Sleazy callers at work

The BBQ Pit
1

My company is pretty small and we don’t have any receptionist, so I take most of our calls. We get a decent number of telemarketers and people like that, and what aggravates me most about them is that they just waste a lot of time. Out of principle, and out of respect for my co-workers and their time, I try to thwart these people, but they always seem to decide to make things unpleasant as possible. I don’t mind taking their info or whatever, but I’m not giving out direct contact info for people unless they have a legitimate request – e.g. they want to buy something. You want to “discuss a potential business relationship”? You “aren’t selling anything but want to talk about business needs”? No, I’m not giving you a direct phone number or email address to add to your mailing list, use, abuse, and resell.

Unlike at home, where you have the power, they figure that calling a business you’re getting a fearful peon with no authority, and they often use intimidation tactics and trickery. They will be sweet at first, then switch to haughty and demanding because you’re not serving them, and even make threats. One Indian telemarketer guy was so incensed that I told him no – as in no, I am not transferring you to the owner, you can tell me what you want or go away – that he threatened to have me fired (ha), decidedand eventually called back just to call me an “asshole fucker”. But that’s another story.

This last one I talked to used a common tactic – calling to “confirm” something, in order to get information from us. We get all kinds of variations on this, from the incredibly transparent (“I am calling from Company Directory Inc, a free company directory to deliver customers to you free of charge and at no cost to you, and I need to verify some information. Is your company name X? Great… and who there is in charge of decisions regarding major IT purchases?”) to slightly more plausible scenarios like this one.

Guy: <schmoozily friendly> “Hi, I’m a friend of <first name of former owner from years ago>, and I needed to send him something, can you just confirm his email address for me?”

So right off, I know he’s a liar, and probably selling something, so I’m generally not feeling too charitable. I always keep it civil but come on.

Me: “He doesn’t work here anymore.”

Guy: “What? I need his email address.”

Me: “He hasn’t worked here in years, sorry.”

Guy: “What??? Oh… ohh… well. <long pause> Who’s doing his job now?”

Oh, so you’re so close as friends… but you don’t know he sold the company years ago, the company he helped build from scratch over a decade ago? Haven’t seen any Facebook updates for him in the last 3 years, eh? Don’t know that he didn’t leave on great terms with the people left here, either? Also, as soon as you find out he’s not here, you just start fishing for information on another contact… sounds like you were super close.

Now I don’t like giving out a name unless I get a reason, I usually deflect in a different direction. It’s not like it’s not public record, but usually they won’t bother. Otherwise, next time they won’t call for the owner, they’ll call for their “friend” the new owner, and it’s more of a hassle to draw them out and they will probably waste a lot more of my time if not the owner’s time.

Me: “I’m sorry, what was this regarding so I can direct you to the right person?”

Guy: “Who’s the owner now? I was friends with <old owner> and I had a business opportunity to discuss. I’m sure he would have been interested.”

Me: “Okay, if you’re willing to send an email to our company box, I can pass it along personally for you and find out who could best help you.”

Salesmen and scammers and other time-wasters never want to do this. They will only even admit what they want once they’ve tried to butter up the decision maker for awhile on the phone, never to someone who could stop them from getting to that person to make their pitch. Normal people don’t usually have a problem with this as long as I promise to check for it myself, they just don’t want it lost in the shuffle. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t like this idea.

Guy: “Oh… er… well then, is, uh, <someone else> working here?”

Me: “Yes, he does.”

<silence. I’m not offering to transfer and he doesn’t ask>

Guy: “Uh, ok … what about <stumbles over another person’s name and gets it wrong>? I talked to him once… I think he is in engineering.”

(We don’t have an engineering department.)

Me: “Yes, he does also.”

Guy: “Can I get his email?”

Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t give out direct emails for other people without their permission, but I can send your email to him if you want to email our general box.”

Guy: <now peevy> “Oh. I guess I’ll call later for him, bye. <click>”

Now I’ll admit, I wasn’t super oozingly pleasant to the guy because I felt like he was being a pushy dick in addition to being a liar, but I was civil and – in my experience – anyone who won’t even say what they want is pretty much 99.999% doing so because they know that telling the truth will mean we will say we are not interested. There’s no reason to lie and be weird for legitimate requests.

Anyway, one minute later, he calls back. Probably pressed a different extension on the main number, but I’m the only one taking calls right now anyway. This isn’t uncommon for sales people to try, as they’re generally fishing for a different employee who will give out information. I see the caller ID and figure he’ll just hang up when he hears my voice.

Me: <answers the phone like normal>

Guy:<after a long silence> “Hi, it’s <guy> again…”

Me: <slightly chilly but still polite> “Ah, hello.”

Guy: <now getting intimidating> “I don’t mean to be rude but I really need to speak to the owner. I want to buy something.”

Me: “He’s actually not even in the office today but I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you wanted to buy software from us. The owner doesn’t typically handle those types of things himself anyway. Can you let me know which product and how many seats and I can get you to the right person?”

Guy: “No, it’s something customized.”

Me: “Oh, like a custom version of <the one product we’ve ever done custom builds of>?”

(We don’t make custom software generally, but sometimes we’ve done tweaked versions of our products to fit certain needs in the past. Primarily we make and sell our software to consumers directly. To my knowledge, we’ve never done any contract work for custom software, ever. Not that we wouldn’t consider it necessarily but it’s a highly unusual request. Also, he originally identified himself as calling from another software company.)

Guy: <rudely> “No, but I’m accustomed to speaking to the owner, so I don’t want to talk to you about this. I want to speak to the owner now.”

Me: “I can give you his voice mail if you want but he literally is not here.”

Guy: <huffily> “Fine, I guess.”
Dude, even if you do have some legitimate opportunity for us – which I doubt in the extreme – why lie up front and then treat me like I’m a bad person for noticing? The cloak and dagger routine isn’t necessary, and it’s really my job not to set people up at my company to have their contact info misused. Everyone knows there are criminals out there phishing for info to send phony bills for toner or any number of scams, let alone just plain annoying, time-wasting salesmen.

2

I work for an international, very large Fortune 50 company. We also have rules against divulging emails, phone numbers, or organization charts to any external caller, unless we are personally, currently doing business with them. Anyone who calls us incorrectly can be transferred to another employee, if the caller has their name, but we’re not allowed to divulge the phone number. We’re all forced to take Corporate Security classes once a year to learn the rules, so it’s getting harder for the phishers to glean the information they seek.

Recently, a very clever person attempted to get information out of me. I don’t know how or where he got my name, but one day, out of the blue, I got a FedEx package from someone I’d never heard of. Inside was a box of cereal with a non-related promotion (e.g. $1 iTunes coupon) attached. The enclosed handwritten note addressed me by name and indicated that he was excited to share this latest promotional tool with me. He said he’d be calling me in a few days to discuss it.

Now, normally, I’d have been nice and called the number on the letterhead to inform him that he’d gotten the wrong person. But a few things tipped me off that he was phishing:

  1. I’d never spoken to this guy before.
  2. I haven’t worked in Marketing for several years.
  3. Even when I was in Marketing, I was never the decision maker.
  4. It was sent to our main office’s general address, without even a building name on it. I don’t work at the main office. The mailroom staff had crossed off the original address and forwarded it to me at my site.

A few days later, he left a message on my audix asking for confirmation that I’d received the product. And, of course, the header indicated that his call was transferred from the operator, meaning he didn’t know my direct line. He asked me to call him at my earliest convenience to discuss it with him. I declined, because I knew that it would give him my direct line, and that I’d be pumped for information. (“Oh, well can you give me the name of the person in Marketing that I should speak to.”

He hasn’t contacted me since.

P.S. I ate the cereal.

3

I actually used to enjoy dealing with sales eejits who hadn’t done their research- when I worked for my parents, who ran a small zoo; we got loads of them, and I normally answered the phone. It was great hearing them mentally change gear when I’d get a call like:
Eejit:‘Hi, can you transfer me to the marketing department’
Me: ‘She’s out cutting the grass at the moment, what’s it about?’

For a while we got really spammed by some phone company trying to get us to sign up for their special offer- they’d call several times a day, and would not take no for an answer. I didn’t put them through, (which involved tracking down whichever of my parents was in, when they could be at the other end of the site, and making them stop what they were doing and get to the phone- which could be a pretty major disruption), but we could never get the cafe girls, who took calls when it was quiet, to understand the concept of a non-important business call.

After a few weeks of this, my Dad just told everyone who took a call asking to speak to the manager to get the company name, and if it was that company to just say ‘Sorry, we don’t have a phone’, and hang up. They stopped calling within a day. :smiley:

4

I work on an IT helpdesk and we get sales calls all the time. We never give numbers or e-mail addresses and never transfer these calls.

We will offer to take their names, numbers and e-mail addresses and pass it on to the people they have asked for. Most will not give any information.

5

I used to work at a defence establishment and we used to have fun with sales calls. “Do you know where you’ve called?” was a good starter. And you’d be amazed how many people would ring off when we said, “Hey Jock, can you trace this call?” :smiley: (Jock being the name of the security officer.)

6

When gatekeepers offer Joe Blow’s cell phone number I am supposed to tell them that it is illegal for me to take phone numbers from third parties. They offer this helpful service a dozen times a day or more.

Don’t trust your receptionist and, especially, don’t trust your mom. :eek:

7

Uh, oh. If you didn’t talk to the guy, you didn’t get the antidote.

8

7 or 8 years ago, there was someone who worked at my job who apparently was a total fuckup. I never met him, I just heard the rumors. I am still getting calls from bill collectors for him. They ask for him by name and I tell them that he doesn’t hasn’t worked there for over 7 years.

They then ask if I have his contact information. When I tell the caller that I never even met the deadbeat, they ask if anyone else has his number. I know that they want their money, but he’s been gone for over 7 years AND if anyone was still his friend after that much time, they certainly wouldn’t give his number out to bill collectors.

They get snarky, so I tell them to call HR for his last know address. I don’t give them HR’s number, I just hang up.

9

:eek:

10

Now, if it was Lucky Charms or Golden Grahams, it was totally worth it.

11

I say the exact same thing. Oddly enough, it works about half the time. I figure they just hear something other then ‘yes’ and have mentally already moved on to the next call. I finally installed PhoneTray which is a Caller ID program that sits on my computer. Once someone calls I can assign a name to them (which is nice since so many (legit) calls come up as ‘cell phone’) but it also works to zap calls. Every time I get a junk call, I tell the program to zap the call next time it comes through. At the very least it’s helpful for keeping my employees from wasting time listening to a sales pitch or a recording since they don’t know to just hang up on it.

12

This is the only way to handle it, IMHO. One of my many hats is answering the support line on off hours. We still get loons trying to contact the owner (or one of the previous ones) or some such nonsense even at 2 am. If you’re legitimate, you don’t mind us having your info. If you aren’t, you’re going to hang up. Heck, if you’re legitimate, we might actually want to buy your crap, we’re expanding. But we don’t want to listen to your unsolicited sales pitch.

13

I’m a small business owner. My business partner has a great method of dealing with unsolicited sales calls. As soon as they start their spiel he starts breathing heavily and saying"Ooh…yeah…mmm…oh God…" After a minute or so of this they start getting really uncomfortable and sort of trail off. Mostly, they don’t call back more than once or twice. I suspect this probably wouldn’t fly in a more corporate environment.

14

A giant syrupy southern accent with lots of “oh, sugar” and super chipper, breathless, but brainless “ohhhhh…? Is that so…?” works wonders also.

Occasionally I’ll get tired of them and send them over to the receptionist at the Main office, who actually gets PAID to deal with that type of shit, but it really is fun wasting their time first, pretending like I’ve got about three total braincells and I used them all deciding which bronzer to wear this morning. :smiley:

15

We tell them to call back and ask for Mr. Meoff. First name Jack.

About half of them do.:smiley:

16

My receptionist handles six lines. At any given time, one is being taken up by an unsolicited sales caller who wants to speak with me (the owner). She goes back to that line every so often, apologizing for the delay, and telling the caller her boss really wants to speak with him and will be with him momentarily.

I taught her this, and it amuses her to no end.

17

I am very lucky to have a terrific staff that screens my calls and then asks me whether or not I wish to take them. The ones we all love is the person that lies to the operator or receptionist to get me on the phone and I immediately call them on it.
“Ms. Fox, this is blah blah from blah blah and I am calling about blah blah”
“Didn’t you just tell my receptionist that you and I had spoken previously and I was expecting your call?”
“Errrrrr”
Click.

18

At my old office, I used to get a lot of calls asking for “the owner.” We were a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, so I always responded “Mr. Buffett isn’t available right now.” I figured that if it was a legitimate call, the caller would give me some details so I could handle the situation. They never did.

19

We are also a small business, so I answer the majority of the phone calls, despite being the VP of this whole operation. More times than I can count, I’ve had sales idiots refuse to speak to me, demanding to speak to the real person in charge or-- most often-- “Look honey, I need to talk to the man in charge, ok?” Yes, they’ve really said that. Multiple times over the years.

If I had to guess, I’d say we get anywhere from 10 to 20 sales calls per day and while I try my best to be nice at first, by the end of the day, all politeness is out the window. I mean, no person can maintain their sanity after 20 slimy, dishonest, and often times outright rude sales calls.

I understand that these slimy tactics probably lure a few dummies, but wouldn’t these companies make more money just being honest? The reason our business is so successful isn’t because we have to trick our clients, it’s because we’re straight up with them. I have many friends in media sales and the ones who make the most money are the ones who are straight up with their customers. I don’t get these scammers.

One particular sales guy stands out above the rest in my memory and I do believe I’ve shared his tale here before. Basically, he called, went through his schpeel, I politely said we weren’t interested and asked him to remove us from his solicitation list. He protested, insisting he’s not soliciting something, I get a little more irritated but am still being polite. That’s when he lost it-- he started saying he was going to write bad reviews of our business all over the internet and how DARE we not want to work with him. I asked for his name and company, he refused to divulge, called me a bitch, then hung up. Normally, I’d let it go-- but his threats pissed me right off, so I got to sleuthing.

Nothing came up when I Googled his number, so a friend called him pretending to want advertising. Turns out, the guy works for a media company, but was trying to sell his own “much better!” SEO service entirely on the side. Friend got his name, we Googled it, and found the guy’s completely up to date Linked In, showing he works for ATT and previously worked for Dex, an ATT competitor in the market this guy was calling from. Funny enough, it appeared he had left Dex a few months before he called us. . . and we are Dex customers in that particular market (but ATT customers in many others).

Needless to say, I called our Dex rep, told them this tale, and the manager contacted legal to deal with this guy breaking his non compete clause. Then, I called our ATT rep, who was horrified and got me the guy’s manager’s info. Needless to say, according to his Linked In, he no longer works at ATT. Fuck that guy.

I may have also signed him up for something on the Scientology website, but that’s childish of me and we won’t go there. :slight_smile:

20

Something similar happened to my manager last year. She got several packages, a few weeks apart, from some guy and the contents of the packages were myesterious and cryptic. I recall that one had a toy car in it and just a slip of paper that said “Make it FAST”. No information about who it was from and what they were promoting or selling. The next package had some other thing in it and another slip of paper, equally unclear. We knew from the way the packages were addressed that it was probably someone who had gotten her contact information from someone other than her. Addressed to the main address rather than our office location, like PunditLisa’s cereal, for one thing.

The thing is, at the time when this was happening, we had just had some pretty big issues in the organization involving the unions and some other unrest. The whole thing completely freaked my manager out and she practically had a security escort to the parking garage every day. When the person behind this ill-conceived promotion finally identified himself, she was pretty clear that not only would she not be recommending his product for our organization to purchase, but that she had some choice names and words for him.

OTOH, I am hungry and could go for some cereal right now.