I am a member of that dreaded species, Telus Marketus Persona Non Grata. (See, I do also work in a zoo!) Anyway, I have a few tips for actually turning us off. I’m lucky, all I have to do is call repeat customers for a well established carpet cleaning outfit. Most times the customers are fairly glad to hear from me or are at least polite. I agree with Cecil, a simple “Sorry, not interested” still works the best. At our company this gets you a note on the call sheet, “N.I.” and the boss deletes it from the database. No point in making wasted calls, right? A few other things that help. We often call customers from several years ago. In our area the turnover for re-assigning phone numbers is something like six weeks, so we get a LOT of wrong numbers. Please put your last name on your machine! Lots of times we get John and Mary’s machine six times and then find out we’re calling the Blacks’s when we wanted the White’s. If we knew that in the first place, we wouldn’t call back. Another one is callbacks. If our customers don’t want anything done just then, we ask if we may call later in the year. IF YOU DON’T WANT IT JUST SAY NO! So many times people put us off because they don’t want to offend us, but a polite no is far better than making pointless calls. One final pet peeve of mine, returning calls. We have headsets that can recieve calls. So many times, someone will see my number on their call display and call back. Unfortunatly, it comes up in the name of our telephone service provider-no, we don’t like it either. When I get a call. nine times out of ten, the person will say “Sorry, wrong number” as soon as they realize who I am. Don’t do that! I don’t have call display, and I’ll just end up calling you back tommorow or next week. Take one minute to say “This is Mr Smith at 555-1234, sorry, not interested”. End of calls, right?! Well, thanks for letting me get this off my chest. Oh, one more thing, yes I do keep a personal “Don’t Call” list for very irate people. Believe me, I like getting yelled at way less than you like getting called!
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One cureall way to stop telemarketers is never to own a phone. If you must call use someone elses phone or make the call outside on pay phone.
Another way is to have your 'puter answer the phone everytime and you never answer your phone only the calls you know. The logical way to stop telemarketers is to explain to them that all the people in the country who telemarketers harrass will “never” buy their products as long as they call the home with these trully annoying phone calls. 
When I was preparing to go to college I worked for a real bottom-feeder telemarketing firm (casement windows for the elderly in ghettoes) and there was really no way to be “rid” of us. We worked off of photcopied sheets from the Hanes Directory, and there were ususally 4 or 5 copies of that page floating around. So when someone said “take me off your list,” we would cross it right off. Then someone else using the same page would call the following week. If someone said, “Didn’t I just tell you to take me off your list?” we’d reply “we realize you receive a lot of telemarketing calls. This is the first time we’ve contacted you. If you have a moment, please hear me out…” It was also common to call people right back when they refused, if they pissed us off. When I get calls from telemarketers, I say “No thank you, I’m not interested,” and hang up as they fight the refusal. It always works, at least for the rest of the night.
Telemarketing systems like the one you worked for deserve the disgruntled-highschool-group-gone-bonkers, for a turkey shoot. I can’t think of any group who deserves this the most, except for you know who on that hill, and that awful lying man who refused to take to the DC police. :mad:
Privacy manager works pretty good. One warning though. If you are a job seeker, a lot of businesses come across your caller ID as unavilable and when I used to call interviewees it could take between 3 to 5 minutes to get the answer phone if you weren’t in.
I usually just hung up as I had to call 30 applicants and as a manager didn’t have that much time to waste.
zoogirl said:
Here’s the problem - telemarketers are too damn pushy. I’ve tried being polite and staying on the line to sort it out. All I get is repeated attempts to sell me the friggin product I didn’t want in the first place.
caller: “Hi, I’m Gina with Annoying Products Unlimited, and I’d like to tell you about our wonderful new Gizamagoo. It slices, it dices, it annoys your pets. It styles your hair while you sleep and prevents toe cheese. So, if I can just verify some information, we can get your Gizamagoo to you right away.”
me: “Well, Gina, I’m not really interested in a Gizamagoo.”
caller: "But sir, if you act now I’ll throw in a free 2 year subscription to I’ll Never Actually Read This Magazine, I’ll Just Pile It On The Floor And Let It Collect Till It Towers To The Ceiling.
me: “No, really, I don’t need another magazine subscription, and I really don’t need and can’t use your product. Please don’t call me.”
caller: “But you’ll never get a better price on our Gizamaboo. Why don’t you try it for the 30 day trial period, then if you don’t want it you can return it for a full refund.”
me: “How many times do I have to say I’m not interested, don’t call me?”
See, telemarketers don’t accept a no, they’re instructed that if we stay on the line they have to try at least 3 times to get us to accept. Thus the immediate “I’m not interested” and immediate hang up. Nobody wants to have to sit through the whole shpiel that the telemarketer gives without taking a breath precicely because they know the recipient is looking for that breath in order to say no. Nobody wants to be harrassed after they say “Don’t call me” by repeated attempts to get you to buy the product - and it happens. We don’t want to talk to you, we want you to shut up and quit calling. And while you’re at it, instead of cold calling other innocent and unsuspecting people who also don’t want your product, why don’t you do the world a favor and call every other telemarketer out there and then sign us up on their Do Not Call list as well. Then you might actually be doing a service that somebody wants.
Oops, I’m beginning to rant.
Depending on my mood at the time I might f*&# with the caller. Begin asking goofy, off-the-wall questions and steer the conversation anywhere but where they want. Crazy, silly, free-form questions or comments often work wonders. Fer instance…
"Hi, my name's Mandy and I..."
"Hey Mandy! What's going on?"
"Not much, I'm calling on behalf of..."
"Hey, you know what? I was just watching my dog dive into the catbox for a snack. D'you ever wonder why they do that? I mean, it's pretty sick, don't you think?'
You get the idea. Have fun without being rude or blatantly obnoxious. More often than not the telemarketer will hang up long before I tire of the game.
'Course there are other times when I'm just not in the mood and "Sorry, not interested" works like a charm.Hey ZooGirl or other Telemarketers,
How many calls do you make for every sale? What’s the success rate?
The outfit I worked for operated on the “throw enough shit at the wall and something’s gonna stick” principle. After I left, they were shut down by the state and reopened under a different name two weeks later. Also, the salesmen we were making appointments for were known to do a little “exploring” while they were measuring the bedroom windows and the mark, I mean customer, was getting them a cup of coffee. So they’d wind up with either a commission on a $6000 sale (financed with a subprime home equity loan, usually) or the contents of a pocketbook. Or both. That’s why you should say “no thank you,” and hang up.
When in my callow youth I worked as a telemarketer to get me through college, I had a simple strategy: tell 'em what you got in the first 10 seconds, then politely thank them and hang up if they were not interested. Reason: I got more calls in that way. More calls meant more sales. I was so productive that the boiler room bosses didn’t care that I failed to follow the script and even would put me on the training line so that newbies could hear my pitch. Today I still wonder about telemarketers who think that by keeping me on the line and annoying further they will increase their chances of a sale.
Oh Irishman, you can rant, but you can’t read! I believe I distinctly said that I don’t do cold calls! Not only that, but I am fortunate enough to work for a well respected company and most of the people I call have already used our service and actually appreciate my call. I do realize that there is some real scum out there, and believe me , I hate them twice as much as you! They only make it harder for legitimate businesses. I should also point out one small oversight in your scenario. The idea is, after you say “Sorry, not interested, bye!” HANG UP! They can’t keep you on the line if they’re talking to a dial tone! If they call back and hassle you, star 69 the number and report 'em! Just please, don’t do it unless they deserve it. It would be pretty low to do it to someone after their first call unless they were truly obnoxious.