I am sure that you heard of the Republican National Commitee's robo-calls during the 2008 election. People were very irritated to get them. And why wouldn't they? After all, it is bad enough to get an unsolicited call but then to pick up the phone to be greeted by a robotic voice? You can't talk back to a robot! You can't ask the caller to please never call you again.  And what is most interesting is that there is no data that show that these types of calls work. Here is <a class="wp-caption" title="Robocalls" href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9978.html" target="_blank">an article in Politico</a> from earlier in the year pleading with the campaigns not to use robo-calls.  The author claims that one of the main reasons that these calls are employed is because they are cheap.

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This leads me to the latest in the Verizon FIOS push. Today, I got a robo-call. My only guess is that Verizon is conducting a marketing experiment to see which method works.  And hey, robo-calls are cheap! Especially if you are the phone company--you don't even have to pay for phone time.  In my opinion, Verizon's marketing geniuses are thinking that somehow they will get me to sign up. So they will try each option numerous times.  Meanwhile, have they checked the blogosphere for what is being said about them? No...haven't gotten a single comment. When I wrote about Comcast a few months ago, a representative contacted me to try to rectify the situation.  Verizon does not care what you or I think. The company only cares that you sign up for its services. I will tell you one reason I won't sign up for FIOS--because if something goes wrong with my TV/phone/Internet I will be forced to talk to Verizon. And I don't want to talk to Verizon, ever.