Hey telemarketers......FUCK YOU! Fuck you & the God you worship!

The BBQ Pit
21

The firefighers union in our state does fundraising via this firm of TOTAL pricks. I can’t even begin to tell you how irritated they made me. One year, ONE YEAR, like an idiot I bought their “concert tickets” for the benefit. Well, the next year I said no. The year after that they called again, repeatedly, asking for me. Since husband works at home, he got every call. Each time the guy never identified himself, just said he was “a friend.” My husband got so he recognized his voice. Finally he got me when I was home (though my husband picked up the phone first and motioned that THIS was the caller who had been calling every day). So I actually bitched a little about that, the fact that he was not “a friend” and also about the fact that though he said “They were just calling to say thanks for past support” they were actually calling for more money. In the course of our conversation, the guy

  • fed me scare statistics about fire safety
  • told me he thought I was lying about being married since my name and my husband’s were different
  • when I asked about 501-3© status, told me it “sickened him” that I would care more about a tax writeoff than supporting those hardworking boys (no women firefighters in the whole state, apparently)
  • told me he thought my husband was really rude
  • denied making previous phone calls, and said my husband was lying
  • denied misleading my husband about the nature of the call

and on and on. For me, I don’t care, it was rather cathartic discussing all this with this fricking numbnuts. But what irks me is the fact that they are also calling little old ladies, doing the hard sell on them. He made it very hard to say no–unless you had an attitude or a chip on your shoulder, like I did. I loathe the firm that did this, and although I insisted they NEVER CALL ME EVER AGAIN, I actually yearn for them to f*ck up and dial my number. I will tape the whole thing and contact the attorney general of our state, who’s been on the warpath for this stuff lately, god love her.

22

I block “Out of Area.”

After reading this, Thank God!

23

Telemarketers scammed my mom out of $300 recently. I thought she had more sense, but they were really tricky. My sister and I are working with Citibank to get the charges removed. I think it’ll be OK.

I work with mentally impaired (retarded) people, in a residental “group home” setting. Sometimes people come to the door, or call up, trying to sell something. They don’t know that it is a goverment-run home that they are calling. I usually just shut them up and get them off as soon as possible. A few times, I suspect, I made a mistake, though…

One of the ladies I look after cannot speak (other than a few curse words, and “yes” and “no”, etc.) She usually makes various enthusiastic grunting sounds, etc. She sometimes gets a call from her mom, or a family friend. They just talk to her on the phone (she LOVES this!) and she grunts and listens for a while. Anyway, I am pretty sure I have handed the phone to her a few times when the caller was a telemarketer. For legal reasons, the phone number is in her name. So when someone asks for her, (especially just by first name) I have assumed it’s a relative. So I hand the phone to her, and she grunts and carries on…and they hang up right away. The lady I care for is not upset, she was happy to get a call. I have no idea what the telemarketers think, though!

And at home, yes, I have caller ID. I never answer “Out of Area” either.

24

I get so many tele-calls that I hardly ever answer the phone anymore. I usually keep the ringer off and let the answering machine screen my calls. On the rare occasions when I do answer the phone, if I hear any kind of delay after answering, I hang up. The delay is a sure sign of a telemarketer’s automated dial up machine.

25

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by dogsbody *
**.

The best way to deal with these loons, though, is to listen long enough to get the name of the person making the call, the company that they’re calling from, and then say, “Put me on your do not call list.” They must do this. They must not call you for a full year. If they do call before the year is up, they can be taken to small claims court and will have to pay a fine, which increases every time they screw up.

So how are we supposed to do this if the person is completely unintelligible? I have had to ask some people who they are about 5 times and got so tired of them not being able to answer me I hung up! How do these people ever expect to sell anything if they cannot be understood?! Who are the dumb fucks who think they will ever make a sale if no one can understand them?

26

My only problem with tele-marketers is THEY NEVER LET UP! And I don’t know how to handle them. I just don’t have it in me to hang up on them, so I usually listen to their whole spiel politely because I just can’t hang up on them. Although, I have figured out that if you have to say “Hello” twice, then it’s best to hang up before you get a response. It’s easier for me to hang up before I hear them say anything.

27

Yes, I have found that if you don’t get an immidiate response to a hello, then it’s usually a telemarketer. My thing to say to them is no Mrs. mispronounced name doesn’t live here. My last name isn’t that difficult, but people ALWAYS GET IT WRONG! They usually apologise to me:-) That is always nice.

28

Hey pkbites. get fucked by a Parkinson’s infected Wombat and die.
Thank you :slight_smile:

29

My husband and I have a parrot named Ringo who LOVES to talk on the phone. When it rings, he lets into a barrage of “Hellos” in about 30 different voices and inflections. He keeps this up as long as you hold the phone there (you occassionally have to prompt him to continue, but he holds his own pretty good).

One evening we got a telemarketing call and my husband held the phone up for Ringo. He just kept on saying “Hello??” “Hello!” Heeeelooooo", [very deep Barry White voice] “Hello” ad nauseum. All we could hear from the other end was “Yes, hell sir…uh- hello…Yes, I’m calling about…yes, hello sir”. We about busted a gut and kept him on around 45 seconds. I love that bird!

Zette

30

You’ll notice, oldscratch, I’m not the only one here bitching about telemarketers. Please include everyone in your sexual fantasies. We’ll have a wombat fuck fest/gang bang.

31

I wouldnt’ really call them my sexual fantasies. You do seem to have quite the fascination with telemarketers. Somewhat similar to the fascination repressed homosexuals display for homosexual behavior.

Could it be, that maybe you long to be a telemarketer yourself?
that’sit, I’ve found out your dirty little secret pkbites. don’t worry, we are a very supporting group here. We’ll help you with this tough time, you have my complete support in coming out of the closet.

32

Dogsbody’s right on the mark - one extra thing to reduce your call volume is find out if they work for a telemarketing firm and tell them to put you on the do not call list for all their clients. This is also a polite way to end the call itself:
“Hello, Mrs. Mispronounced, my name is John, and I am calling on behalf of MCI-”
“Your name is John? Tell me, John, do you work directly for MCI, or do you work for a telemarketing firm?”
“Uh - I work for a marketing firm.”
“What’s the name of your company?”
“ABC Marketing.”
“OK - please put me on your do not call list for MCI and all your other clients.”
“Alright, I’ll do that.”
Then they hang up, which is great.

You do have to interrupt at the beginning, but they are usually receptive because it sounds like you’re interested and asking for more information at first.

Then if they call you back, sue them for $500!

33

Man, I’m glad this thread is here! At the hell-hole where I work, I have been given exclusive rights to be as rude as I like to telemarketers. I usually get the following:

  1. Someone claiming to be from the “Service Department” wanting to know the model of my copier. Here’s my list of replies:
    a. I put them on idefinite hold.
    b. I hang up on them.
    c. I get nervous and inform them that their technician
    picked up the copier yesterday and that they should
    have it in their shop.
    d. I make up the name of a copier: “It’s a Canon 666.
    It’s a helluva copier”, laugh and hang up.

  2. Calls that start out with, “May I speak to person in
    charge of (insert department here).” I hang up. Today I
    got one of theses and the woman called back and said,
    “That was very rude!” So I hung up on her again.

  3. Long distance companies: We use AT&T. Always have.
    Always will. I ask them what they are offering us to
    switch. After they tell me, I claim AT&T gives me free
    long distance service and they recently painted my
    building and does my laundry once a week. Most laugh.
    Others get pissed. Fuck 'em. They can get a real job.

34

D’oh! I hate theses to pieces!

35

Tonight, while eating dinner someone from Visa calls me, I politely tell him I am not 18 yet. (He also had me on speakerphone. The echo drives me crazy!)
Then 30 mins later, why my face was stuffed with desert, a lady called me from the same company, with the same speaker phone, selling the same thing. :rolleyes:
Don’t they communicate with each other at all?
I was 18 30 minutes ago, what makes you think anything has changed since then?

36

Y’know, it just shows how often I read profiles but I had absolutely no clue until right now that you were under 18, pepperlandgirl. Damn. I wish I could have written as coherently as you seem to when I was your age.

Oh. . . I really really really hate telemarketers too, especially the ones who call right in the middle of Futurama EVERY WEEK! Die Telemarketers Die.

(No, no, it’s German)

37

You will not believe this, but I swear on my own, and my mothers life that as soon as this thread loaded, a got a phone call.

From a telemarketer.

“Hello, I’m Annie - and I’m calling from <a company>. We can seriously reduce the cost of owning a cell phone.”

Do I look fucking poor? I can afford 50 fucking cell phones so fuck off and plague someone else with your unique brand of wanton shite.

I swear I get about 10-20 calls like this a day at work.

38

Okay, now I know I am gonna get some nasty reply’s to this but, I am a telemarketer. Yes, that’s right, the evil spawn that won’t stop calling you… that would be me. Let me say first, I hate my job, anyone that had a job such as mine would hate it passionately because I HATE calling people and bothering them. (But as a struggling university student, the money is far too good to turn down lightly… some of us make as much as the business people we call.) So, that said, I feel I should probably clear a bit up for everyone.
First, let me discuss the mysterious “lists” and “databases” that so many people I call have the totally wrong idea about. There rarely is a special list that is used, or a database… often telemarketers just use the phone book. That’s right, the phone book. So, no sir/madam there is nothing I can do to get telemarketers to stop calling you unless you want me to ring up the yellow pages and have them remove your business from their listings- but that might cost your company real business.
Secondly, there is no do-not-call list. We can be polite if you insist there is one but, nope, sorry, that would be far to easy… if such a list existed don’t you think everyone would be on it? And you can use the do-not-call list idea to threaten to sue us ,as some people have suggested above but, no offense, you’d have to find the telemarketing company first and, let me save you the time and say, that is no easy thing to do. These companies are aware of how much they are generally despised and they do not put up signs saying “Here we are, come hang us from the nearest tree.”
Okay, next, I am not the kind of telemarketer that is connected to a computer that dials all the numbers for them but, I know about such things and, let me tell you, that is an even worse deal than mine because, while I can take numerous smoke breaks during the day, between calls, to help deal with the absolute evil of what I do, those others cant even take a break- they’re hooked to a computer like a chain and forced to stay perky and alert while the computer dials number after number after number. Now, that sucks.
Okay, next… so you get calls 6 times a day? I can assure that it isn’t the same telemarketer calling you each time so, what do you want? There’s no telemarketers union (gee, wouldn’t that like, bring about Armageddon if there was one?). So, we don’t call each other and say “Yes, so and so doesn’t wish to be bothered today so, lets nobody call him?” or “So and so is having sex so wait 5 seconds while he finishes and then call him.” If you get 6 calls a day, be happy you don’t get 10… there are hundreds of thousands of telemarketing companies out there, and each individual telemarketer goes through about 300 calls per day. Do the math. Yes it’s a conspiracy, yes its evil, yes it would be wonderful if human beings had never thought up something so monstrous.
Next, a few times a day I get someone that wants to speak with my manager. I usually say he’s “unavailable” or “busy with a client” or some such crap but in actual fact, I don’t really have a manager. I’ve got a supervisor who hands out pay checks and phone numbers but, no actual manager because- we’re telemarketers… it’s the easiest (and therefore worst) job in existence. No manager needed.
So, straight from the telemarketers mouth- what is the best way of dealing with us? If you are being called at home, hang up as soon as you figure out what kind of call it is. We don’t care if you hang up on us. It is far from being the worst thing that happens to us during the day and, most of all, its honest.
Now, if you’re being called at work, well, what you need to do is to get a secretary to screen your calls. We much prefer to deal with secretaries that know their bosses’ minds than to get through to the managers who then ream us out because they really don’t have time for us. But, it isn’t enough to just have a secretary- they have to be trained on how to spot us: They have to know that even though we may call and ask for a manager by name, we do not necessarily know the person we’re calling so, the secretary always needs to ask what the name of the business is that we work for and, if she does not recognize the business as a client or customer, to ask for what kind of business it is that we do. Key words are " information" “introductory call” and even “business proposal.” If the secretary is in doubt, it’s never a problem to just ask flat out, “Are you a telemarketing or information service?” If they’ve been mistaken and insulted a valid client, the secretary can always explain the reason for the question and apologize because, trust me, most business people would understand the reason for caution.
So, I’m afraid that’s all the advice I can give… if there were more Id freely give it. Unfortunately, there simply is NO way to get telemarketers off ones back for good. It’s a hazard of modern business. It is used as a marketing tool because, regardless of how many rejections we get each day, it does actually work to bring in a lot of money for our clients. Even though you may not be interested in what we are marketing, there are many other people out there who genuinely are interested. If we could use a psychic to figure out who those people would be before we started calling, well, shit, that would be great. But we don’t. The psychics are all busy on late night television.
Oh, yes, there is ONE surefire way to never receive another telemarketing call and that would be to start your own telemarketing service. My company never gets telemarketing calls.

39

Maybe not in Canada, but there’s a US federal law that requires telemarketing firms to maintain such a list. The major problem is that this list must be maintained by each company, so if I tell Sears to put me on its DNC list, Dillards is still free to call me. And Sears can start calling me again in a few years (I think it’s 2 or 5).

Your supervisor IS your manager. And if you hate this business so much, get out of it. I mean, even being a prostitute would be more moral than this.

I, personally, think that telemarketing should be outlawed, or at least strictly on an opt-in basis.

40

Again (as LB stated), This may be the case in Canada, but not the US. I worked in a data center for a company that outsourced the whole telemarketing process, and I can assure you (and everyone else) that there are HUGE lists and databases full of joe-schmoe’s info.

If you’re just using a phone book, shouldn’t you know you’re calling a business?