I cannot believe my credit card company tried to do this to me.

The BBQ Pit
1

Ten minutes ago the phone rang. I picked it up and said hello, hearing nothing back. At this point I probably would have hung up knowing it was a telemarketer, but I actually had a friend call about an hour before who I couldn’t hear right away. He left a message on my answering machine on the call back stating that this was the case. So I stayed on the line to see if it was him.

No, it was a voice I didn’t recognize calling me by my last name. Telemarketer. Damn.
But before I can say anything she tells me who she works for. It’s my credit card company (for the sake of anonymity, let’s call them Hase Manhattan Bank). So maybe this isn’t a telemarketing call after all. At this point I’m confused enough to not wonder why they’re calling me this late at night.

Well the woman has a fabulous feature that I can have on my credit card account she’d like to tell me about! See, if ever I get behind in my payments I can call them up and explain the situation and they’ll defer my payments until the next month.
This handy feature costs just 69 cents a month! Isn’t that wonderful?
But this phone call isn’t to sign up for anything. No siree bob, she said. She just wanted my permission to send me this information in the mail so I could, you know, look it over at my convenience.

Now at this point I was thinking two things. 1) I would never EVER sign up for this plan. 2) Why in the world would they need my permission over the phone to send me information in the mail? They have my address. Just send me the stuff.

So I said yes. Send me the information. This, I figured, would be the end of the call and I could get back to work.
It wasn’t.
The woman from Hase Manhattan Bank then said “OK, sir, if you don’t mind I’m going to be recording the next part of our conversation to verify your name and address. It will only take a few minutes.”

I snapped into full alert. Warning bells went off in my head. Seriously, they did. It was pretty spooky.

“Excuse me,” I said interrupting the woman from Hase Manhattan Bank. “Why are you recording this part of the conversation?”
“Just for verification purposes.”
“It will take a few minutes? I’m in your system already! You should have all my information.”
“Yes we do, but I just need your verification.”
“I’m not signing up for anything am I?”
“No sir you are not. We’re just sending you information in the mail and giving you a one month free trial of this new service.”
It all clicked.
“Let me guess. If I don’t call you up later and actually tell you I do not wish to have this service, it will be billed to my account until I cancel it, right?”
“Um…well…yes sir that is correct.”
“You were expecting me to not read the fine print and toss this information away as junk mail. Then I wasn’t supposed to notice the teeny tiny 69 cent addition to my bill every month. How close am I?” Not waiting for an answer I continue. “Tell you what? I’ll save you time right now. I do not want this service. I will never want this service. Do not sent me anything. Do not bill me for anything.”
She actually started laughing at this point. It was a minor chuckle but she was laughing! As if I had gotten past all Hase Manhattan’s defenses and she had to reluctantly admit the truth. “OK sir, thank you for your time this evening.” Click.

You fucking bastards. It’s bad enough you have me on your on your own personal telemarketing list. It’s bad enough you’re calling me at 9:00 PM on a weeknight. But you, Hase Manhattan Bank, have the fucking nerve to try and trick me, no, to screw me, a loyal customer of yours for over two years, to the tune of 69 cents a month. Your fucking mother doesn’t work that cheap.

I hope this is plan of yours is netting you a hefty profit at the expense of lost accounts because I’m seriously considering canceling my card over this.

2

I would write a very strongly worded letter saying mostly what you’ve just stated above, that it was wrong of them to try and trick a loyal customer, and send it to the highest person you can.
That is pretty shitty of them to do.

3

Perhaps it is the economy, and desperation, but my private line which is normally only the recipient of 1 telemarketing call a month, now gets several a day. Each one I politely tell “No thank you, and please put me on your no-call list.” Which is what the telemarketing defenders and apologists on this Board tell me to do. Here were the last three responses to my very polite “No, I’m sorry, I’m not interested. Please put me on your no-call list.” were:

“Fuck you too.”

"But wait - won’t you let me tell you about - "(hey - I used the “no call list” buzzword. You are supposed to let me go. That’s what the telemarketing apologists say should happen…)

“Is there anyone there who can make a decision?” (WTF???)

“I need this job. People like you make me angry. (click)”

:rolleyes:

I can’t even answer my fucking unlisted number anymore without being abused.

4

I work for a credit card company. Fraud Analyst, not marketing :smiley:
According to bank regulations, we can only call people between 9am -9pm in their time zone.

I know the bank I work for has third party vendors -not bank employees- that do this crap. They are not supposed to represent themselves as bank agents, but state they are “aligned” with us.
I think they suck weasel cooter. There are times I have to call a customer to make sure account activity is valid (customer’s child at Best Buy with mom’s card, child’s name not on account) and because of these telemarketers/wastes of space, I get hung up on.

5

At least she was gracious enough to be honest - and lighthearted - when confronted. Or maybe she snapped, grabbed a whiffle bat, and went on a rampage, annoying the crap out of all the people in her office.

They call it the Great Whiffle Bat Massacre, and Ender, it’s all your fault.

6

I’m not sure if someone calling “on behalf of” a company of which you’re a customer legally counts as a telemarketer, but this might work:

Every state has a Do Not Call list. Some states charge something nominal like $5 to get on the list, some states (like Tennessee) do it for free. Here in Tennessee you can even do it on the state’s Web site (http://www.state.tn.us - insert your state’s two-letter abbreviation here). I signed onto it a few months ago, and it took about a week, but I haven’t has *one single call * from a telemarketer since then.

I was as shocked as anyone to find that a free government service actually works, but it did. Check it out.

And yeah, write a strongly worded letter to “Hase Manhattan.” If they’ve got any decent customer service, they’ll do something nice for you. If not, tell them to fuck themselves; it’s extremely cathartic.

7

or, get an answering machine, and put a long (but amusing) broadcast message on it - few will sit through it.

8

I get telemarketers all the time.
I make them talk about Buffy. I figured they’ll just call back if I tell them I’m not interested, and seeing as how I was probably talking/thinking/reading/writing about or watching Buffy at the time of the call, I figured they might as well be an “interested” party.
I figured if they are going to waste my time, I’ll waste theirs.

9

Here’s the information for California “Do not call” list.

Haj

10

cut up your credit card and you won’t have to worry about that kind of crap.

11

Unfortunately, this statement is not true. Only a few states have Do Not Call lists. One place you can check to see if yours does is right here.

12

On the contrary, I used to love listening to funny messages.

One time I set a callback for a number with a particularly funny message so my friend could listen to it - but instead of the machine, he got a person, and he stole my sale. :frowning:

13

Bummer. Well, it worked for me. I note that Enderw24 lives in Lawrence, KS (a totally wonderful city; I spent a couple years in Kansas and always had a ball in Lawrence), and so as a public service I have hunted the link down:

https://www.kansasnocall.govconnect.com/ksregistration.asp

It does say that you won’t be removed until January 1, 2003; apparently they update it only quarterly. Still, it’s free. For more info, here’s the home page.

As a former telemarketer (I was in college and desperate), I can confidently tell you not to be afraid to simply hang up. We’d laugh and call the next number. Horrid job. shudder

14

Cutting up the card doesn’t close the account. To close it and have it show as closed on your credit report you have to contact the bank.

15

And even then you can still be on their marketing list. I cancelled one of my credit cards a few months ago, by phone, and in yesterday’s mail I got a letter thanking me for being such a good customer and as a reward offering to sell me an accidental death & dismembership insurance policy. For my convenience, the premiums would be charged to my cancelled account. Another credit card kept trying to sell me credit protection for two years after I closed the account.

16

[hijack]

Bit naive, that. Not everyone rings up thousands of dollars in debt with a credit card. Some of us pay it off each month and incur no interest charges. Another reason is to use it for online purchases because when you have to do a chargeback, which I currently have two going on right now (had the card for 10 years and first time I’ve ever had to do a chargeback), the credit card company gives you your money first and researches it after.

You don’t get that benefit with a debit card, which we learned after our last DSL provider charged 4 months of DSL service in two days without our permission, after we cancelled our account. If someone gets access to your debit card, they can drain your bank account dry before you know it. [/hijack]

I just checked that link Lok provided and saw that Texas’ DNC list costs about $2.50 for five years.

17

I put my parent’s phone number on the Texas DNC list because I was tired of listening to my dad spout obscenities every time the phone rang because he had to get up and answer it.

It’s dramatically reduced the amount of calls we get – the rest I say “Are you aware that this number is on the TX state DNC call list, and DNC electronic call list?” to which they usually kind of stammer an apology and hang up.

I once got a call from what seemed like a local man trying to sell his home repair stuff – I guess he just opened the phone book and started calling numbers in the neighbourhood – and I gave him the same line. He apologized profusely and hung up.

I wondered if he kept calling people after that, he sounded so flustered. Probably didn’t realize it might not be a good idea to just start calling people at random. His number and name had showed up on our caller ID, too…

18

Thank you to all who have given suggestions and links to information about the DNC lists. The thing was, this wasn’t the problem here. Yes, had I asked previously, my credit card company would not have called me last night.
Since this was the first time they had called, though, there never had been a previous opportunity to do that. Once she mentioned who she was, I stopped thinking she was a telemarketer and started thinking “is it about my account? I paid everything off. Is there a problem? Why are they calling me?” At that point I had to stay on the line to find out what was going on. By the time I knew, I was too flabberghasted at them trying to trick me to even think about saying “put me on the Do Not Call List, please.”

19

I have to admit that I was extremely rude to the last telemarketer that called me. At the end of a particularly long and frustrating day I was unwinding with my glass of wine.

When I received the sales pitch I said “Hmm, that’s interesting, my I have your home phone # please”. He said “Why?” I said “So that I can call and bother you just when you are trying to fuckin’ relax!”

It made me feel better for about 1 minute, then I felt bad. :frowning:

20

My wife is still scandalized by my reaction to telemarketers. I simply lay the phone aside and check back in ten minutes or so. Usually they’ve hung up by then.

Enjoy,
Steven