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

submitted 11 months ago by amoroso@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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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[-] sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 months ago

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 11 months ago

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 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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 11 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 11 months ago

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

this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023

93 points (97.9% liked)

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