of presents, but even they had a bit of a focus on practicality this year: lots of clothes and DVDs they knew they would watch and chocolates. Wayfare’s parents got us a Wii Fit (a very tough thing to find this year!) which is a toy, but will hopefully also be practical in helping us to continue to get healthy this year.

Though oddly enough her cousin got us an… iron. For ironing clothes. We both kind of tilted our heads at that, puzzled. We’ve been living out on own (singly or together) for the better part of a decade. We each came with an iron, and even then it’s not an item I use much around the house (perhaps it’s a passive-aggressive hint?). It just seems like such a strange gift to give someone: it’s at the same time a practical item, and also a completely useless one. After all, who doesn’t already have an iron that actually uses one? And it’s not like it’s a real cool or thoughtful gift, the sort of thing you just love to give even if the recipient doesn’t need it and you have to return it…

I recently posted about the dearth of ad revenue here, and I was a little surprised at how bad it is. I know this is a low-traffic personal blog spanning multiple topics, but there are a lot of other bloggers out there who have essentially “gone pro”. I’m actually quite amazed at how much ad revenue some sites are pulling in, with Four Pillars making enough to cover paying $20 per post to Mr. Cheap for writing. Hell, at that rate I could write one post every three months and cover the server bills! (Mike: hint, hint)

With ad revenue that enticing though comes the steady soulless grind: many “pro” blogs try to keep up their once-a-day posting scheme, even if they have to post less than stellar articles to fill the space. It loses the passion and discussion and opinionation that makes reading blogs worthwhile in the first place. It’s like the regular media but without the benefit of journalism training (not that I put much value on professional journalism training). Million Dollar Journey is the perfect example of this: I used to read it every day (and followed most of the comment threads, too), but now the site has over half its page space devoted to ads, and meeting the once-a-day format has taken it’s toll. The biggest symptom of this is the list post: 5 ways of cooking bacon; 7 types of winter tires; 10 books on retirement planning; one ring to rule them all. The posts also start getting shorter and shorter, with fewer details, and less research, with the first ten comments often containing corrections… and you start wondering if you can trust anything this guy (and here I’m referring to pro bloggers in general and not MDJ specifically) is saying — especially once they start getting into affiliate deals. Then to help promote the blog sites will join “carnivals” on some topic to increase cross-linking and help their readers find the other blogs. A lot of these carnivals are a great way to find new blogs and particularly good posts. However, some of them are just mis-mashes of regular blog-a-day posts with no unifying theme. One that struck me as being particularly strange was a post on how to subscribe to RSS feeds in the investing carnival, New Year’s edition, under real estate investing. In that same carnival is a link to a domain squatting “investing” site… and it wasn’t even a link to a particular post for the carnival.

I’m actually a little surprised at how high a lot of pro bloggers set the bar: many aim for a post every weekday (5 posts a week). That’s a pretty hectic pace, even when the posts are only 400 words long. I know it seems to synergize well with people’s daily routine to better bring in the ad revenue or whatever, but still, a lot of very successful sites (including some linked here: Penny Arcade, XKCD, etc) have thrice, twice or just once a week posting frequencies. I personally blog more for my own entertainment than yours, so I post whenever the heck I feel like it; I do try to keep up at least once a week, but sometimes will post three times a day when I’ve got a bee up my bonnet and nothing better to do with my time. I figure by now people have learned how to set up feeds, or aren’t terribly disappointed to come here a few days in a row to find nothing new (granted, if I go two or three weeks without a post, then it’s understandable if the bookmarks get pulled).

Now that the secret’s out, I can tell you all that I got Wayfare a new cell phone for xmess. She doesn’t use much time at all, and was formerly on a low-usage Telus plan that they don’t even offer any more. However, her handset broke apart, so it was time for a new one. I was hoping that Telus would give her a new one just to keep her as a client, but it wasn’t until I called in to switch her number that that offer was made. In the end, I think it was a good thing anyway. She told me she was on a $15/month plan, which sounds pretty good for a light user. After looking at her bill though, I saw that she was really paying $25/month after taxes, voicemail fees, and network charges were added on, which is pretty terrible for 50 minutes of airtime (50 cents/minute, much of which went unused through the month)! On top of that, the long distance rates were atrocious.

So a pay-as-you go phone seemed just the thing a light user like her needed. Most of the pay-as-you-go plans were pretty similar: roughly 20 cents/minute local, 30 cents/minute long distance. The thing that set them apart was the various additional fees and how long the airtime top-ups lasted. The winner was, believe it or not, Petro-Canada mobility (the oil company, yeah). They had no extra monthly fees (aside from the 911 fee) and $20/$50 top-ups lasted nearly 6 months (180 days), and a $100 top-up lasts for a whole year! The Nokia handsets they have are low-end but do have some neat features like FM radio tuners and voice recorders. However, we were quite surprised to find that the phone doesn’t have a volume control! (not normally a feature I feel I have to ask about) Here’s a breakdown of the competition:

Update: The phone does have volume control! You have to press left/right on the d-pad during a call, rather than the intuitive up/down.

Bell – 30 cents/min local; 40 cents/min long distance. Voicemail “express” included. $3.95 monthly system access fee. Top-ups last 30 or 60 days. A number of optional features for extra $$$, including automatic credit card top-ups. With the system access fees and the high rates, this is basically just a shitty monthly plan. Avoid it.

Solo – Bell’s more dedicated pre-paid plan, Solo has a higher daytime local rate of 40 cents/minute, but only 5 cents/minute evenings; long distance is an additional 30 cents/min. Voicemail “express” included, no other fees aside from 911. Top-ups last 45 [$20] or 75 days [$30], and are available from a number of retail outlets as well as via credit card.

Telus – 25 cents/min local; 55 cents/min long distance. Voicemail included, no other fees aside from 911. Top-ups last 30 [$10] or 60 [$25+] days. Expensive add-ons like text messaging (might be needed if you get lots — they charge 15 cents/message without a plan!) and unlimited evenings/weekends are an option.

Fido – It’s pretty complicated. If they can’t explain it on their website so that I can understand it, then that is a fail. They call it a prepaid plan, but you have to refill monthly, so it’s really just a monthly plan that you can top-up by buying cards at a convenience store instead of a bill in the mail.

Virgin – 30 cents/minute local; 60 cents/minute long distance. Voicemail included. Top-ups last 30 [$15], 60 [$25], or ostensibly 365 [$100] days [their website still says the $100 top-up lasts a year, but I heard that they cancelled that]. A large number of optional plans available, as well as some primo handsets.

President’s Choice – 20 cents/min local; 45 cents/min long distance [24 cents/min combined with a PC long distance card]. Voicemail included, no other fees (aside from 911). Top-ups last 30 [$15] or 60 [$25] days. Optional extras include browsing plans and evening/weekend plans, making it a hybrid of a pay-as-you-go and monthly plan. Credit card top-ups an option.

Speak Out – 7-11’s reselling of Rogers’ service features 20 cents/min local [25 cents/min with the lower top-ups]; 40 cents/min long distance. Voicemail included, no other fees. All top-ups last a full year. However, top-ups are only available from 7-11 stores.

Petro-Canada – 20 25 cents/min local; 30 45 cents/min long distance. Voicemail included, no other fees (aside from 911). Top-ups last 180 [$20 or $50] or 365 [$100] days. Top-ups only available from Petro-Canada gas stations. Edit: In March, just 3 months after getting the phone because of the decent rates, Petro-Canada has screwed it up by jacking the prices.

So for someone like Wayfare who only uses about an hour a month, but in fits and bursts where some months she won’t use it at all and then two or three in another month, a pay-as-you-go plan is perfect, and having the top-ups last a long time is also important — I shake my head at the ones with 30 day expiry: how are those really any different from a monthly plan? Being able to load up and not worry about it for the rest of the year is a nice feature.

Petro-Canada has been great so far: the people at the call centre were friendly when activating the phone and transferring over her old number. The one call she’s made on it came through clear. One thing though is that they need to load the phones with a normal ringtone option. I think there are only 4 song options. What happened to the classic brrring, brrring?

It’s only been a few days, and the only decision we’ve made on the HDTV front is to wait to see what boxing day sales bring.

One thing I’ve been thinking of is that so many reviews say that the physical screen itself is not all that different between brands, and that 1080p vs 720p is not such a big deal. However, the scalers and other software can have big impacts on how the final image comes out with a source that isn’t matched to the native resolution (and what might contribute to SD looking like crap) and things like step artifacts. So I was wondering, is it possible to create a test DVD/blu-ray to take into stores to see how various screens handle certain test patterns and video at different resolutions? I obviously don’t have a blu-ray burner, and I don’t know how possible it is to make a high def video clip (h.264?) on a DVD that will play on a TV, let alone one for different hi-def formats and framerates, but it could be a useful tool to make up.