They certainly do, but after all I am not that important of a person as many other mobile phone owners, and the world will not come to a screeching halt when I cannot be reached at every instant.
The main advantage of using a mobile phone is, surprise, surprise - its cost. I paid flat $25 for the land line (with caller ID and free 60 local calls per month) plus per minute charges for all long distance connections. I pay flat $30 for the mobile that includes unlimited weekends and evenings and 300 minutes peak time (of which I use about a hundred) and no long distance charges. Since most calls I make are long distance and international (for which I use cheapo calling cards anyway), I pay less for the mobile than for the land line AND I do not have to deal with telemarketers.
> One thing that has helped quite a bit for telemarketing is to get
> Caller-ID-blocked-rejection service: if they don't give up their
> Caller-ID, they don't get through. Your privacy-freak friends will
take
> a while to get used to dialing the per-call-unblock each time they
call
> you, but eventually you'll get quite a bit fewer phone calls.
Yes, but that will also block international calls and I do not want to sacrifice that in order to get rid of the telemarketers.
A better way to deal with telemarketers is to pick up the phone and when they ask for Mr/Ms so and so tell them "hold on", put the receiver on the table next to the phone and go about your business. This will certainly hurt them more by wasting their time than blocking their calls. If many people did that, it would sufficiently tie up the telemarketer resources, which may eventually decrease the frequency of their calls for everyone. Not to mention the fact that it does not let the phone company profit from selling you a service to protect you from telemarketers with whom they are in cahoots.
Wojtek