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Why don't telemarketers give up on unresponsive numbers? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 9 months ago by amoroso@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When receiving unsoliciting phone calls by telemarketers, many people consistently hung up, don't bait, and don't interact. So why don't telemarketers delete from their databases such phone numbers that don't lead to any sales or other business benefits?

Maybe the cost of keeping the numbers is so low telemarketers just don't bother. Or keeping track of what numbers to delete may actually have a cost. Or perhaps telemarketers hope those people will eventually pick up the calls.

Any insight?

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 79 points 9 months ago (2 children)

because they aren't people 99% of the time, it's a computer program. It'll keep attempting, and if you do engage it will switch over to a real person once they have someone hooked.

They even have ones that garner attention, like shuffling noises, saying "Oh I'm sorry, hang on a second" and other gimics to keep you on the line and start engaging. You'd be surprised at how many people will say "Oh sure" out of politeness.

As for cost, to run a virtual machine in the cloud running 24/7 trying all the numbers one by one in the database would cost... pennies. We're talking probably less than 5 bucks a month.

[–] amoroso@lemmy.ml 9 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Okay. But if a robocaller doesn't lead to results, it may be programmed to give up on unpromising numbers.

[–] snooggums@kbin.social 24 points 9 months ago

They are going by volume, so the overall successes matter and the reason for why the rest are unsuccessful doesn't matter.

Phone numbers get reused all the time, so if they pull the number from the pool they miss a possible future opportunity. This is important when lack of success would massively shrink their pool of numbers at no real cost savings to them since they are going for volume anyway.

Basically you are asking from a logical and well intended point of view, but telemarketers are approaching it from a maliciously logical volume method that benefits from stumbling across enough gullible people to make the rest of the volume worth it.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 15 points 9 months ago

Sure it can be, what I'm trying to say is that there is no financial incentive for it to be though. Programming takes time and money, and there is literally no profit to be had for doing it.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

That sounds like it would take effort.

[–] sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

As for cost, to run a virtual machine in the cloud running 24/7 trying all the numbers one by one in the database would cost… pennies

but how much does it cost to make the phone call. Don't they get charged per minute by phone companies?

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not phone companies, but phone APIs.

https://www.twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/us

If you do it well, $0.0140/min.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Also, don’t underestimate the incompetence/lack of care that some of these companies may have. Just because they could reduce costs by flagging unresponsive numbers doesn’t mean they necessarily will.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 points 9 months ago

If I had a dollar for every time I told my company how I could refactor code to reduce costs....

[–] ech@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

If no one answers, they're not spending minutes, are they?