In case anyone isn’t familiar with it, I use Google Voice, which has automatic spam detection, and calls go straight to a spam voicemail folder that I can check at my leisure. I get very few spam calls, other than a few debt collectors who are fine with me once I tell them they have the wrong number.
You can get yourself a google voice number for free, and then set it to ring your house, work or cell phones (or all of them). It’s also nice because you can send/receive texts from any computer with internet access.
It really does help cut down on the annoying surveyors, telemarketers and debt collectors though!
Then, you just give your google voice number out instead of your real phone numbers.
OP, I don’t like you very much. You waste my time calling with stupid polls. The last few polls I took (years ago) were so badly worded and biased that I haven’t taken any since.
That means that you can take your existing number and put it on that service to act as a front end. THEN, you get a new number on your cell, etc. The service takes calls at your number, screens them and passes on the ones that you want to the phones that you want (like home, work, cell, etc). PLUS it transcribes the messages (wonder how good that is) so you can just read them like email instead of punching through the voicemail stuff. The dropped calls get the “this number has been disconnected” tone/message.
Okay, this is a legit service and I think I’m going to go and see how much Google stock is running right now. Google can put one heck of a blacklist behind their service if they want to (they don’t claim to that I saw).
BUT, I couldn’t find the cost of the service… UGGGHHHH… me want… how much is it?
I once had a telemarketer who wouldn’t give up, much like our friend Flyer. I couldn’t figure out why he would keep calling when he never got an answer, but it became a game. I decided to answer each call like the CIA-ish switchboard op in 3 Days of the Condor.
I did phone surveys for a while. I needed the work. I thought, hey, it’s not like I’m selling anything. Why, if I got a call about politics from a well-known company, I’d answer the questions if I wasn’t busy. Turned out that I did surveys on a lot of different subjects, not just politics.
Anyway, we used random number dialing. Once the computer generated a number, it was on our call list, until we got the survey or eliminated it for some reason. “Don’t call back” was a reason. Hanging up wasn’t. So people who hung up right away or made up a story each time we called? They kept getting called. So maybe that’s the explanation for people who get a lot of calls. Duh.
I have never got a lot of marketing or survey calls. Sometimes they come at an inconvenient time, like dinner. Luckily there’s this invention called an answering machine. Duh again.
We only called mobile numbers for a couple topics. Sometimes the person would ask how we got their number. For mobiles we didn’t use random numbers, the list was generated by them submitting a form that gave us permission. Triple duh.
I thought Flyer had a pretty decent OP. A lot of you assholes apparently didn’t bother reading past whatever point made you decide you had enough ammunition to compose a half ass response.
Doing surveys isn’t a particularly sleazy job, and it’s not as bad as being a jobless wonder like Lynn Bodani. I’m pretty sure you don’t have a job, right Lynn? I asked you once after your participation in a workplace thread rang particularly false. You didn’t answer, so I took that as a no. It was shitty of you to decide that Flyer belonged in the Pit where he could be treated as an acceptable target, when he didn’t do anything inflammatory.
I didn’t answer you then because it seems that your only purpose on this board is to slam on other people. I’m only answering you now because you seem to assume that if I don’t answer, I’m guilty of whatever you accuse me of.
I’m a free lancer now. Have been for some time. I don’t talk about my current jobs because what I do is not very common, and if I provided much information, it would be extremely easy to find out my RL name, address, and all sorts of info. I prefer not to put that out on the internet. There are some people who seem obsessed in finding out who I am, what I look like, and all the other details of my life.
I see, since I think you’re a stupid loudmouth and said so, all I ever do is slam on people. You missed the bit where I stuck up for Flyer… in the post you quoted. Where I could I have possibly got the idea that you’re stupid? It is a mystery.
Very interesting how you went from register jockey to TOP SECRET freelancer. Is “freelancer” kind of like “independent contractor”? Like, if you have a big gap in your work history you put in “freelancer” and not mention that in that entire six months your total hours add up to less than a standard work week? Just like how somebody thinking you have the keen judgement skills of a toddler means that person is obsessed with you and wants to prank call your trailer.
The way you babble on about your tedious shell of a life a stalker could determine your identity. You don’t have any stalkers, princess.
I should add that I bet that Lynn is not the only work dodger/puffed up bottomfeeder to give Flyer a hard time here.
I kinda get that phone surveys are a bother and telemarketers are a pain. I just don’t understand all the fucking vitriol that gets hurled at them. They’re just people doing a job to earn money. Same as most of us. They didn’t make the product their selling. They didn’t decide to conduct a survey via phone. They don’t run the company or make the decisions. They’re just a person clocking in and out for apparently $8 an hour or less. This makes it kosher to treat them like shit on your shoe?
How about this for a novel concept? When you get a phone call from a survey or telemarketer, be polite. Ask nicely to be removed from their list if it bothers you that much. If you can’t do that, just hang up. Don’t be a dick to someone just because you can. Don’t make their job that much worse.
Or here’s a better idea: DO NOT COLD-CALL!!! You don’t know what urgent calls your survey is keeping your target from getting or how little sleep repeated calling (see Flyer’s remarks about how he’ll call over and over to bully his victim into compliance) is allowing someone in a dangerous line of work.
More importantly, you are using someone else’s resources for your marketing without permission of the person providing said resources (time, paying for the phone, etc.). IMO, telemarketing (INCLUDING surveys) is right up there with e-mail spam on the sleazy parasite scale. Pay for your own (bleep) advertising!
How did this thread become a pile-on for one of our esteemed, overworked, underpaid and under-loved Administrators? It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature, Dude!
Why don’t you start a Pit thread about this topic and stop hijacking this one? Let’s all focus our hate for telemarketers, where it belongs!
Since accepting or rejecting a job is voluntary unless our economy becomes 100% socialist, you can always quit.
Long ago and far away, I took a job where I was given leads for magazine sales. I had to deliver the customer’s “guarantee” personally, and incidentally :rolleyes: get their signature on an installment payment plan. Before accepting the job, I checked with various authorities and determined that it was not illegal. But after a while, even though I was pretty successful, I decided that I could not continue, as I was trying to convince people who could barely scrape by to pay for something they certainly didn’t need, at a price that wasn’t reasonable. They were signing up only because of my dynamite sales tactics.
So I quit, for no other reason than I didn’t think it was an ethical job. Some of us actually have ethics.
All that “bullied” person needs to do is stay on the line long enough to find out how to prevent future calls. Apparently with Flyer’s outfit, you have to specifically say that you want on their do not call list. Hanging up, making up a story, chewing out the caller, and/or being a general crybaby doesn’t get it done.
As I pointed out earlier, there’s an invention called the answering machine that comes in handy when you get calls at inconvenient time. Or you can just unplug the phone. Or turn off the ringer. Anybody who ever worked a night shift knows that.
They do get your permission right at the start of every single survey. Nobody needs your permission to call your number, though, if that’s what you mean. Not even unlisted or mobile phone numbers.
Seriously, if you have time to goof around posting to this thread, your time isn’t that precious. The plain facts are that the practices of telemarketing and phone surveys are legal and will continue. Being a jerk to the poor old phone monkey does no good and is probably counterproductive. Honey vs. vinegar and all that.
