It's dinner time - perfect for yet another unsolicited call. This time it is from GoTalk. It is interesting how this pitch was sequenced, and I paraphrase hence:

"Hello am I speaking to Z Liew? How are you? We want to tell you that Telstra, Optus [and several other big name telcos] are giving you a discount on your phone bill next month. There's no catch, and no contract to sign."

At this point, note I am being led to believe this is an announcement from my telco (which is Telstra). But he goes on. "This discount will be issued to you by GoTalk. We need your details so we can mail you your bill. Can you grab a pen to write some of these details down please. Oh but we are not taking over your account. Everything stays the same. There are no catches. If something goes wrong Telstra will still be there to fix it..."

The catch is they get you on their mailing list of course.

Here;s the opportunity lost: If they were sincere about giving me something, why not just do it? That would be a nice and genuine surprise, and some people may actually be moved to switch!

Instead, typical business-as-usual thinking means they had to use a "safe" method, the unsolicited call. Guaranteed to piss people off. Stupid stupid stupid.