To Whom it May Concern,

We're not dumb.  Your company contacted us today, offering to score us all sorts of web-traffic and yadda yadda.  Much of our business comes by way of the "internets", which we suspect you know (hence the cold-call).  What we suspect you didn't know is that we've got extraordinarily decent, wholesome web-savvy folks working on our behalf.  Here's what they had to say about your offer:

$160 a month!  From what I can tell, all they are doing is registering your business with Google and Yahoo, which is a free service.  They also are only guaranteeing a top listing in local Yahoo searches - their sales language on the site notes that "in 30-60 days your listing will appear to Google".  In other words, they will also submit your domain name to Google's web crawl, which hasn't been necessary since 2003... Web Design / Search Engine Optimization business has always been fairly corrupt - the technical barrier keeps most clients from a full understanding of the costs & labour involved.  I'd say 90% of the inquiry clients I get are from people that have been burned somewhere by a vanishing/overcharging company.

You know, with all of Wall Street's insidious and willfully malicious efforts to get in on the mortgage game coming to light, while forclosures go down like Gangbusters, something tells me this predatory schtick isn't quite limited to Web services.  It's the sort of thing one should come to expect from the celebration of avaricious self-interest.  What's more, your script went south almost precisely when you heard the words "Well, we're a democratic workplace; I can't just hop on your offer.  That's not how we work, so why don't you email me something I can run by everyone else?"   In your world, consent is quaint.  In ours, it's a lynchpin.

Yes, we're a business.  We have lives and responsibilities like everyone else.  But that's where we got off the train, so to speak.  It ceased to be apparent why tending to said lives and said responsibilities was inextricably bound up in jettisoning our dignity, so we opted not to sell it to the highest bidder.  Had we decided otherwise, perhaps we'd be happy to externalize the inflated cost of your "expertise" to our clients.  That's how it works, right?  That's how we all get rich, right?  Thanks, but no thanks.  Our self-respect is just fine, right where it is.

Don't call us.  We'll call you.