[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by sidle *
That’s the language used in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (you know, the law of the land?)
Perhaps you’d care to take personal insults to the Pit? Perhaps you shouldn’t make assumptions about any philanthropic efforts on my part? Perhaps you should stiffle your ad hominum attacks and address the issue at hand?
Yeah…following the law…what a concept.
Here’s how I deal with telemarketers (when I even answer):
<Begin TM spiel>
“I’m not interested. I never purchase things over the phone. Please put me on your ‘Do Not Call’ list.”
Simple, no?
Interesting that such a mundane topic can stir up so many different emotions…
My tactic is this.
Them: Would you be interested in a subscription to mega news newspaper?
Me: I’d love to subscribe, but considering that I never learned how to read…
Them: Have a nice evening
OR
Me: Hello
Them: Hi mrs. lady of the house, would you like to get substantial savings on your home mortgage?
Me: I can’t possibly imagine saving any more than I already do, considering that I don’t have a mortgage.
Them: (Laughing) Wow! That must be nice.
Me: Oh, it is!
Them: Well, you have a nice day.
My husband and I HAVE thought of selling advertising space on our phone though. For the minimal fee of $5.00, we would whole heartedly listen to their entire script.
Yep. You’re right. That was entirely uncalled for on my part.
Rudeness and sue-happy attitudes are two of my “boiling point” issues, and I completely overreacted. Ironically, I was quite rude to you, by making assumptions for which I have no basis, and which were unnecessarily personal.
Obviously, we have completely different views of this issue, and while I cannot say that I respect your behavior as you have described it with regards to the OP, I should have been more respecting of your right to express your opinion without being attacked.
Now…back to the garlic-y chicken issue…
Who says there’s such a thing as too much garlic?
Thanks…no prob 
To clarify (perhaps) I personally don’t talk rudely to telemarketers… I don’t string them along for 30 minutes…I DO request to be put on a Do Not Call list (which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t). I do admit to finding the comedian’s tactic (in the linked piece) amusing… Regardless of the type of people employed by companies in the industry, I don’t approve of their methods (as apparently a whole lot of other folks as well…witness the FCC looking to further restrict telemarketers) My initial post in this thread was not to support what Inky did (or to disagree with his approach) but to respond to Twisty in terms of the “opt out” concept.
Not me man!!
I love this idea. I’m going to put the name “Thomas Tuxedo <my last name>” on my personal line, and “Wallace Sandy <my last name>” on my fax line. Mebbe my hubby will put “Guinness Harp <last name>” on his line (after one of our dogs). Hee, hee!
However, we have a feature on our phone line that is the most glorious thing ever to see the light of day. It is called “Privacy Plus” and is an adjunct to Caller ID. If a number shows up “Anonymous” or “Unavailable” the call does not go through. Instead, the caller is asked for a name and our phone rings only if they give one. The ring for Privacy Plus is different from the regular ring - and we still have a choice if we pick up the phone and the recorded name still isn’t someone we want to talk to.
We never, ever get telemarketing calls anymore. 
TM: “May I speak to Larry Mudd, please?”
MUDD: “No.”
TM: “Pardon me?!”
Such a simple exchange, and yet it is so often met with incomprehension or incredulity.
When he’s at my house, my pseudo-kid (who’s 15) takes great delight in answering calls from telemarketers (easy to “spot” because they generally show up as “Unknown” on the Caller ID), just so that he can answer “No.” when they ask if they can speak to me (usually they butcher the hell outta my name, too), and hang up on them.
One day, the phone rang, and he got that mischievous look when he saw the display on the Caller ID…
Knowing at that point that it must be a telemarketer call, I went back to whatever I was doing, and let him do his thing…
This time, however, I noticed that he stayed on the phone a little longer than it usually takes for someone to butcher my name…
Then I heard him say, “I HATE YOU.” and hang up.
WTF??? I whipped around and eyed him quizzically.
Turned out it was the Kansas Association of Police Chiefs, calling for a donation (The Kid has been unduly harrassed by cops… whole other story).
The Kid said that when he spat, “I hate you” into the phone, the guy on the other end said “Pardon Me?”
We had to giggle.
That said, I’m generally polite, but brief, with telemarketers (although once I wound up on the phone for 1/2 an hour, listening to some gal’s family problems), and if the Caller ID says “Unknown”, I don’t even answer the phone.
I don’t eat much chicken, but I have a really good recipe for broiled salmon with a dijon glaze… and hey, has anybody tried those bottled marinades from the grocery store?
My brother does the exact same thing. Cracked me up the first time I heard him do it. Hell, it’s a honest answer to the question.
Very true, that throws a curve every time!
I, uh, ahem, actually worked in this industry for over 12 years as a manager at many different companies and I agree with everyone that has stated their hatred for telemarketing calls. I have callerID on my phone and screen out every call from “unknown” or “unavailable”…they are telemarketers 100% of the time. However, you would be shocked at the number of people that we have contacted that were nice, courteous and even PURCHASED something from us!!! That of course is how the industry stays in business, people buy things from telemarketers EVERY MINUTE of EVERY DAY. I am a (former) behind the scenes witness to this.
As far as hanging up on customers, any legitimate, professional company has a policy that the phone reps are not to hang up on a customer for ANY reason. If you we caught someone doing this, we fired them on the spot. At one company I worked for, we had to contact the Vice President of the company, who would then be patched in to listen to the phone call (many times it was customers that were very abusive, using racial and/or sexual slurs) and the VP had to be the one to approve hanging up the phone. We would have to tell the person, “Sir/Maam, I am now disconnecting this phone call”. Then there was all sorts of paperwork we had to fill out to make sure the client (usually a credit card company) knew the circumstances behind this. The reason being that a customer could of course raise holy hell by calling the credit card co and telling them they were hung up on by a telemarketer…these kind of things could cause the company to lose business from the client. Anyway, probably TMI here, but there really are no laws about hanging up on people, it is usually a company policy and like I said, only a legit company would follow it to the letter like the person that contacted you did. Yeah, it’s a pain when we would get customers like this, but all in a day’s work, really. The phone reps do usually get paid hourly with the chance of increases based on sales, so she was getting paid no matter how long you kept her on the line.
The TCPA and National Do Not Call List legislation is all well and good, but there are plenty of loopholes that the telemarketing companies use to their advantage. It is a huge industry, and the TCPA is very difficult to enforce…in all my years in the industry, I do not recall any audits by the FCC to make sure the do not call lists were being maintained as is the law. It’s the smaller companies like newspapers that ironically have the hardest time keeping the rules enforced…they don’t have the automation that big companies have.
Anyway, sorry so long, I usually stay away from telemarketing hater threads, but since I have FINALLY gotten out of the racket I figured I would jump in.
My housemate likes to torment telemarketers too, although he normally keeps it down to only a few minutes - 10 or 15 at most. I remember one time he was talking to a telemarketer from a charity, with something along the lines of the “price of a cup of coffee” donation for children in third world countries. The telemarketer was telling him that he could get letters from the child he sponsored, etc etc. My housemate cut the guy off and said “If I send you the money for coffee, will you write me a letter?”
The guy didn’t really know what to respond to that, apparently. And this story is a bazillion times better when he tells it…
Now, before people think he’s totally hearltess for not donating to a children’s charity, the fact is he already donates a LOT of his student income to charity, spends hours working at a women’s shelter, and wants to go into some sort of career that will allow him to help families and communities in need.
But it was just so damn funny on the phone!
Ye gads!! My humble post starts out in pointlessness, meanders into a general question, turns into a great debate and now careens into The Pit.
If it changes anybodies sullied opinion of me, I regularly buy unwanted band candy from the neighbor kids, am kind to the elderly and infirm, send my mum flowers on Mothers Day and her birthday and stock the good candy (Snickers, Milky Way, etc.) every Halloween. It’s just that various branches of Brand-X company (which starts with an “A” ends with a “T” and has another “T” in the middle) won’t stop calling me and I’ve had it up the snorkel with them. In fact Brand-X Wireless were kind enough to wake me up this morning (they did manage, however, to hang up on me).
Moderator’s Notes: Comments such as this: “Some of you people sound like serious assholes,” are inappropriate to this forum, no matter how indirectly pointed. Let’s everyone maintain a modicum of civility while we’re in MPSIMS.
Thank you.
The people I feel sorry for are the telemarketers that get insulted when people are rude to them or hang up on them. But I suppose they would quit or get fired pretty quickly.
When I retire from the AF I’m going to finish getting my Massage Therapy certification, buy a portable massage chair, and provide massage services to telemarketing companies. I can’t think of any industry that needs it more. The trick is to get the company to pay for it, not the inidividual, underpaid telemarketers.
For the ultimate in flavor-to-effort ratio, try Swampbear’s world renowned Italian Chicken .
Okay. My take on the telemarketing situation:
Although I have Caller ID, I still pick up the phone for “Unavailable” callers, because I hate just letting my phone ring, and if I don’t personally give the caller the brush-off, they’ll just call me again some other time. So, I talk to them.
Actually, I don’t so much talk to them as let them go through their script as long as it takes for them to reach a stopping point. You know, the part where they actually ask you a question. Usually it’s something pushy, like, “I’ll just sign you up right now, okay?” It is at that point that I say “no”, as many times as it takes, and usually that is quite a number of times.
In fact, “no” alone is rarely sufficient. I want them to be aware without question that I don’t want whatever they’re selling. My responses are always honest, but they are indeed firm, as they must be. “I’m living on student loans, I can’t afford to give anything to your charity.” “I barely have time to read the magazines I actually WANT to read, much less any others.” “Listen, you say ‘pre-approved’, but when you actually RESEARCH my credit, it’ll be declined, so let’s not bother.” “No, I don’t need accidental death insurance, because I’m a law student, so if I get killed, someone will have done it on purpose.”
And a big “badger biscuits!” to all those “you’re taking food out of the mouths of telemarketers and their Dondi-eyed infants” people. By law, they’re required to receive the minimum wage. If they get paid less and the rest is supposed to be made up by commissions, the employer is required to make up the difference if their actual pay winds up being less than the minimum. So, excuse the hell out of me for failing to give people a cash bonus. Only one entity is harmed by keeping a telemarketer on the line, and that is the firm employing the telemarketer. And they should lose money. Telemarketing won’t stop until it becomes unprofitable, and I’m going to nudge it in that direction with a clear conscience.
And if you want a personal reason why I hate them so much, how about the time they woke me up on Saturday morning, evidently took something I said as an acceptance, and wrote themselves a $70 check from my bank account? Hell with that noise. I’m taking my pound of flesh.
I’ve got to admit, Inky-, you’re behaviour is not something I would have done, but I can understand your frustration, having been pretty much outright lied to by a phone solicitor for the local PBS station a while back, and having had repeated calls from the local paper I do not subscribe to because I find their publisher’s politics abhorrent.
That said, here’s a nice recipe for chicken – quick, easy, and no garlic! Take a frozen chicken breast put it on a microwavable plate and coat one side of it with low-sodium soy sauce. Sprinkle it heavily with ginger and pepper (the soy sauce supplies the salt) and microwave it until it’s done – 6 minutes with my microwave, YMMV.
Happy now?
CJ
Arrgh!!! Make that your behaviour. I’m keeping the u, though.
CJ
Sorry, Unc…
As I went back and read my posts, I realized that I was either in a seriously bad mood, or in need of medication, or both.
I apologize to everyone for acting so freaky.
:sigh:
my first (official) SDMB scolding!
Wow! I didn’t know that Jerry Seinfeld was an active member of the SDMB:
Originally posted by Silver Fire
HelloKitty, if you stick your head back in here, could you let me know what, in your (ex)professional opinion, what the TM in question would be (stuck) doing in the situation Inky put her in? I mean, if she had Internet access at work, or something, I think she’d be pretty grateful…