Battling for ‘Right to Be Left Alone’

WASHINGTON — The call to Bob Bulmash was from a Sears salesman offering to redo his kitchen cabinets.

“Don’t call me again,” the Chicagoan responded.

Click.

Bulmash called Sears back.

“Hey, you don’t even know what number not to call,” he told the operator.

“If you don’t want to be called, hang up,” the representative replied.

Click.

He called back once more and eventually got hold of an executive. Bulmash said he would bill the company for his time if a salesman called again. Bulmash, a paralegal, said that the call was an implicit contractual offer and that his answer constituted acceptance.

Some months later . . .

“Ring.”

Guess who?

Sears again. It was another sales pitch, prompting Bulmash to lodge another round of complaints. After some prodding, the company sent Bulmash a check for $100. The enclosed note called it a “customer goodwill adjustment for you (sic) recent inconvenience.”

“We don’t do it for the sake of the money; we do it for the absolute right to be left alone,” said Bulmash, who has turned his loathing of “junk calls” into a cause, the aptly named Private Citizen Inc. “This is a mission, not a money-maker.”

Indeed. In the four years since he founded the Chicago-based public interest group, the check from Sears was his biggest score. He also has received a court judgment yielding 97 cents and various out-of-court settlements producing not much more.

But it’s the principle. Bulmash said that his quest is simply to make life as rough for telemarketers as their calls make life for others. “Stop them now!” he demands.

With a 1,200-person mailing list, Bulmash aims to enlist others in the battle against junk calls. He cites a 1988 Roper poll showing that 83% of those polled prefer not to receive unsolicited telephone pitches. In fact, following his advice, others have also collected from callers, picking up from $5 to $92 for their time, he said.

Small Claims Courts Wary

Although small claims courts often are wary of the contractual theory advocated by Bulmash, he said that many companies are willing to make small payments to people who complain about junk calls to avoid the nuisance of additional protests. And a nuisance is exactly what he’s trying to create.

“The point is to create a telemarketing mine field that they dare not step into,” he said. “That way, it becomes easier for them not to call us.”

So far, it’s a rough fight. Bulmash mailed a list of people who did not want to receive telephone pitches to the Britcom telemarketing service in Illinois. The firm mailed it back. He wrote to Citibank to tell the bank to stop calling him; it replied that it could take up to six months to process his request.

Computer messages especially bother Bulmash. “Respect us enough,” he said, “that if you’re going to annoy us, annoy us in person.”