No need to be facetious. The fact is that telemarketing is the only way that some people can pay their bills and feed their families. Would you prefer that they go homeless or collect welfare, so that you don’t have to spare 10 seconds of your oh-so-precious life to say “I’m not interested, please don’t call again.” to end the supposed “harassment” that they cause?
Perhaps you could list the jobs you would turn down to become a telemarketer instead.
Or maybe give us the career path you see for yourself in telemarketing.
Here are some quotes from other telemarketers:
‘telemarketing is the only way that some people can pay their bills and feed their families’
'Trust me, if a “proper job” had been available, that’s what I would have taken. ’
'I used to be a telemarketer. It’s a sucky job. Few people choose that line of work because they think it’s a fun way to spend a life. Most of my co-workers were people who lost their jobs because of things like plant closures or were unable to find “real” work for one reason or another. ’
Are your fellow telemarketers wrong to insult telemarketing too?
It’s not fun dealing with telemarketers. Nothing to do with telemarketing is fun, except of course you think this is:
Why on earth does inconveniencing people make you happy?
If you had, for example, noisy neighbours, wouldn’t you try to make them stop?
Telemarketing is a real nuisance, and we are entitled to try to stop it.
So I suppose you think a mugger could complain about people who resist, and that the mugger is then entitled to beat them up?
By the way, that’s what ‘treating someone like a punching bag’ really means.
You’re complaining because I recommend walking away from the phone and wasting the telemarketer’s time?
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Anyway, do you not know how telemarketing works?
“The theory is that you’ll be able to argue some of them into buying your product if you persist. I’ve seen it work. Customers who said no, but didn’t have the agressiveness necessary to hang up sometimes got badgered into buying our product.”
What a great job.
… is a telemarketer?
If I’m a rock musician, can I play continually outside your house as ‘part of my job’?
If I’m a cultist, can I come to your door and continually try to convert you as ‘part of my job’?
So let me get this clear. I post a message on an Internet board suggesting we all waste a telemarketer’s time, because they are irritating.
This message, which you didn’t have to answer the phone to read, upsets you so much that you start swearing and calling me names.
Yet you think we should put up with telemarketers?
Obviously you haven’t got the patience to do it.
So there you are in a dead-end job which teaches you no new skills and
QUOTE]*Originally posted by NailBunny * (bolding mine)
…any stupid, cute, clever bullshit you think you’ve come up with has been said to said telemarketer thirty fucking thousand times that day already, and two to five seconds after they’ve hung up they’ve forgotten all about you.
[/quote]
Don’t people who are continually insulted at work need to rethink their career?
If they stay on, aren’t they the ones who need to ‘seek therapy’?
QUOTE]*Originally posted by NailBunny * (bolding mine) However, those few and far between people whose parents educated them on what it means to be POLITE, well, those people we thanked for their time and never called them again. Crazy how it works, huh?
[/QUOTE]
Obviously you were not a typical ‘telesaddie’.
I used to state politely that “I don’t want anything, thank you, take me off your list” and hang up.
I have had 16 telemarketing calls in one hour (I was waiting for an important call).
I have had one firm ring me four times in an hour. (Apparently they were doing a marketing promotion, and there was a ‘problem’ with overlap.)
I have had new people from an old firm ring me and say “Sorry, no-one here told me you didn’t want to be called.”
I have had telemarketers flatly deny that they wanted to sell me anything (they were under instructions to complete their spiel first).
Since I started leaving them hanging on (by saying politely “can you just hang on?”), the calls have diminished enormously.
Sad, but true.
**
No, your just wasting yours. The telemarketer will hang up after a few minutes, and send your number back to be called again. You’re virtually guaranteed to get another call. Why get caught in a vicious circle, when a few concise words will bring the results you seek.
Yeah, it sucked. I hated it, and left as soon as possible. It’s the nature of the beast, but it is not the fault of the worker who’s trying to feed his/her family. They must do as the company dictates, or go down to the welfare office. The job market isn’t exactly booming, and sometimes people have to take what they can get. At least they’re working.
That said, if you want them to stop calling * tell them so. * No need to be an ass. It does absolutlely nothing except, perhaps, raise your blood pressure. It’s pointless, and it’s rude. Your tactics are not going to bring the industry to its knees. It’s not going to make the telemarketers reconsider calling your home. You’re just ensuring you’ll be called again. And again. And again.
I too have the Privacy Director. I love it. I just don’t answer when I see that come up. I am polite and tell them no thanks if one does get through. I agree it is annoying. But on the other I hand I think that at least they are trying to make an honest living (there are scams out there though). I need help though, you speak of being put on a list to “not be called” can anyone tell me how I can be put on that list? Please give me a link if you can. I want to be on it. Although I am nice, I am also a consumer who doesn’t want to be bothered.
My philosophy is that my telephone is a tool that exists for my convenience.
Everything gets screened through the answering machine. If we want to talk to you, we will pick it up. If we don’t, we won’t. That alone removes over 95% of the Telemarketer calls. The others leave messages, which we simply delete.
The only time it’s a problem is when we are expecting a call and therefore picking it up. In those cases, we usually just hang up on them.
I imagine that a mugger probably would complain about people who resist. I don’t know why one would expect them to be happy.
By the way, “treating someone like a punching bag” is a simile. It needn’t be read literally.
glee, your analogies are irrelevent, thoughtless and just plain silly. Telemarketers have nothing in common with muggers because, well let me think, it’s kind of hard to beat up someone over a telephone, no one’s holding a gun to your head to make them give you money, and if you tell a mugger “No thank you, please remove me from your list”, I have serious doubts as to whether or not his attacks on you would cease even temporarily.
As a rock musician, or even a garage band practising under my apartment, I would have absolutely no qualms with you playing loud music as long as it fell between the hours of legal noise ordinance. After that, you’re breaking the law, and I don’t know about what bad experiences you may have had in the past but the telesurveying company I worked for never called anyone they were legally prevented from calling, and never called after hours.
And if you’re a cultist, you’re a volunteer and not getting paid. It’s a sad but true fact that telemarketing pays, and let me bold this so that you can understand it: above minimum wage, and even more than that on weekends. So the way you see it, someone should call into question all manner of right and wrong and rights to personal privacy etc. etc. blahblahwhatisthemeaningoflifecakes and go work at McDonald’s for five dollars an hour, rather than work somewhere where they are guaranteed hours and a pretty hefty paycheck to do something that you have deemed morally reprehensible because you once received sixteen calls in a day (which are you sure wasn’t from a collection agency, because at my organization we weren’t even allowed to call the same number more than twice a day)? Yep, makes perfect sense to me.
I apologize for being insulting before (since obviously you felt I was speaking directly to you, what does that say about your perception of your behaviour?), but until you come over to my house and cook me and my family dinner and make our car payments and pay our rent and buy litter for my cat, don’t tell me how I can or can’t legally earn money, K?
I don’t do this to punish YOU. I do this to punish the company you work for. Every minute I can keep you busy thinking I’m interested or just leaving you in limbo is one more minute you cannot waste of another person’s time. It is another potential sale that is lost, it is more overhead of the company’s dime that is wasted.
If you put me back on the list, I don’t mind. I talk to my friends most frequently by e-mail, ICQ, or face to face, so I am rarely expecting anything important over the phone. It requires no effort on my part to regularly keep the phone tied up, sitting on the counter while you remain unable to bother anyone else.
As an aside, I’m also the guy who takes the credit card offers I get and stuff the contents into the pre-paid envelope (minus my address information) and send it back where it came from. If I can do a little bit to slow them down, then perhaps they will bother all of us a little less.
I wouldn’t rather they go homeless, but our phone receives tons of these calls every day. Our record so far is 37 in one day.
This is more than a minor inconvenience. I realize that not all the calls are from the same company, but it certainly feels like harrassment when the phone rings every 10 minutes.
Whether or not we even answer the calls, they are intrusive and irritating and ruin the few short hours of peace and quiet we try to have when we’re at home.
Well I’m relieved to hear you were using it as a simile. I wasn’t sure, which is why I challenged you with the mugger analogy.
Anyway an odd choice of phrase, since there is no violence involved.
I remind you that my recommendation is not to swear, not to shout, but simply to waste the telemarketer’s time in silence.
Obviously that’s reasonable to me since telemarketing wastes my time.
You didn’t respond to my points (and your fellow telemarketers) about insulting your job.
Here are some more:
Does telemarketing require any useful skills?
Does it look good on a CV when you apply for a proper job?
Does it give job satisfaction?
So you waste even more time by listening <boggle>?
I ask for their home phone number so I can call them back later.
They have an uncanny resemblance to telemarketing, then.
I was, obviously, challenging both the use of the phrase ‘punching bag’, and Snooooopy’s quote “My question is: If someone openly says that people who have my job are scum, and gleefully talks about how much fun it is to heap abuse on people who have my job, am I really supposed to care whether or not I hurt his feelings?”
it may have been a laboured analogy, but my point was that the telemarketer started the annoyance, and shouldn’t complain if he gets some of his own medicine (i.e. time-wasting).
Well I think telemarketing is sad and intrusive, whether or not it’s legal.
And I assure you that I have been called after 22.00, and also by the same company repeatedly after I asked to be taken off their list.
And so have innumerable others. (see any telemarketing thread - they all have horror stories)
You sound like a decent person, but telemarketing companies are desperately trying to sell by exploiting people who are unable to get a proper job.
A collection agency?
I say, I’m a respectable financially sound person! 
No, it was telemarketing all right.
You have the absolute right to earn money within the law. I was merely exerting my right to annoy a rude person back (which is the innate nature of telemarketing).
Also I am not the only one who feels telemarketing is a dead end job (see above posters).
Thank God I have never been in such financial straits that I have had to consider telemarketing.
I’ve worked in an office (pre-computers) sorting endless files into alphabetical order. I’ve been a sales clerk, and smiled politely at rude customers. I’ve done mileage claim checking using only an adding machine. Good grief, they were all unsatisfactory! But at least I didn’t annoy people all day.
Let me expand a bit.
Advertising is part of capitalism. Nobody can keep up with everything that is available. If your attention is drawn to a useful or enjoyable product, both you and the company benefit.
Here is my ranking of advertisers:
-
Amazon
Excellent, 5 stars
Whenever I buy something from them (like the Lord of the Rings extended DVD) a discreet link appears. If I click (importantly, it’s my choice), a list of products bought by people who also bought the DVD appears.
This is how I discovered the CSI books - a most enjoyable companion to the DVD of the TV shows.
-
newspaper ads
OK, 2 stars
I can read my paper, and something may catch my eye (or I can ignore it). Perhaps a book club. The newspaper takes some responsibility for the quality of the product.
-
Posters on trains / buses
better than nothing, 1 star
If I finish my book, or have to stand, at least they are something to read. I can also ignore them.
-
TV commercials
waste of time, 0 stars
On this side of the pond, we only have a few minutes of ads per hour. (Is it true that the US has 15 minutes of these every hour?!)
They interrupt a film very badly, and haven’t got time to give you a review or any real detail.
Still they can be mildly entertaining.
-
telemarketing
annoying time-wasters, -5 stars
They sell products that are so bad they cannot be shifted by regular means.
They are sold by unhappy people who want a better job.
They cause endless annoyance, both to the customers and to the hapless callers.
Ooh, I’ll answer your questions, glee, with pleasure.
First of all, I myself am not one of those who looks upon this profession negatively. It simply wasn’t for me. Next question.
Does telemarketing require any useful skills? Why, yes it does! It requires quality communication skills, sales techniques, problem solving and scheduling abilities, as you are required to schedule your own hours taking into account that you are required to work a certain percentage of time on weekends in addition to any time you put in during the week, but are usually not encouraged to work overtime. It requires strong computer skills, as everything you are saying and doing is coming to you directly from a computer flowchart, and you must be able to enter all information given to you at the speed of which the person is speaking. I type 80 words per minute, and I found this challenging.
Does it look good on a CV when you apply for a proper job? Apparently so, since immediately after leaving this job I was hired as Office Manager of a small, successful software company, from which I went on to work for a large law office, and am currently employeed by Microsoft.
Does it give job satisfaction? Personally, having any job, earning my own money and not having to rely on my parents or my government to support me gives me great satisfaction. I cannot speak for you.
Got any more?
I say, old boy, didn’t you read my strategy?
I ask them to hold on, then leave the phone and go back to whatever I was doing. After about 15 minutes, they hang up. Soon after that, the phone starts whining, and I put it back on the hook.
Time wasted =
Me: 1 minute
Them: 15 minutes
It may not be perfect but it’s the best I can do. (Also they pay for the call).
I appreciate your suggestion of asking telemarketers for their home number.
Alas I can’t bring myself to disturb a total stranger at home and waste their time with a pointless call.*
(*Does that mean I can’t be a telemarketer?)
It’s one thing if someone who is or has worked as a telemarketer laments that it’s not a fun job (because it isn’t). It’s entirely another if someone who isn’t a telemarketer calls us scum, calls us losers, delights in hassling us, compares us to muggers, etc.
I don’t want to inconvenience people. However, if someone I have called decides to be nasty to me, then yes, I am happy to inconvenience them. There’s a difference between my making a call, which might not be welcome but certainly isn’t malicious, and someone who uses the opportunity to abuse me, which certainly is malicious. Even if I “started” it by making the call, the person on the other end has definitely escalated the situation with his maliciousness.
Does telemarketing require any useful skills? The ability to sell, for one – a very useful, very marketable skill. And there’s the discipline required to deal with long strings of rejections in addition to the jerks who tell me to drop dead, get a “real” job, etc.
As for your wonderful “strategy,” like I said before, I have no idea why someone would wait 15 minutes. We’re not DUMB. We wait a minute, maybe, and schedule you for another call.
Oh, shame on you! Don’t you realize that you are undermining the livelihoods of these poor envelope stuffers who make all this junk mail possible?? And what about the poor loggers who need to feed their families? Huh? Ever thought about them?
If there is no more junk mail, pretty soon there will be no more need to cut down trees! That may be a major victory for the tree hugger element, but who will feed the loggers’ families?
You are everything that’s wrong with this country today! Pinko attitudes like yours will only increase the welfare rolls, by shaming and scheming honest, hard-working Americans out of their jobs!
Glee, if you’re going to quote me, then attibute properly and know what you’re talking about.
I’m not a telemarketer. I’ve never been a telemarketer, your snide suggestions notwithstanding. (For the record, I’m a corporate VP and attorney.) I simply choose to recognize an astonishing truth – people who have financial obligations to meet and not a lot of options will use whatever means are at their disposal to keep a roof over their heads, the lights turned on and food on the table.
You choose to be rude without necessity. You choose to waste your own time and tie up your own phone line by staying on the phone with telemarketers for much longer than necessary. **You refuse to take the steps provided to prevent continued calling while continuing to hypocritcally complain about the receipt of telemarketing calls. You do not assert your rights under the law when you are called outside the boundaries of what is permissible, yet, again, hypocritically complain about the issue.
So let’s tally things up on the scale of wrongdoing, shall we?
Telemarketer – 1 point for placing a call to you without any knowledge as to whether or not you would welcome such a call.
Glee – 1 point for wasting the telemarketer’s time and the company’s money rudely just to prove his point. (Though I strongly doubt that many telemarketers would hold for 15 minutes – it’s a volume driven industry and workers are trained to end any call that is placed on hold for more than a set amount of time, usually one minute, perhaps 90 seconds.) 1 point for refusing to ask to add his name to the do not call list, escalating the situation. 1 point for being condescending and irrationally nasty to people who have done nothing more than take up less than a minute’s worth of his precious, precious time.
I see which way my scale is tipping.
Before the thread gets Pitted…
My call waiting simply says “unavailable” when they call, and even then, on the rare occasion I decide to answer, all I get is silence anyway. So, they get to talk to the machine. Usually it’s just people offering me credit cards I don’t want anyway.