Everybody Loves Rachel...Sort of

Who is the most popular woman in America? Tough question to answer; let's set some parameters. First, she has to be ubiquitous, recognizable by everyone. Lot's of women meet that criteria. Second, the vast majority of Americans must have a strong opinion of her, one way or the other. Care to render a guess? No, I'm not talking about Hillary Clinton, although she is the strong runner up. I'm talking about Rachel. You know, Rachel? I know that you know Rachel, everybody does. She calls us all the time. Rachel from Cardholder Services. In fact, she called me again this morning. She usually calls me once or twice a week. How often does she call you? Are you guys on a first name basis too? Does she have your home and cell number? She does? Wow, she is one well connected woman.

So what do you actually know about Rachel? I learned a few interesting tidbits about her this morning. First of all, she has a tenacious work ethic. Did you know that Rachel made over 2.6 billion phone calls over a six month period? That's 167 calls per second, twenty four hours per day, weekends and holidays included. Another thing you might not know about Rachel; her consulting services are for hire. It's unclear just how many company's employ her familiar voice, but her largest client, SBN, got shut down last year by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and my phone hasn't stopped ringing. In fact, the FTC would love to put all of Rachel's clients out of business, but identifying them is tricky business.

The last thing I learned about Rachel today is perhaps the most useful. Did you know that you really are not completely  powerless to make Rachel stop calling? It's true, I hope. Whenever Rachel calls me she asks me to stay on the line and speak with one of her representatives. Most people don't. I usually do. Someone answers the phone and asks if I'm calling about consolidating my credit card debt and I say, "No, will you please put me on your do not ca***click**" and the line goes dead. If you haven't tried it, you should. Their record is perfect, 100%. I have never got the entire phrase "on your do not call list" out of my mouth before the representative hangs up on me. So what can you do about it? I'm already on the national Do Not Call Registry. A lot of good that does. But did you know that you can lodge a complaint? I know, big deal, like that every gets results. That's what I thought too. But then I read this statement by Frank Dorman, spokesman for the FTC who runs the Do Not Call Registry:

It only takes a minute to enter it. We need the complaints to look for patterns. We then use those in developing enforcement cases.

So according to the FTC, your complaints are actually helpful. And it makes sense. Rachel's clients use a technique called spoofing that switches up the info that you see on your caller ID (that explains why Rachel travels so much. One day she calls from Missouri, then Kansas, then Nevada). All those phony numbers make it difficult for law enforcement to track down where the calls are coming from, but the more people who lodge complaints, the more data they have to draw patterns from.

So go ahead, complain. This may be the only time in your life that you can actually feel good about whining. I started this morning and it felt good. And I'm going to keep complaining every time Rachel calls. Hopefully we see Rachel's popularity decline. Although, politicians are exempt from the laws that prohibit Rachel from calling. If Hillary does run for office in 2016, she may very well pull ahead in the popularity race, at least by my definition of popularity.