Thank you, my dear twin. I really needed to smile. I haven’t done that very much in the past few days. 
For all you people telling telemarketers to get a new job, face reality.
Telemarketing pays higher than minumum wage, has very flexible hours for students and requires little or no experience. It sucks, but it’s what people gotta do, ok?
And if you despise the industry so much, yell at the owners of the company, not the peons who just need the money, ok?
I agree with Diane. Would it hurt to take an extra 5 seconds out of your life to say “Sorry, I’m not interested. Thanks anyway,”?
Generally, that’s what I do. However, as you can see in my post above, that doesn’t always work. When it doesn’t, I usually get a little more aggressive, swear at them, and hang up.
Okay, I’d just liek you all to know I’m crazy. As Diane hasn’t posted in this thread, I meant I agree with chique.
TO the OP:
Nope. Sorry. Yes, you are human, but in the function of your “job” you deserve or get absolutely no consideration or courtesy from me.
Your job is to do your best to be intrusive, using resources I’m purchasing (the phone service) for your own benefit, you cost me money by making me get a caller ID, which I abhor and an unlisted number (which you still call) that I hate. I dislike having to sign-up at junkbusters.com , I resent having to fill out “do not call” forms from the phone company. I’m sick of the effort it takes to keep my phone operational but (somewhat) free of verminous parasites like you and your ilk.
I refuse to put up with it meekly. You have intruded into my house, uninvited (having a phone doesn’t mean that I want or invite phone-spam, any more than having a car means I give free rides to every stranger that comes along). You and your cohorts have caused me to have to spend money. You disrupt my life at your convinience. I give you all the consideration that I give a burgular, who’s also “only out to make a living” at my expense.
Frankly, I hope more people start responding the way your initial caller did. Enough of them and perhaps you’ll find a respectable line of work. Perhaps it won’t be as easy as sitting around harrassing and spamming people, but at least you’ll be able to hold your head up proudly.
And the more of you phone-spammers that quit, the more your parent corporations will have to pay for rehiring and re-training.
LaurAnge: True, it may be a way to earn quick bucks, but one of the drawbacks is that they’re not gonna bother me without getting bothered back. And false dilemma: It’s not an either/or situation. I can yell at both. When I can find the parent company that phone-spammed me, I’ll certainly write or call them. But that doesn’t mean I’ll ignore their minions who are actually doing the dirty work.
(and yes, in the middle of my tirades, I do say and the alleged magic words “put me on your ‘do-not-call’ list.”)
Fenris
Here it is - my all-time favorite number one pit thread courtesy of Cervaise:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=51270
sorry, but put me on the list of assholes who are rude to telemarketers. i will not give them slack. i fully agree with those who have posted my attitude previously: you annoy us for a living, if you aren’t prepared to get some abuse, QUIT and find a nice comfy job where people are nice to you.
asking them to not call again has never worked for me, but lately when they ask for me (always mis-pronouncing my name) i say either “wrong number” or “he’s dead”
as long as i’m here, let me tell you what pisses me off the most about them: phone rings, i get up from the couch or have to stop what i’m working on in the shop. answer the phone and get no response for about 5 seconds. dead air, till the asswipe telemarketer discovers he has a live one on the hook then hits me with his schpeel. (is that how that is spelled? never had to type that word before!)
it’s that damn dead pause that pisses me off. i always think it is my wife/sister/mother on a rotton cell phone trying to call me to rescue them on the side of the road somewhere!
spiel.
From Dictionary.Com:
spiel (spl, shpl) Informal
n.
A lengthy or extravagant speech or argument usually intended to persuade.
floha, if your sensitive little soul can’t handle the fact that EVERYONE IN AMERICA DISLIKES TELEMARKETERS, then get another fucking job.
Oh, was that insensitive of me?
I try not to be rude to these intrusive parasites, even the ones who called me Wednesday, when I was waiting by the phone to hear about missing loved ones to shill car insurance, long distance service, and siding.
I simply say “this number does not accept phone solicitations. Please put me on your do not call list. May I have your name and company name to verify this?”
But please understand - you are paid to intrude into people’s homes and waste their time for a living. So spare us the whining.
Gee floha, registered yesterday for one post and this is it. You sure you’re not a troll?
Let me get this straight, you’re job you’re so proud of is to purposely intrude on people’s time and lives by rudely calling randomly and you think we are the ones being impolite? Get this through your thick skull. NOBODY likes telemarketers. Nobody wants an intrusive call from a stranger trying to convince us to buy your product. If we want your product, we’ll go looking for it. What’s even worse that live callers? FUCKING MACHINES! That’s right, recorded messages calling us at home. It’s almost funny when your automated calling machine reaches my automated answering machine and leaves a 5 minute message with the request at the end for me to push the 9 key to be connected to a real person, remember push the 9 key now. Now if I just had automatic erase the stupid telemarketer call from my answering machine…
You think people are being rude to you with their responses? TOO BAD! Most of us consider you to be rude for cold calling us. You want peace and harmony in the world, and a return to nicety? STOP TELEMARKETING!
You claim to be human too, and just doing your job. Well, we’re human and don’t like you calling us. But I can’t put up a sign on my phone “don’t call me”. And no, I don’t want to pause in my life to answer the phone.
Shouldn’t get a clue when you have to run through your spiel without stopping because if you take a breath in the first paragraph you know the response will be “No go away.”? Shouldn’t it be a clue to you that there has to be a policy that if we stay on the line after saying no you have to try at least twice more? I’ve tried being polite to the telemarketers. Really I did. For a long time I would say, “No, I’m not interested in your product, okay?” And every time all I got for that was “Well why not?” or “But this is such a good deal,” or some other continued attempt to persuade me, instead of a polite “Oh, I’m sorry I bothered you. Thank you for your time.” See the problem? I’m trying to be polite even though you intruded on my time and life, and your response is not a polite thank you, but another attempt to get me to buy your stupid product. Can’t you see how that would drive a person to get preemptively rude?
So the guy called you stupid, I’d say it fits if the only job you can get is to purposely annoy people. Telemarketers are worse than mimes - at least mimes only attack in public, and don’t knock on your door and come into your home.
So on behalf of all my fellow call recipients, I’d suggest you and your fellow coworkers think before you call, and realize we don’t want your shitty product, we don’t want your shitty call.
In fact, if you want to do the world a favor, stop calling people and start calling all the other telemarketers out there and put me on their Do Not Call list. Then you’ll be doing a worthwhile service.
And if you don’t like people cursing you out when you call, then get a different job.
dropzone said:
You know what, that argument is totally unconvincing, because I have no desire to cold call people and try to convince them to pay me for anything. Sure, they’re just people, but their job is to annoy me. I think it’s fair that I let them feel some of my frustration.
Here’s a thought - we live in a world that to call any type of customer service - be it phone repair, billing problems, computer support, doctor’s appointements, whatever - we are forced to run through an automated computer sorting system to “direct the call appropriately”. And then we end up spending long waits on hold waiting for the operator to answer the call. And what happens when they answer? They ask us exactly the same questions that the automated system asked us as we ran through the sorting system. You mean I entered all that information already and now I have to repeat it? What kind of an organization is that? Hey, I just learned that Compaq customer support outsources to another company, and they have a system where if the callers’ wait is less than 30 minutes, they are being too efficient and cut down on the number of operators. That’s right, they expect you to wait at least 30 minutes for a response. So here’s my idea. Instead of paying people to call us up at home and annoy us trying to sell us something that we don’t want, don’t need, can’t use, and can’t afford, why don’t we pay these people to answer phones instead? Then maybe when I call the phone company I’ll get someone on the other end right away instead of waiting till next week.
chique said:
Yeah, well most of us are so freakin’ tired of getting calls by telemarketers. Doesn’t seem to stop them.
Because I tried being polite and all it ever got me was more demands to buy their product. See above.
Right, and then the next idiot down calls me, and then the next idiot calls me, and the next idiot.
Normally I don’t take the time to get rude and obnoxious, I just respond and hang up. But it sure is annoying, and sometimes a person has to vent and share their frustration.
Well, why don’t you start by not phone soliciting us? That would be a refreshing nice change.
LaurAnge said:
First, it’s already taken more of my time than I wanted to spend on the stupid product to answer the phone. Second, in the past I’ve tried being polite, and all it got me was further attempts to convince me their product was a gift from the gods. Sorry, they brought it on themselves with their policies and practices.
And yes, it’s the companies not the callers that set the policies, but it’s the callers that are physically annoying me. If all the callers quit because they don’t like the way the company makes them treat people, then the companies can’t cold call me, can they.
I have worked extensively in telemarketing. I have also done a lot of customer service, so I have heard it from both sides.
I have managed two telemarketing offices and we were very polite and very strict in enforcing that our representatives be polite. The policy: Customer says no, come back with a question, customer says no again, apologize for the incovenience, thank the person for their time and hang up. Anyone who wouldn’t “let go” of a customer or who argued with a customer got reprimanded, and someone reprimanded three times was fired. Even if they were the best salesperson we had. It happened once, and made an example out of him. We wanted sales, but if you want sales that stick, you can’t sell to people by harrassing them.
Some of you will say: Why don’t you go away on the first no? Because the first no is almost always a knee-jerk. IE: A little while back, I was managing a sales office for cellphones. Typical discussion that led to a sale:
Telemarketer: Hi! I’m calling from COMPANY about our new offer on cellphones.
Client: Not interested!
Telemarketer: So you don’t want the free cellphone?
Client: What free cellphone?
Telemarketer explains deal, which isn’t a scam and in which the person is actually given a phone for free upon signing up with COMPANY. No tricks, no forced sales, nothing of the sort.
A note to FLOHA:
You will get screamed at no matter how polite you are. If you want to stay in this business, you have to realise that these people are not reacting to you personnaly, but to what you represent. When someone started saying “FUCK YOU you stupid little…” I’d say thank you and hang up, and call up the next person on the list. You are disturbing people in their homes and they CAN scream at you if they want to. You should have been told this was a part of the job. If it gets to you, you probably should work somewhere else. Just don’t make the mistake of going to work in a call center. As bad as telemarketing is, you can always say “Shit, I’m having a lousy night, I’ll take a break…” Not so for customer service or placing orders for take-out. You will make less money, and work harder.
When I was doing customer service for a chain of restaurants, I used to come home with pounding headeaches. People would call in, start insulting me, screaming at me, etc, but would not tell me what was wrong with their order. Then they’d say “fix it” and hang up. Half an hour later, they’d call back to know why we havent fixed it yet. I could go on for pages. Suffice it to say, it was a good week when I hadn’t been threathened more than once or twice. And we’re talking about people being angry about the wrong toppings on their pizzas! Not “If I get my hands on you…” but “I’m coming down to the restaurant to kick your ass” or “I’ll Kill you you little ?(@” :rolleyes: The thing is, I’m not at the restaurant, I’m at a callcenter miles away from the restaurant. When we’d get people telling us they were coming to kick our asses, we’d call the restaurant the order originated from to warn them. Some people acutally went and assaulted staff at the restaurant. There were two incidents that I know of, in a period of one year where people were charged.
There are a lot of unprofessional people in telemarketing. These people accomplish a couple of things:
1 - They make everyone hate telemarketers with a passion. I can’t blame people who get angry when they get a “pit-bull” at the other end of the line, and can certainly understand why they’d be sore the next time any telemarketer calls them.
2 - They can get the company they’re working for in trouble. I once caught an employee harrassing a person because they had hung up on her. She was calling back and hanging up on them. I used to bring people to my office to discuss problems, but I fired that one right there on the spot, in front of everyone and told everyone that this kind of behavoiur is not accepted. The person she was calling would have probably been within their rights to file charges against her and our company.
3 - High-pressure salespeople actually generate a lot more trouble than revenue, since for 1000$ of sales, 750$ will be canceled within a week, since 3/4 of their sales are people who wouldn’t buy our product ususally, and once they realise they have bought it don’t want it. There are laws to protect people, and (in Canada) anything sold over the phone can be returned within 30 days for refund.
Also with a lot of criminals doing fraud over the phone under the pretense of telemarketing, it’s no wonder people get edgy when the first thing they hear on the phone is: “Hi, Mr. _____ My name is ______ from _______”.
I would just appreciate it if some of you could realise that not all telemarketers are evil scumsucking soulless bastards. Most of them are students working nights, trying to pay for school, and some of them are retired people who were tired of sitting at home. A lady that worked with us was 58 and very polite but would still get yelled at. OTOH, if you come across a pitbull that won’t let you put in a word, scream at him as much as you want! 
It still would be more efficient to get the name of the company and make a complaint, but I can understand most of you don’t want to be bothered. Just know that complaining to the sales office or head office will probably stop the calls from that company. Screaming at them and hanging up probably won’t.
Very well, then.
In the interest of détente, I’ll stipulate that some of your parents were married.
These make for the best response for telemarketers.
“No, thank you. I need no paper. Other agents from
planet Damogran inform me of all relevant details. Have
a nice Earth day.”
"No, thank you. I need no long-distance service. I use
a comunicator was impanted in my brain before I left my home planet. I use this device for all important calls. Have a nice Earth day."
"No, thank you. Your survey is meant to gather information on humans. I am an agent of the Vogon empire, and thus not suitable to your purposes. Have a nice Earth day."
Yes, I really say these kinds of things. I use a pleasant tone and am careful to be polite. When I finish my statement, I hang up without waiting for a response. The telemarketer usually gets a laugh out of it. For me, these calls have become a new hobby. I'm always coming up with better stories to tell them.
Oooh! I got one
“No, thank you. I am not interested in long-distance service because I do not own a phone. How are you talking to me? Lately, I’ve been picking up phone calls on my fillings. But, I can hang up by pinching my lips like this”
DocCathode That’s perfectly fine with me! I don’t work in telemarketing anymore, but when I did, I’d get a couple of responses like yours, and we’d both laugh and hang up. But most people seem to prefer being insulting.
A point to people who like screaming at telemarketers:
When I did coldcall and someone started getting upset and screaming at me, I’d hang up. You got what you wanted, you’re not talking to me anymore. However, you are upset and I am not.
Here is some advice when making a call:
-
DO NOT ask them how they are doing tonight…get to the point quickly…
-
DO NOT keep repeating their name in ever sentence…they already know their name…
3.DO NOT call them by their first name…you are not their friend or relative…
- Don’t argue with them…thank them for their time and let them go…
I had to do some telemarketing for a golf company a few years ago and I was amazed at how NICE most people were even when they didn’t want the product. I was prepared for the worst and in a couple of thousand calls I only got one like the OP. That guy scared the crap out of me. He sounded like CLint Eastwood on crack.
And I was amazed at how many people actually buy things over the phone.
Go back to #1-as soon as I hear that I hang up on them.
i s0 pwn humans
0mg teh eur0s want n0n3!!!
This is the BBQ Pit. floha can bitch and whine about anything she wants to. We are all free to ignore or disagree with her, but telling her to refrain from bitching and whining is not fair ball. Please, floha, understand that you did nothing wrong coming here to rant. And welcome to the boards, by the way.
(meeshkeen, once again, in English this time?!?)
Allow me.
Translation: I am menstruating.
Translation: Additionally, I advocate slavery and/or indentured servitude.
Translation: Oh lord, please don’t let them draft me.
When you get a telemarketer you just have to be very very loudly friendly–like they are!
Here’s scenario:
[ring]
Mr. Scheaffer: hello?
Marvine: Hello, Mr… schneeefur? This is Marvine from ATT calling to let you know about a grand new opportunity for you to waste your money in x way-
Mr. Scheaffer: [cutting in quick] Well, thank you SOOOO much for calling, MARVINE! I appreciate the time you took to call me this afternoon! I hope you have a WONDERFUL and SUCCESSFUL rest of the afternoon, Marvine, thank you SOOOO much. GOODBYEEEEE!
[click]
After “hello” all Mr. Scheaffer’s speeches are LOUD, and VERY SPRIGHTLY, and Mr. Scheaffer uses Marvine’s name as often as he can work it in. Mr. Scheaffer DOES NOT ALLOW MARVINE TO SPEAK unless he wants to torture Marvine for some reason like that he’s bored and his goddamn cable went out so he can’t watch the latest “Attack on America” rehash.
Mr. Scheaffer hasn’t been rude to Marvine at all: he’s been bludgeoningly polite, just as telemarketers are. He’s assumed Marvine wants to be his very special first-name-basis friend, just as telemarketers do. Mr. Scheaffer likes to use, occasionally, other weapons at his command. Like silly accents. A very high-pitched voice. Sudden, random snorts and mouth sounds. Unless Mr. Scheaffer has developed an unreasoning dislike of the telemarketer, Mr. Scheaffer hangs up quickly: after all, the way to hurt the telemarketer is to waste the telemarketer’s time. Sometimes Mr. Scheaffer likes to pretend to be interested for a very, very, very long time and then come across with the mouth sounds at the end. Mr. Scheaffer enjoys himself in his small way.
At our company, we had 30-40 lines that were for out-calling only. Therefore, anyone calling on them is either a wrong number or a telemarketer. We’d answer this line one of two ways:
1 - “Cimetière Côte-des-Neiges Bonjour?” IE: pretend the person was calling a cemetary. Some telemarketers wouldn’t get it and ask for M. ______ We’d tell them we just buried him, too late and hang up.
2 - We’d let the person do their spiel, and if they were any good, we’d ask how much they made. If it was less than what we offered, we hired them. You’d be surprised how many people we hired like that!