What is wrong with people when they think they can just wake innocent victims up at 6:30 AM on a GOD DAMN Sunday and think they can sell them life insurance?
Jeez. What is up in the world today? I think Telemarketing should be an outlawed job. I know there are things that you can get to take them off their lists or block their calls, but dammit, that just never seems to work in my house.
And also, they call under names like, “J. Scott” or “FM Smith” so you think you’re getting a nice call from an old friend, or some one you don’t know. How can they do that!?
Fuck you telemarketers for waking me up, and calling me 70 times a day.
It’s illegal for them to call you then. Get all their contact information first, then inform them that they’re breaking the law, then contact the police or FCC or whoever regulates this chicanery. That way, the dumbasses get what they’ve earned. In fact, do this anyway…if they’re calling under personal names, they’re probably not all that reputable.
Disclaimer: I work in the marketing business, but I don’t do telemarketing. I do, however, have lots of clients that do outbound telemarketing and are looking for other channels through which to reach consumers. I support moves away from the telemarketing business - sales phone calls at home suck.
Believe it or not, the “do not call” lists work. Or at least, they will soon, after the fines kick in.
I’m servicing a client through a partner agency - this client spends most of their marketing budget in outbound telemarketing. They are desperately seeking other sales channels (which is where I come in) due to the rising costs of the telemarketing channel. In order to avoid fines, this company has to contract with a service that maintains a database of the various state “do not call” lists (and soon, the federal one). This service runs outbound telemarketing databases against their master “do not call” database and removes names of people on those lists. Unfortunately, a few names do slide past somehow, and the first company is paying out about $30,000 a month in fines for dialing up “do not call” consumers. Plus, the service costs extra money and it’s making the telemarketing channels less profitable every day. Thus, they’re looking at other ways to spend their marketing budget.
If the telemarketing bugs you like it bugs me, get on the “do not call” list in your state. If you continue to receive calls, be sure to record the name of the company and the time of the call, so that you can report it.
If you’re not interested in the “do not call” thing, another effective tactic is to tell the caller that you’re on a business line. In 99% of cases, the caller will apologize and remove your name from their list.
