Tonight I got the chance to try a new line I have worked out for telmarketers.
Lately, I’ve mainly been getting calls from companies I actually do business with offering me better deals. At the point in the prepared speech where the marketer says ‘we really want to help you get the best out of our services’ I interrupt and say that there is indeed a way (s)he could help and then describe aspects of their service I find unsatisfactory. Of course, I’m always given another number to ring entirely at which point I challenge the claim that (s)he was ringing to help me. They seem to find this approach disconcerting, especially when I refuse to talk on the phone and ask for their ‘special offer’ in writing.
Tonight an unknown market research company rang me. In the middle of the breathless introduction I stopped the caller in mid sentence and said ‘Have you cleared this interview with my business manager?’ There was a brief silence at the other end and then the caller launched again into the prepared speech. Again I interrupted and repeated my question. This time there was a longer silence. Finally the caller said ‘I do have a residential address don’t I?’ I replied ‘You have a residential address but you are making a business call. You don’t seriously think I’d give interviews free do you?’ Long silence at the other end. ‘I don’t think I know who you are?’ I replied ‘Clearly not. But how odd, you don’t know who I am but already you want to do business with me. Let me save you further trouble; you wouldn’t be able to afford my rates.’
Try it some time. You’ll feel much better than you usually do after receiving one of these calls.
I enjoy hearing about new ways to bait telemarketers. In the trenches though, I tend to recognize that he/she’s just a poor schmuck who took a cruddy job and it takes the wind out of my sails.
Ideally there would be a way to launch humorous assaults on the people who devise the spiels and train the drones.
I don’t hate telemarketers, I hate the people that buy things from them and from spammers. They are the problem, they are the ones that provide an income for these people. Think about it, do you think that people like Ladybug91210 (see political forum) would pollute this forum if there was no profit to be made from buyers? I wish that of all things, the media would do one of their scare tactic “investigative reporting” specials on people that got sick or died off of the miracle drugs that they sell or a special on the people being scammed over the phone. Maybe this would put a dent into their buisness.
And just to make myself Mr. Unpopular, I feel the same way about people handing money to beggars (and then walk by a street performer and comment that their act sucks). Want to help the homeless, fine, but do something real rather than handing out guilt money.
Me too, which is why I’m not rude or abusive. Their unwanted intrusion is rude and their assumption that ordinary politeness is a wedge to get in is offensive. That’s why adopting something like the view of the world they are foisting on us and trumping every move they try to make is satisfying. They want to dictate to me when they speak and what they talk about. They hope to profit. I just insist that for wasting my time I get a healthy cut. Fair’s fair.
Of course, I arrogate to myself a degree of importance in the business world I don’t really have. But so do they, and I suspect many don’t even realise they are being rude.
BTW, don’t ever fear that you will be found out pulling this stunt. If somebody tries to find out who you really are, just act indignant that they don’t already know. Let’s face it, in your world you are more important than them and, given your priorities, the activities they are interrupting are vastly more imporatant than any survey or marketing spiel they might want to force on you.
If I were living in another country, and had to pick one reason to
immegrate to America, my reason would be the Do Not Call list.
Brilliant piece of legislation, that.
Unless you are living in a cave, your phone company should offer you features that tell you on the message window of your phone the name and/or phone number of the in-coming caller. I have both.
Telemarketers learned early that if their name came up, people would not answer. They used privacy laws to be allowed to block the caller information from appearing on my phone. Their calls typically show up as Unknown Caller/Unknown Calling Number. So I know not to answer in any case. I can’t be bothered to even let it ring. I just pick up the receiver and drop it again. Since most of these companies use automated diallers, this saves me from further aggravation, and I do not have to have a confrontation with the caller.
I don’t mind the calls from telemarketers because (1) they’re getting fewer and fewer with the no-call list, and (2) they can be fun to play with. What seriously pisses me off are the machine-generated recordings from our proto-simian fundamentalist friends. These shrill ravings generally go something like this:
Did you know that Hilary Clinton and Al Gore have joined forces with sexual terrorists and NAMBLA and the Jews to enforce mandatory darwinian homosexuality in American high schools.
Or something like that.
They never identify themselves, and although they say that you can stay on the line if you want to talk to an operator, you never get one. I don’t know if this is illegal or not, because there are some non-commercial exceptions to the no-call laws, but random, anonymous calls are certainly chickenshit if not beyond the pale of the law.
I would welcome, yea, I would relish a call from a nice Episcopalian, but nooo, I get Mouthbreathers for Jesus.
Sometimes when a telemarketer would ask for me and my husband answered, he would say he was my personal secretary and ask what exactly their business was. The calls were very short!
Once our phone company kept calling with additional offers, etc. I finally told the woman, very politely, that I was going to change companies if I got one more call. She apparently was able to note that down, because we stopped getting the calls. My husband started doing this with organizations he gives money to who were calling to ask him to increase his donation and that cut down on the calls from them. You can do this in a really polite but firm way that doesn’t put down the person making the call.
Once I accidentally hung up on someone calling from our bank because she started out just like a telemarketer and I quickly interrupted and said I wasn’t interested, thank you. It was a little embarrassing when she called again and it turned out she really did need to talk to my husband!
Which part, the darwinian homosexuality or the sexual evolution?
Either way, my company unit wont let me see many of the results
Probably just the naughty bits!
One of the things telemarketing has done is ruin the tone of voice with which people answer the phone. If they have caller ID and they don’t know you, or if you call up and address them formally (Mr./ Mrs Doe), they answer with a cautious tenseness that you can actually hear fall away when they realize you’re not telemarketing. Remember when people answered the phone expectantly? Hopefully? Remember when answering the phone was pleasant?
I agree absolutely. I know I can come across as rudely curt on the phone.
Actually, Wombat, I do think it’s funny, and why not give the telemarketing schmoe’s call an interesting twist? You may as well have fun.
Exactly, Em. Nobody gets hurt, I maintain my good mood and sense of humour and I actually throw back some of the presumptions they make. They make assumptions about the relative value of our time without having the faintest idea whether those assumptions are warranted. I might do market research if I were paid well enough. If I believe in their cause, I’ll help an NGO for nothing. Same thing if I’m approached by the media as an expert on something.
Several years ago, a friend got tired of listening to me go on and on . . . and on and on . . . about telemarketing calls. They were occurring at a rate of several per hour, including in the middle of the night. Signing up for a “no call” list hadn’t helped one whit.
She kept telling me that I needed a Zapper. Having seen them on late-night TV (after having been awakened by telemarketers), I believed them to be in the same genre as Popeil’s Pocket Fisherman and Ginsu Steak Knives. I thought they were overpriced and likely useless.
I wasn’t spending $39 to find out.
She gave me one for Christmas. I installed it and caller after caller just . . . hung up. After a few days, there was a noticeable decrease in calls. After a week or so, there were almost no calls coming in. Now, I might get one every few weeks.
I offered to pay her for the Zapper, but she wouldn’t have it. Said $39 was a small price to pay for not having to listen to me go on and on . . . and on and on . . .
A friend of mine had a story to tell about how he dealt with telemarketers.
One day he was working outside at the cartridge factory building when the phone started ringing. He was way over on the other side of the complex when the outdoor phone bell rang. Well, it continued ringing and ringing so he started out to get to the phone. Finally after a long walk (phone still ringing) he arrives and answers. It’s a chimney cleaning service and they to want do a free first time chimney cleaning.
He was extremely irritated to come all the way in for a telemarketer so he set them up. “Hey, we have a chimney that needs cleaning” . So he gave instructions on getting there.
The people arrived and he took them into an old building and went up a big catwalk and into huge access door into the chimney.
Well here it is:
How’s that for chimney, not what they were expecting.
The Chimney people said they had to leave to get special tools, they never returned after that.
