I hate to be a wet blanket, but sometimes, those guys calling you are victims themselves.
No job, no money, puts in a ten hour day for no hourly pay and maybe $20 in commission IF they’re lucky.
Out right scammers I have no sympathy for. But if it’s someone trying to sell me a legitimate product, I try to be respectful and not waste their time.
I did that, and then hung up. The guy actually called me back to say his mother knows what he does, and he was pissed.
The podcast Reply All did a long story about how one of their guys got a call like this from India and did a deep dive, building a surprisingly extended relationship with the called to find out what it was like on the inside. He found out about the company that was running it, and IIRC he actually went to India to meet the guy. It’s a two-parter. Here is the first part, with audio player and transcript.
Generally, I don’t bother answering, since these days it’s a computer making the call, not a person, and there’s no good way to waste a computer’s time.
I did have a good one about 2 years ago. The guy told me that he was from Microsoft, and his display was showing that my computer was riddled with all kinds of viruses and trojans and he can fix them for me. “Really?” I said, “because we just moved, and my computer has been in a cardboard box for a month.” He tried to recover, “That does not matter, sir…” Yeah, whatever. Click.
Sometime when I’m alone I’ll try a new tactic, like pretending it’s a phone sex call. They called me, so I don’t see where they have a right to complain. You don’t want to wear the rubber shorts, you don’t have to call me.
Having once been the guy making the calls, I’m not inclined to give callers a hard time. But on occasion, when I feel reasonably sure that I’m actually talking to a robot, I will have a little fun giving crazy answers to see just how sophisticated the technology is. What will happen if I say that I’m a bad person? What will happen if I say that I wish I was dead? It is kind of amusing to say something that would really flummox a human, only to hear the robot dispassionately plow ahead like nothing was out of the ordinary.
I never answer a call that is not from a known contact. Ever.
Once in a blue moon, it turns out to be a legit call. The caller leaves a message and I return the call. Otherwise, my long list of blocked numbers grows by one. Life is too short to waste my time wasting their time.
Once when I got a typical “Microsoft Windows” call. I launched into the guy telling him the windows they’d installed were drafty and leaking rain and I’d called and called and I wanted them to send someone out right away to fix them.
I had my wife and son practically rolling on the when I kept saying “No you listen to me” and wouldn’t let him get on with his spiel.
He did finally hang up.
I think the poor person (financially poor I mostly mean) who has taken this job doesn’t need their day made more difficult, and that nothing I say or don’t say to THEM can make any useful difference to me or to other victims/customers. If I can talk to their supervisor or higher, maybe something happens, probably not. The effort of doing that seems highly unlikely to be followed by much of a reward, so I just ignore from the start.
Agreed. I get so many spammers/scammers calling me that if I picked up the phone to screw with them every time they called, all I would be doing would be talking to these assholes on the phone. Screw that.
In any case, these scammers are scum of the earth.