Have you ever had a notable experience with a cold-caller, at home or at the office?
Mostly, I’m curious if anyone ever has a positive experience with cold-callers. Engaging with them usually seems like a bad idea, but I guess it’s not always negative. I did once hire a lawn guy who knocked on my door, and he’s been relatively decent.
So let’s hear it. Has the random door-to-door salesman or the person who called your office out of the blue ever done ya good?
I think I once switched home phone providers via an unsolicited call. I was planning on switching anyways, so they just saved me a call.
We got some useful coupons for a local waterpark once when someone came door-to-door, but in general no.
A funny “not cold caller” story: We’ve learned to recognize the sort of calls that are selling stuff, cut them off very abruptly “thankyouNothankyouSlam”.
Back before we got caller ID, Typo Knig answered the phone one Sunday evening, did the same “thankyouNothankyouSlam” thing, and muttered something about “so-and-so Painting Services”.
I said “Uh, that sounds familiar”. Yep - it was the name of the painter our decorator had recommended, letting us know he could start work the next day.
Fortunately, the painter found it hilarious. He phoned the decorator, who phoned us and said he’d been laughing when he called her. Typo Knig was embarassed.
I’m not sure how much this counts, but I’ve given to my university and political campaign funds a total of three times based on unsolicited phone calls. As an aside, the weirdest political cold call I got was one to support Governor Scott Walker in the Wisconsin recall effort. I explained to the person that “a) I don’t live in Wisconsin, I’m in Illinois (as should be evident by the phone number they called) and b) I’m a registered Democrat and that they’re barking up the wrong tree.” She still persisted, after a long pause, saying something like, “well, it’s not about political affiliation, it’s…” before I cut her off and said, “look, I don’t like the guy. You’re barking up the wrong tree.” She got the hint then. I’m still trying to figure out how I got on that call list.
The really funny thing about the Gov. Walker supporters is that they’re claiming the recall effort was caused by out-of-state instigators :dubious: and yet they are definitely (it’s not just you) making an attempt to solicit out-of-state funds.
The only cold call received positively that comes to mind was my husband who talked to a guy from AT&T going door-to-door when UVerse was coming to our area. Since we were pissed at Comcast as our Internet/cable provider and were with AT&T anyway for landline and cell phones, it wasn’t a tough sell.
Since we have about 5 different trash collecting companies around here vying for everyone’s business they are constantly cold-calling door to door trying to undercut eachother. Since I don’t care who’s picking up my trash I constantly switch whenver offered a better deal.
One time I answered the phone for a cold caller and it was someone doing market research. She asked if I would mind answering a few questions about communicating with my doctor’s office—this was before doctors here had online portals for managing health information, asking questions, viewing test results, etc. I said yes, which completely threw her off guard. Clearly she had been getting so many refusals that she assumed another was coming.
It took all of 5 minutes to answer the questions and she was really happy. So, that wasn’t so much them doing me good as a painless cold call, but I guess it counts.
I got in touch with a good printing company who dropped by my office one day. I still use them.
I got my last job based on a cold call from an executive recruiter, if that counts. But his timing was perfect. I just had come out of a meeting wherein I was informed that I would be working sixty hour weeks for the next six months (again), because my manager couldn’t say No to the users.
I said Yes I wanted to interview before he finished his first sentence.
Regards,
Shodan