Savage and Greene

 
This Time with Statistics

Dear Coach: I call on consumers. You keep saying that the "do not call" list is not bad for cold calling. At this point, there are 64 million numbers on the list so how can you say it's not a bad thing?

Coach Says: First of all, the only real difference between 64 million people who hated getting cold calls in 2002 and 64 million on a "do not call" list in 2005 is that you don't have to waste your time (or theirs) calling them. But 64 million does sound like a lot so let me throw some statistics at ya, too.

It's surprisingly hard to find out how many land-line phones there are in the U.S.. Though I found a 2001 figure of 112 million, the 2000 census data is probably more reliable.
  • As per the 2000 census: 102,909,396 households have at least one phone line. Let's round that up to 103 million.
  • As of October, 2004 there were 64 million numbers on the Do Not Call Registry. Considering the continuing hot issues and that's the highest number to be found, that's probably still a good number.
So, whipping out the calculator here…
  • Looks like there are about 39 million numbers telemarketers are free to call.
39 million. Darn. A mere 39,000,000 left to call. Jeez, where is Chicken Little when you need her?

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