You know, Harris, after reading your post, I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re operating under a misconception. People are not insulting you and cursing at you because you’re a telemarketer. People are insulting you and cursing at you because you’re you.
For me, they are: “How are you today, Sir?”. Usually, the call ends a few seconds later, time needed for me to say “Sorry, not interested” and hang up.
But that’s in exceptional cases, when I’m specifically waiting a call from an individual or firm that could have a blocked phone number. 99% of the time, I let my caller ID/answering machine (marvelous combination, BTW) filter calls for me. Legit companies and friends and associates will leave a message. Telemarketers never will. And since I’m usually never very far from the phone, I can always pick up at the start of the message. Suits me just fine: patience is NOT one of my cardinal virtues and I positively abhor telemarketing.
Harris snivels:
All is not lost. As the worthless scum that employ you can be fined into a financial state that matches their moral bankruptcy for violating any of several regulations, as more people become aware of this, you will undoubtedly find yourself starving on the sidewalk as the aforementioned scum find that they have to converse their assets to buy drugs, or else vanish into the recesses of Club Fed for 5-10.
I have a question. Why is it when a telemarketer calls they always wait until I say hello twice?
Actually, I don’t think my opinion of you is that high.
I think it has to do with the auto-dialers truthbot refered to. I’m pretty sure there’s some device telling them that some unsuspecting victim has picked up the phone.
Yeah, that pause is actually a great giveaway. Sometimes you can get a second or two of boiler-room noise in the background that will indicate it’s a telemarketer and you can hang up without having to even talk to anyone. I’m getting pretty fast with it. I figure if I make a mistake and it’s not a telemarketing call, they’ll call back right away, but that has never been the case yet.
I’m sorry I didn’t have time to read the entire thread, but this phrase Harris used caught at my brain.
Pardon me if I am wrong, but isn’t that the same excuse Nazi War Criminals used?
I’ll sign that petition to do away with telemarketing. Any business that is based on annoying hundreds of people so you can find the few people lacking the mental faculties to know when they are being ripped off is unethical.
As I have mentioned before, I did telemarketing. Twice I did it for a fund raiser, once selling burglar alarms. NONE of these jobs had a ‘Do Not Call’ list. We were given a phone book and told to go through the names. Which numbers we called was pretty much left to our discretion. Since I was in a smallish town (25,000) I knew which addresses were in poorer parts of town and I skipped those. I also skipped the addresses of apartment complexes when I sold burglar alarms.
The whole time I tried to make contacts for the burglar alarm company, the only times I got someone to agree to one of our salesmen making a presentation were older people. Usually the salesmen would come back from their appointments laughing about how senile the people were. I was quite proud to have only been responsible for one sale.
I made a number of sales when I was doing the fundraisers, probably because it seemed like it was for a good cause, the local humane society. The actual charity did not benefit much, though. They got about 5% of the money from ticket sales. Here’s how it worked - a guy whose career was doing telemarketing would come into town and contact local charities to see if any were interested in letting him use their name to make some money. The tickets are for a show called ‘Circus Stars on Parade’, which would be held in the local middle school auditorium, was basically jugglers, clowns, the kinds of circus acts that don’t require animals or special equipment like trapezes. Once he gets a charity that is willing to sully their name for a hundred dollars or so, he rents some office space for a couple of months (this was the first time, the second we worked out of the guy’s motel room) and puts ads in the paper for a part-time job that pays minimum wage. He hires the first half-dozen or so folks who respond to the ad, hands them photocopied pages from the local phone book and a script, and has them start calling. If a customer said they had no kids or didn’t know anyone willing to go to the show, we were to tell them that we could give the tickets to ANOTHER charity, one year it was a local home for runaways and orphans, the other year it was the Boys Club. The tickets were $6 each, and I would sell about 3 to 5 an hour, sometimes more if someone buys a lot at once because they care about those homeless doggies and kitties. After a couple of months they have the show, a few people show up to watch a few jugglers and clowns for an hour or so, the charity get’s their 5%, the performers are paid for their show (a couple of hundred, total), and the guy who runs the scam gets the rest and moves on to the next town.
After the first time I did this I was contacted a year or so later by a different telemarketer selling tickets for the same show for the same charity, apparently they have a network that shares names of people willing to do this who are good at it. I did it again because I was lazy, only worked a couple of seasonal jobs, and the extra cash between selling fruitcakes in the winter and recovering teachers edition and used college texts for Texas Book Company in the summer was worth it for the lack of work you have to do. The third time I was contacted for this kind of telemarketing I refused, even though I didn’t have any work lined up until I delivered phone books later in the spring.
Yes, I know that not all of telemarketing is like this, but it IS a sizable portion of it, especially when you get people selling tickets for events for charities. The larger scale, more professional telemarketing is different in execution only.
So, if you care so little, why did you go to all the trouble of posting a rant?
Hint: you’re an idiot. Every local call is subsidized by long distance calls. Unless there telemarketers are calling long distance, they’re being subsidized.
Harris:
Don’t call me. That’s all I ask.
No, shit for brains, you still don’t get it do you? It is not possible for a telemarketer to be polite. Telemarketers are rude by definition. Regardless of what you say, simply being a telemarketer is a breach of etiquette.
And if I weren’t calling you a self-centered deluded piece of sacntimonious talking shit, I’m sure someone else would.
Fenris:
Just what I was thinking. Except that he’s also angry about his victims making him feel bad about it. The good news is that he has a conscience. The bad news is that he’s doing his best to kill it it, and every time someone tries to wake it up he cusses them out. Harris, if telemarketing bothers you so much, STOP DOING IT.
relic_11
But if you’re getting paid for something, that makes it perfectly moral! :rolleyes:.
You know what? I’d rather work retail forever than be a telemarketer. Which shows you how much I despise telemarketers.
I try to be polite to them. HOWEVER…it pisses me off. Often, I’ve been expecting an important call and a telemarketer fucks me up. I remember waiting to hear if my cat was going to make it through an operation, and jumping every fucking time the phone rang. When the telemarketer called, I lost it.
Quit tying up my fucking phone line. Quit shoving yourself into my space.
Harris-bite me. I’m a cashier, and I don’t like people being rude to employees. But quit acting so holier than though.
Telemarketing should be illegal. Period.
Lynn Bodoni:
No, I’m explaining why telemarketers (often) don’t transmit caller ID information, and why it wouldn’t make business sense to intentionally hide it. If you want to say telemarketers shouldn’t be allowed to use digital lines, that’s something else.
No, I have personal experience.
Saying “I heard that the fire department doesn’t see any of this money!” is like asking “Why should I support the AARP? My grandma doesn’t get a dime of that!” The money isn’t going into Bob Fireman’s paycheck, it isn’t buying new axes or hats or dogs - and the callers should gladly tell you that.
casdave:
Not at all. Junk faxes cost the recipient money - whether I want to receive the fax or not, whether I decide to walk over to the fax machine to look at it or not, it costs me money (in the form of ink and paper) if someone sends me a fax. The same goes for cellular phone calls, which is why TMs don’t call cell phones.
Telemarketing calls only cost time, and even then you have a choice. “I hear the phone ringing. Maybe it’s someone I want to talk to; maybe not. Maybe it’s that important call I’ve been expecting; maybe not. Should I pick it up and risk talking to someone I don’t want to?”
coosa:
The same amount of outcry that’s required to do anything else that consumers like and businesses hate. While you’re at it, overturn the DMCA.
Fenris:
Nonsense… anyone who’s had the job for more than a day is already used to being bitched at. All you’re doing is venting your own rage - not that there’s anything wrong with that. Better to take it out on the telemarketer than to kick the cat across the room or beat up your wife.
As for driving up the operating costs: I don’t know about other companies, but we hire at least one or two people a week. It’s not much of an investment. The potential applicant arrives for a second interview at 2:30 and listens in on calls for a couple hours. He gets on the phone at 5:00; if he hasn’t walked out by 6:30, he’s hired.
Now, someone who’s just been hired is going to bring in less money than someone who’s been there for a few months. If you can get rid of all the experienced workers and fill the office with rookies, you’ll win. But good luck saying anything on the phone that will bother anyone who’s been there more than a day.
truthbot:
What nonsense is that? Let’s have a link to a manufacturer’s description of this amazing product, please. It sounds not only annoying but inefficient.
How modern dialers work:
An office has a certain number of telemarketers (agents), X. Each agent sits at a computer, spending most of the time looking at a blank screen. The dialer manages a certain number of outgoing phone lines, Y, which is greater than X. It dials a number on each line. As soon as a number picks up, it is transferred to an available agent (more clever dialers will automatically hang up on busy signals, disconnected numbers, and answering machines).
Calls are only “dropped” when there are no agents available to answer a call. Since the average call length is known, and a predictable percentage of the numbers dialed will be disconnected or answered by a machine, the goal is to choose an optimum value for Y. Too low, and we spend all day waiting for calls; too high, and we drop calls. We hate dropping calls, so we tend to spend more time waiting than we have to.
That means the company would rather drop calls than spend time waiting for them… or someone stayed logged on during lunch. I believe our machine doesn’t redial dropped numbers for a week or two.
Sounds like you stand to make a fortune off of them.
Why would that work? “Uh oh, this guy swore at me, I better take him off the list! Who knows, I might get sworn at twice next time!”
omni-not:
You’d be surprised… many dialers will automatically record a message when they detect an answering machine.
pepperlandgirl:
There’s a pause between when you pick up the phone, when the dialer detects that it stops ringing, when the call is transferred, and when the record comes up on the agent’s screen. Usually it’s quick enough that we hear “–ello?” at the same time that the record comes up.
The Ryan:
- US West is in the long-distance business? Guess I’ll stop paying AT&T.
- Many telemarketers do call long distance. About half of our calls are long distance.
Telemarketers are only “subsidized” by your home phone bill in the same sense that mechanics are “subsidized” by your buying a new car.
I don’t wake up to go to work until about 11 usually. Without fail, the phone rings about 9 am every day. When I’m awakened from my sleep, my first thought isn’t to go into the next room and check caller ID. I answer the phone, it could be important. “Good morning, this is Kim, from ____, I’m calling to offer you a new plan, blah,blah, blah.” I don’t pay the bills in my house. I sit through 15 minutes of crap before they listen that my mom’s not home. Eventually, I start being rude. It’s the only way people get the hint.
Maybe I don’t submit my name enough places, but if I get 2 telemarketing calls a month, it is a deluge…
The calls can no doubt be annoying. Heck, I get a little miffed when a friend calls while I am eating dinner. But the anger being directed towards Harris and Mr2001 would be better directed towards the percentage of the population that actually buys what they are pushing and making telemarketing a profitable method of selling. Capitalism at work I guess - so long as it is successful and someone can make money at it… I guess a few inconvenient calls are the price to be paid to live in a place with so much choice and opportunity. Bet they don’t get many telemarketing calls in North Korea or Cuba…
Feel free to rip me a new a-hole for being somewhat sympathetic to telemarketers… 