Comment Re:Opt them in to a service (Score 1) 405
I actually did something like this with my local AAA office. It worked, in a way.
My home phone number is one digit off from that of a popular local towing company. One particular night dispatcher at AAA had a bad habit of misdialing, and no amount of reminding or "educating" or calling her boss in the morning would get her to stop. So I sent an official-looking sales letter to the office manager advertising my new 24/7 dispatch dispatch service. "Best of all, there's nothing to sign! Just call us any time at xxx-xxx-xxxx, which is actually not the towing company. We'll handle the rest and bill you later!" Etc., etc.
That's right, a dispatch dispatch service. For only $500 per call, I will take down all the information about your stranded AAA member, make and model of car, location, that sort of thing, and then call the actual towing company for you. The next time my little friend called, I logged all the information, thanked her, and passed along all the information to the towing company as promised.
A few days later, their accounts payable person called about this invoice for $500. I explained the nature of my service and said "we" were very happy that AAA chose us for their dispatch dispatch needs. They never paid the invoice, and I never heard back again from accounts payable, but I also never got called again by my little friend either.
True story.