And No Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery

On one recent Monday morning, a licensed clinical social worker named Diane Morrison returned to work and discovered an unusual recording on her phone answering machine.

It was a sales pitch that had been left over the weekend, a recorded, four-minute come-on that encouraged the listener to plan ahead. Now is the time, the voice urged, to make “pre-need funeral arrangements.”

Such plans may sound a bit ghoulish, but that isn’t what bothered Morrison. Better to do it yourself, thoughtfully, than to leave the chore to grieving survivors. Phone calls from a computer are always annoying. But when she learned that several colleagues received the same call, Morrison was appalled.

Imagine somebody selling funeral arrangements at USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Hospital. And, yes, some of the patients heard the spiel.

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In the annals of American capitalism, this might not be a new marketing low, but it’s right down there. “It’s like ambulance chasing at its worst,” said Morrison, a Glendale resident. Not only was this sleazy, it was sneaky, too. And whoever is ultimately responsible for these phone calls is, for now, a mystery.

The recording never mentioned a name and didn’t leave an address or phone number. Listeners at the other end were simply invited to leave their name and number at the end of the recording if they were interested. One hospital administrator who happened to be in her office over the weekend did just that. But so far, more than two weeks later, she hasn’t been called back. She and others recall a product described as the Final Expense Plan of America, but their calls to the state Better Business Bureau and state insurance authorities proved fruitless.

Without answers, there’s been plenty of room for speculation. Were these calls to a cancer hospital an unfortunate fluke or monumentally poor judgment? Was it, perhaps, a cruel prank? Or was it something worse?

Morrison may have more faith in human nature than most people do. Her initial thought was that the telemarketer probably happened upon the hospital by accident.

When I mentioned this possibility to my friend Donald, a successful salesman, he scoffed.

I called Donald for two reasons. Several years ago, he was selling advertising space for an Orange County newspaper. One of his clients was a company that provided cremation services for funeral homes and ran a small ad near the obituaries. He told Donald he wanted to eliminate the middleman and offer his services directly to the public.

Donald suggested that he’d get more bang for his buck with targeted advertising. Instead of buying the usual four column inches, Donald persuaded him to buy an advertising insert with a limited circulation--limited, in fact, to the retirement community Leisure World.

Were people offended? Not much, apparently. “He got 30 jobs out of it,” Donald recalled.

Donald also has experience in telemarketing. The hospital, he figures, had to have been targeted. To telemarketers, he explained, “America is a list of phone numbers.”

Who would do such a thing? I called Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks--not out of suspicion, but because the company might be knowledgeable about their competitors. Forest Lawn spokesman Dick Fisher said he’d look into it. The next day, he issued a statement: “We don’t know of anyone in our industry who would engage in such a horrible practice and we suspect this might well be a hoax.”

Donald had suggested a call to Inside Prospects, an Orange County firm that compiles and supplies business data, including phone lists. Sales representative Diane La Rock, herself a veteran of telemarketing, said the calls to the cancer hospital showed all the signs of a scam.

La Rock based this judgment primarily on the fact that the source of the recording left no identification--no name or phone number. A legitimate but inept business might do this. But much more likely, La Rock said, this was just a new angle for the kind of unscrupulous boiler room operations that are notorious for selling snake oil, gold-mine shares or swampland to the elderly, who are often lonely and vulnerable to a smooth-talking swindler.

The hunt for prey might well lead them to a cancer hospital with a sincerely insincere offer of funeral arrangements. This entreaty can’t help a patient’s morale, Morrison says. This wouldn’t interest a swindler, who probably doesn’t care that the science of psychoimmunology shows that a positive attitude helps patients fight disease. All they’d be interested in is a name and phone number. Then they’d try to win the customer’s trust--and persuade him or her to mail a check.

“As far as telemarketing is concerned, there’s the good, the bad and the ugly,” La Rock said. “It’s just like people.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Please include a phone number.

Imagine somebody selling funeral arrangements at USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Hospital. Yes, some of the patients heard the spiel.