Opinion: Scary sequel: Return of the telemarketers

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Were you secretly harboring a major home-renovation plan but holding off in the hopes that just the right home design company would call while you were in the shower to offer its services? Have you been pining for the 17th recorded warning this week that you really, really need a new car protection plan? Caring telemarketers are here to help you.

Just when we’d all gotten past our fear of answering the phone around dinnertime, someone out there must have stopped enforcing the ‘Do Not Call’ registry. There were a few glorious years of telephonic peace, replaced by telemarketers who ring just as a pot is boiling over and chat cheerfully along until you ask for their phone number or utter the words, ‘But I’m on the ‘Do Not...’ ‘ and the line goes dead.

In the early days of California’s telemarketing law, I was among those who received $200 as their share of a $100,000 settlement by American Home Craft. The idea behind the suit by then-California Atty. General Bill Lockyer was to put companies on warning: Disobeying the law would cost them.

Not enough, apparently. Or often enough. Because they’re ba-a-ack. It seemed to start right after the November election. Maybe the boiler-room operators figured that after months of nonstop campaign robocalls (which were completely legal and utterly irksome) we’d be downright grateful that the latest call wasn’t from some pre-recorded celebrity (‘What? Scarlett Johansson is on the phone for me?’) but from some pleasant chap who just wanted to clean our carpets and drapes.

Everybody needs a job these days. Telemarketing might be the last refuge of laid-off lawyers and Circuit City salesmen. It was just nice to think, for a while there, we had a law that actually worked.