Wrong Number

Dear CenturyLink (or whatever you’re called this week since I’ve known you as Embaq, Sprint and maybe even other names):

You represent yourself as a modern company despite selling some very old technologies.Worse, you employ ancient sales techniques that are inappropriate in the modern world.

I had your DSL service when we lived in Las Vegas. It was reliable enough but very slow. Too slow, really. When the cable company got around to offering their high speed Internet, I jumped at it and got a connection more than 10 times faster for the same price.

We also had a phone line and it worked fine, but was too expensive. You never wanted to budge on price, so when we moved to Denver, we decided to “cut the cord” and no longer use any of your services. We don’t miss them.

I thought you understood that you no longer offer any services that I wish to consume, especially at the prices offered. This has worked nicely for the past nine months. Too bad you screwed it up last night be sending two fresh-faced people to my door to try to sell your services. They’re lucky my wife answered. She is nice ans as soon as she realized there were unsolicited solicitors at our door, she thanked them for stopping by and closed the door. They didn’t have a change to start their spiel, but were smart and left.

Had I answered the door, I would have used several unpleasant words in a row, questioned their parentage, and told them to get real jobs that don’t invade peoples’ privacy. After that I would have gotten mean and insulting.

I will remind you that it is currently the 21st Century, CenturyLink, not 1950. For a company with “Century” right in your name, you seem to have lost sight of which one we’re in. Door-to-door as a sales medium is dead. It’s frankly obnoxious. I know you can’t call me since I don’t have one of your phones, but I do have a cell phone, as does my wife. Then again, don’t call.

And don’t email me, or even mail me something in the US Mail.I really don’t want to hear from you in any way at all.

I promise you this: if I am interested in one of your slow, overpriced services, I’ll sign up. I can figure out how. I’m smart that way. But until that highly-unlikely moment in the future, sending your minions to my door simply tells me that you’re an old-fashioned, out-of-touch, boorish company with no sense of appropriate marketing or personal boundaries. And because of that, my desire to ever want your products and services diminishes with every misstep.

In fact, if I want phone service or pokey-slow DSL, I’ll find another company to provide it first. I don’t like you any more.

Thanks for trying, but don’t do that any more. You can only lose.

Sincerely,
Chris