What’s the best line for getting rid of those annoying junk phone-calls without verbally attacking the poor ham who is just trying to make a living… ?
I just use “I’m not interested.” Repeat once if necessary, then hang up.
Of course, sometimes I’m in a bad mood, and just pick up the phone and say “F*** you.” and hang up.
“Please put this number on your do-not-call-list.”
Legally they must comply and not call you for a certain number of years (I think five). Check http://www.junkbusters.com for specifics.
It won’t matter what you say to them, they will keep calling you back. If not this particular telemarketing company, some other will. There is no magical formula aside from not having a phone that will keep them 100% from calling you. I’ve even seen unlisted phone numbers on telemarketing call lists.
That being said…
I suggest you have some fun with it. Pretend to be some pretentious redneck who doesn’t fully understand today’s modern technology and keep bugging the crap out of the telemarketer who called you until THEY hang up.
{b}Former** telemarketer here.
The reason you cannot escape them by having an unlisted number is that they work with lists of sequential numbers (555-0001, 555-0002, 555-0003, etc.). If you think that’s bad, you haven’t got a listing for a business district, where you call EVERY extension for a company. It gets old real quick at both ends of the line.
The BEST way to annoy telemarketers is to let them go through their pitch, ask them lots of apropos questions, and THEN tell them that you are not interested. In other words, make them waste their time, since most of them are on commission anyway.
My solution:
"Yes, I’d love to listen to your sales call. Please be advised that since this is a business transaction, I charge a fee of $10. per minute, or every fraction thereof, to listen to your sales demonstration. Do you agree to pay these fees? If you cannot agree to pay, either connect me with someone who can or put me on your DO NOT CALL list.
Here’s what Cecil Adams has to say on the subject: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a960927.html
For every one telemarketer you annoy, ten more will spring up to take his place.
These days, my solution is to use a cell phone for pesonal calls, and give businesses one of those free voice-mailboxes from the internet. No landline means no telemarketer. But when I used to have a real phone line, and whenever I would have some time, I would do what detop suggests. I would pretend to be very interested, asking for all kinds of details, then at the crucial moment I would:
(a) Say “I have another call coming in, please hold a second” then I would hang up on them. If they called back, I’d pretend I don’t know anything.
(b) I would give them a really strange name that I would have to spell out, but I would repeatedly give them different spellings, ask them to repeat it, then correct them with a new spelling.
© I would start selling them my own telemarketing equipment: “You must get tired wearing those headsets all day long, I’ve got these hi-tech ones that you won’t even notice you’re wearing, and they only cost $19.99 plus $49.95 shipping and handling. Wanna buy one?”
When I would not have the time, I would tell them something in a pretend foreign language (using a conversational tone), scream (if alone), then hang up. But I suppose that violates the “without verbally attacking” part.
The May 2001 issue of Poptronics magazine has a great article about thwarting telemarketers. Apparently, most of them use something called a predictive dialer. This is the sort of machine that pre-determines whether or not you’re actually there. It waits for a short burst of audio (“Hello?”) followed by a pause. If it hears a long string of audio, it assumes it has called an answering machine and flags the number to be called back later. If, however, it hears the infamous Special Information Tones (the “doo-daa-deep!” you hear just before messages like “The number you have reached is no longer in service”), it will take that number off the list of numbers to be dialed permanently, assuming it’s a non-working number. So, the trick is to start your answering machine message with these tones. A WAV file containing these tones is conveniently located at ftp://ftp.gernsback.com/pub/pop/sit.wav. So, go download it and have some fun.
Telemarketers have a horrible job. Once I started working in an office around a lot of customer service reps I made a resolution to stop abusing them. Problem is, that even though it’s not their fault, there will always be more.
The compromise I came up with this. I pick up the phone, ask who it is…if it’s a telemarketer, I hang up. No pleasantries. click
It doesn’t waste their time, it doesn’t waste mine and it satisfies my need to be rude without actually being that rude, relatively speaking. More importantly, it’s the quickest way to get them off the phone and out of my life.
I used to use an air horn aimed right at the mouthpiece. The wife made me stop though, she felt sorry for them. Also I once “accidently” did it to my mother-in-law. It was her own fault, she should have answered right away as soon as I said hello.
When they call, I tell them that I don’t deal with telemarketers, and not to call again. If they hang around long enough, I ask to be put on their “Do Not Call” list, but generally they try to get off the line as fast as possible when I say I’m not interested.
I used to get stuck talking to them all the time, until one day I realised that it’s my phone line, and I don’t have to accept their calls. Tell them you don’t want to deal with them, ask to go on their “Do Not Call” list, and if that all fails, just hang up. You don’t have to talk to them!!
I got ruthless after the Diabetes Foundation fiasco. I liked the Diabetes Foundation, and was keen to support them and the work they do, so when they called asking for people to sell raffle tickets for them, I said yes. This probably wasn’t too smart, as I’m semi-disabled and I don’t get out a lot, but I still managed to sell a respectable number of tickets for them. The following year, they rang and asked me to do it again, and I said yes. Again, I sold some tickets for them, but it was harder, as I was getting out even less. Then the next year, they rang during a period where my illness was flaring up, and asked me to sell tickets again. I told the man on the phone that I couldn’t this year, though I was terribly sorry, and that perhaps I would be able to do it the year after. He abused me. I couldn’t believe it. No “Sorry to hear you’re not well, thanks for your effort the last two years”, just a stream of abuse for refusing to do it that year. And then he slammed the phone down in my ear.
I have never forgiven the diabetes foundation for this, and figure if it’s good enough for telemarketers to hang up on me, it’s good enough for me to hang up on them. I am the one who pays for the telephone service that they call on, and if I don’t want to speak to them, I won’t.