And why not? They’re being rude to you. They’re interrupting whatever you were doing, probably in the privacy of your own home, to try and make a buck off you. Why don’t they deserve rudeness?
I don’t much care that they’re just trying to make a living themselves. It’s a contemptible living.
It’s not actual police officers or sheriff’s deputies who are calling you. Instead, it’s some fundraising firm that keeps most of the money, so that the police charity gets only a few dollars out of every hundred.
I usually ask them how the money contributed will be spent, and it’s like pulling teeth to get them to admit that only a small percentage of the money goes to doing anything useful. Once I get them to tell me the percentage, I tell them that I’ll contribute directly instead.
Here is a thread I started some time ago about Fraternal Order of Police chicanery.
Hahaha! My wife told me she did when I wasn’t home one day. She asked the telemarketing guy how much he was donating and said “uuuuh…nothing” and then she told him that is what she was donating and hung up.
Speaking as a reformed telemarketer (Hey! I was in college and times were tough for me.) who used to make Fraternal Order of Police calls, I can say that the percentage the police actually got was ZERO! The angle that the company I worked for was trying was that they would approach an emergency service organization (police, firefighters, ambulance drivers etc.) and say that they will put on a community event to help put them more in the public eye. They wouldn’t have to do anything, the company would make all the cold calls asking for people to buy tickets to the event, then that money would go to the telemarketing company to suposedly pay for the cost of putting on the event. Nevermind that most of what was going on was donated by everyone who participated… meaning that the event cost this company NADA. They pocketed every last cent.
Telemarketers really don’t like being there. Their actual success rate in getting a sale in telemarketing is less than 3%, and most work on commission. Back when I was doing it, we didn’t have the autodialers that made the calls for us. We each had a phone and a stack of 3 x 5 cards with names and addresses that we had to go through each evening, so our commisions were pretty low. I used to get harrased by my employer because I would not press people to buy when they said no. I figured if they didn’t want it, no meant no, so I would thank them and move on. The our sales were so bad that the company actually changed it’s salery policy of “base pay + commision” to straight commision. There were weeks when I would literally get paid $15 for my paycheck. Then on top of that, there’s the psychological impact of the job. Just hearing people say no on almost every call, every night I worked there really took it’s toll.
So, having been through all that, I find it easier to just hang up. It minimizes my time on the phone when they call me and minimizes their time with somone who will not buy their crap.
Most of the telemarketing calls I’ve been getting lately must be using autodialers. If I don’t hear anyone talking within a count of three after I pick up, then I hang up. These idiots actually expect me to wait for the pleasure of their annoyance. Idjits.
To everyone who rips a telemarketer a new cornhole, I have this to say:
Back when I was a starving college student, I did this work for a few months. It was long, gruelling work. The shift leaders were constantly on your ass, the managers were contantly threatening to fire the whole lot of callers, and the QA people listening in on the calls would make idle chat with you in the hallway about raising your “professional tone”. It is thankless, low-paying work that emasculates your soul.
Then you call someone who just screams at you. …And this is a good thing. You’re helping them. I can’t stress this enough. It’s a break from the monotony, the cellmates and managers get a laugh, and the folks in QA make a note about how resiliant you are to abuse.
No, the calls that really sucked were the ones that took a long time and ended with no sale. “Time is money” is the equation of this job, and the shorter you can keep the calls, the more chances you have to make comission.
So today, back in the real world where that kind of shit doesn’t matter anymore, here’s what I do: stretch the call out as long as I possibly can. If you really want to make a mark, if you really want to piss off the caller, you will damage their oh-so-vital productivity numbers. Act interested. Drag the caller all the way through the script. Make them repeat themselves. Lead them backwards and down other branches through the script. Have fun with them. Confuse them with the people who called yesterday. Rattle out 16 random digits and have them explain that they can’t take your credit card information yet. Put them on hold at random intervals for only 5-10 seconds. Give them a fake mailing address that sends mail to the drainage ditch, say you desparately want to see it in writing, offer to pay in cash. Be like a housecat playing with a grasshopper before the kill. Watch TV while talking to them, be distracted, be interested, be the person that makes the caller hate the job so much they decide to quit and get a better-paying job at McDonald’s.
See, I think about it in the opposite way. Here’s how I see things: telemarketing will not stop until it becomes unprofitable. Every second of a telemarketer’s time that I waste is time that he could spend doing something profitable. Therefore, it is my sacred duty to waste as much of a telemarketer’s time as possible, for the public good.
I let them read their little script for three minutes or however long it takes 'em. At the first stop, I say, “Not interested, thanks,” and hang up. There! That wasn’t rude, but it wasted some of their time, and made me feel a little warmer inside. One more step toward unprofitability.
The cop ones, I just explain that I just got outta’ jail and have contributed adequately to the employment of law enforcement officers.
Not true, but it makes for an awkward silence as they decide whether or not to hang up.
With commercial ones, I ask for a copy of their “DO NOT CALL LIST” procedures. I figure if they’ll waste my time, I’ll waste their printing and postage time.