We are planning to take a short trip to Oregon later this month. Our plan is to stay with family most of the time, but there is one night when my wife will be staying with her sisters and I will be on my own. The simple solution was to book a motel room for one night. Since I’m the one involved, I followed my usual practice of doing a little Internet shopping. Often the best rates on the rooms I want appear on sites that offer prepaid reservations with limited options for change. I check those sites against the actual motel websites because they are not always less expensive. For example, in September we stayed in a vacation rental. The property could be booked through VRBO, but the property manager offers direct booking as well. The property manager’s fees are lower than VRBO because the VRBO organization makes a surcharge to support its system.

You have to be careful with booking sites because they often have rules about a minimum number of nights to stay, surcharges for short stays, different check-in and check-out times and prepayment rules.

One night in a discount motel is a different matter. The offer I found on a booking site was about 25% lower than the price offered by the motel’s web site. Prepayment is not an issue as I prefer the discount. When I proceeded to book the web site, however, I had to register with the booking company. It was one that I have not previously used. The process of registering was relatively simple. I carefully unchecked the boxes allowing marketing emails and phone calls and I tried to register without giving my phone number. However the site would not allow me to continue without giving my phone number.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve opened the door to yet more spam phone calls. There are a lot of different ways that marketers obtain phone numbers. One of them is by purchasing lists from web sites to which I have given my number. I may have blocked marketing calls from the booking company, at least temporarily, but I’m fairly confident that I have not blocked them from giving my phone number to other marketers.

Unwanted marketing calls are a part of modern life. They are annoying and software developers are working on solutions that help somewhat. My phone now displays “spam likely” when phone calls come from marketing companies. At first I thought the system was great. I would just allow “spam likely” calls to go to voicemail. Most marketers didn’t bother to leave messages and I could choose whether or not to respond to those who did. There is, however, a major flaw in that system. My phone consistently displays “spam likely” when the phone call is placed by one of the doctors providing care. They will usually leave a message, but the call back number that they leave is not a direct number for the provider, but rather an automated system that only allows me to leave a message for the provider, setting up a loop. I can’t get the information from the doctor without answering “spam likely” phone calls. This has been especially frustrating as I have been going through a series of medical tests where the provider wants to explain results to me and does not post the results to the medical charts I can view online before having that discussion.

I understand the issue from the physician’s perspective. They have many circumstances when it is not possible for them to receive phone calls. Their personal phones would be impossibly cluttered with unwanted and unnecessary calls if they allowed for direct call backs. The medical system provides a way for them to make calls that do not reveal the number from which they have placed the call. My software “sees” those calls as marketing calls and labels them “spam likely.” School systems employ similar software, making it equally frustrating for parents to speak with teachers.

We might get a bit of relief now that the Federal Trade Commission will be enacting a “click to cancel” rule over the next six months. The system is designed to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions for online services as it is to sign up. The rule is aimed at services that result in recurring charges and not at marketing information, but it may provide a way for users like me to quickly remove our information. For example, if I could sign up for a booking company’s services, make a single reservation and then unsubscribe from that company’s program I might prevent that company from transferring my contact information to other companies. I suspect that marketers will find a quick work around, but I intend to unsubscribe from as many services as I am able as quickly as possible.

Communications have always been a challenge and carrying a personal phone with me everywhere I go has not solved all of the problems. I first agreed to carry a cell phone to make myself more accessible to church staff and members when I was out of the office. Now retired, cell phones are the only phones we have. My cell phone number is out there on the Internet because I have used it to communicate with all kinds of companies and service providers. Unwanted marketing robocalls come in to my phone far more frequently than wanted communications. It seems to be part of contemporary life.

Long gone are the days when a marketing call was placed by an actual person. I used to feel sorry for telemarketers whose job it was to place phone call after phone call, mostly meeting rejection. I was quick to hang up on marketers because I felt like doing so as soon as I detected unwanted communication at least saved a few seconds of the marketer’s time. Those jobs have to be really difficult. A click when a phone call is ended must be preferable to someone on the other end yelling at the caller. These days, however, most of those phone calls are from automated systems and don’t involve actual conversation with another person.

I certainly don’t have a solution. There are plenty of times when I ignore “spam likely” calls and let them go to voice mail. However, I still answer when I’m expecting a call because “spam likely” doesn’t mean “spam certain.” A good step in the right direction would be for those making necessary communications such as health care providers to upgrade their software to identify them without enabling direct call back. I’m looking forward to the day when my phone might display “healthcare provider” instead of “spam likely.” I don’t view an opportunity to speak directly to a doctor as spam.