IT appears to be an inescapable downside of living in a mobile telecommunications age - telesales agents call you up on your cellphone out of the blue to ask "How are you doing today?" before launching into a sales pitch for a new cellphone contract, an insurance product or something which is "not timeshare".
Challenge him or her to reveal where they got your contact details from, and you've got a good chance of being told "the national consumer database".
The words crop up in reader complaints about such intrusions all the time, and recently they came out of the mouth of Rozana Hunsraj, customer care supervisor with the Astral Group, a Durban-based marketing company.
I'd phoned her about a complaint I'd received regarding a domestic worker whose bank account had been debited by the company despite her insistence that she hadn't agreed to anything.
And I began my questioning by asking Hunsraj the "where did you get her details from?" question.
"From the national consumer database," she said.
When I told her that there was no such entity, and that such an entity would contravene consumers' right to privacy, she accused me of being "aggressive".
So I decided to get it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
And this is what Brian Mdluli, CEO of South Africa's Direct Marketing Association, had to say: "There is no such thing as the national consumer database and please report to the DMA those contact centres that are using this line!
"I would really like to make an example of one of them," Mdluli said. "We have been trying very hard to find a culprit without success.
"There are over 100 database suppliers in the industry and the DMA has started an audit process of these companies to ascertain the origins of these databases... we wish to stamp out the illegal compilation and usage of databases."
Speaking at the Department of Trade and Industry's consumer law conference in Midrand earlier this month, Mdluli joked that while heart surgeons' conduct was only regulated by two laws, that of direct marketing companies was governed by seven, including the not-quite-yet-enacted Protection of Personal Information Bill and the not-yet-effective Consumer Protection Act.
Between them, the laws essentially give consumers the right to refuse to accept any form of unwanted contact made by a direct marketer.
In his conference address, Mdluli made several references to what he termed "an audience of one", saying that given our diversity, there was no such thing as a "mass market" in South Africa, and that it was far more "transparent" to speak to that audience of one.
I later told him that I don't share this view, having listened to a number of unsophisticated consumers being "ambushed" on their cellphones and bombarded with a sales pitch.
"Please explain why you, and presumably the industry, feel that this is a transparent way to engage with consumers in order to sell them a product or service," I asked.
His response: "The 'Audience of One' is exactly what we need because it is the only platform that acknowledges that the South African consumer is unique... and shows them respect. I completely disagree with the notion of the 'unsophisticated' consumer because if SA brands start to realise that if they invest in training their staff to communicate properly in a language of the consumer, we will not have unhappy, misinformed consumers.
"The DMA is very serious about consumer protection and we will push ahead very vigorously for better-trained sales and marketing agents who are able to speak the language of the consumer," Mdluli said.
Which brings me to the case in question. Mandy Raw of Durban contacted me regarding her domestic worker Khozi Makhaya's dealings with the Astral Group, which markets holiday vouchers on behalf of a company called Zenith.
Makhaya became aware, via SMS alert, of a R300 deduction from her bank account by the Astral Group. She got her bank to reverse it, saying she did not agree to do business with them. She went on to close her account to ensure it wasn't similarly "raided" again.
Raw took up the matter with Astral, and was sent two phone conversation recordings as apparent proof that Makhaya had indeed agreed to the deal.
The first recording, of a conversation which took place between Makhaya and an Astral Group telesales agent last October, has the former firmly saying no to the offer of a once-off holiday voucher of R300, or a once-off voucher plus R100 vouchers every month.
Incidentally, there was no offer to discuss the deal in Makhaya's home language, isiZulu.
Hunsraj claimed that Makhaya was called by another Astral agent on February 1 and it was during that call that she agreed to the offer and supplied her account details.
"All sales are recorded and passed by the quality assurance department prior to the customer being debited," she said.
The problem was that while the recording of last October's conversation, in which Makhaya turned down the deal, was perfectly intact, the January one, in which she allegedly had a change of heart and agreed to it, could not be opened.
Hunsraj told me the company's IT department was looking into the problem, but a few days later the company's call centre general manager told me that the file in question was among "a few" which had been corrupted "and cannot be retrieved".
"Taking this into account and the fact that the client was unhappy regarding the product, the client has been refunded."
In fact, Makhaya had already got her money back from her bank, and the account into which Astral has apparently now refunded her money has since been closed.
After her experience, Makhaya is clearly not feeling respected as a unique "audience of one". In fact, in the first call Astral made to her, the agent reels off her script and tries to close the deal without ascertaining anything about Makhaya, not even whether she is employed or not.
"Mass marketing will still be there but there is a new phenomenon in SA called 'Somebody knows I exist!'," Mdluli said, "and we have to be vigilant as an industry to make sure that this new wave of consumers is protected, and that our members know how to deal and communicate with these new customers."
From where I sit, on this Human Rights Day holiday, the "new wave of consumers" is being horribly exploited by a very active section of the direct marketing industry.
If you'd prefer that the direct marketing industry did not know that you exist, register your details on the Direct Marketing Association's Do Not Contact list. SMS DMA followed by your ID number (this is crucial) to 34385; or call the call centre on 0861 DMA DMA (362 362); or go to www.dmasa. org.
You can also use that call centre number to report companies which claim to have got your number from that mythical "National Consumer Database".