There is a Federal law to protect you from these pains. When they call tell them to put you on their DO NOT CALL LIST. This prevents them from calling you for another 10 years.
If they do call again, you can take them to Small Claims Court and get a couple of Thousand dollars for harassment.
The only call I get is from the phone company wanting me to use their answering service. I’m waiting for the next call so I can tell them I will take the service if they will pay me $350.00 a month.
Some telemarketers used to call, wanting opinions or to sell crap. I’d make up the most outrageous stories for the opinion seekers and for the ones wanting to sell crap, I’d reply in German. They have stopped calling.
HAAHAHAAHAH I actually like Telemarketers sometimes =) Last time one called I ended up with her number and screen name =) nothing happened but we still talk like every couple of days
But yea, you can ask them to put you on their list. That usually works. But seriously Why? I mean yea you can get some cash, but it’s usually alot more fun to make fun of them.
If they really start to bother you ask them to put you on the list then just hang up.
I’ve recently hit upon a guilt free way to get rid of telemarketers. Simply tell the peron on the other end that you already get the product or service they are selling for free. They can’t beat that deal so they hang up and no one feels rotten or angry.
I’ve only used this one (it wasn’t a lie at the time) and it worked great. I haven’t had any chance to test it beyond that one time so I offer it up to the Teeming Millions to try out. Let me know if it works.
Telemarketing is horrible. Telemarketing is nasty. Telemarketing corporations should be lined up and shot. But (insert small plea here): please have some pity on the poor slob who actually is on the phone with you. He or she is probably a wage slave who had to take this job to get off unemployment. They hate having to call as you hate being called by them.
Threaten them with fines and lawsuits. Tell them you already get it cheaper. But please, please don’t be rude. (/plea)
You’ve made a common error - confusing teleMARKETING with telephone RESEARCH. Telemarketing is the practice of calling consumers and offering to sell them a product or service. Telephone research is the practice of calling consumers to poll their opinions.
The one is intrusive - the other is legitimate and useful:
Telephone Market Research helps the consumer. Market Researchers collect YOUR opinions then tell manufacturers what you want from them.
The difference is small, but vital. As you’ve probably guessed, I work in the Research field - we’re the ones who call, ask you some questions, then offer to pay you for your opinions (in a taste test, focus group, whatever).
Most people, when presented with the true nature of our call, are happy to help - most of our respondents are only dissatisfied that we don’t call them more often!
I despise telemarketers as much as you do - they besmirch my industry (and often pose as researchers for their own nefarious purposes). I only wanted to set the record straight.
Trion:
My teacher’s wife used to tell those salesmen that her husband sold whatever it was that they were selling (insurance, siding, whatever). It worked for everything but girl scout cookies…
Note to self:
Don’t climb into the ring with sdimbert. He’s one of those guys that checks the facts.
– WallyM7
Tell ya what: find me a phone-monkey who doesn’t rudely interrupt whatever I’m doing, isn’t ignoring my stated wishes (I’m on all the no-call lists, my number is unlisted etc.), and isn’t being unpleasantly familiar (“Hi Fenris, How’s it going? How’d your weekend go?”), and I won’t be rude. Until then, the more miserable I make the lives of these scumbags, the more likely they’ll get similar paying jobs (like garbage collection or burger flipping) that don’t negatively impact my life.
BTW, for suggestions on how best to deal with the call-jockey trash, and their scumbag employers who spam-call can be found at the following links: The first one (Junkbusters) is especially useful, http://www.junkbusters.com/
and the other is pretty funny and has a great telemarketer tormenting technique sub-page.
It was a landmark day for me when I first realized that it’s OK to be rude to these people. My mother’s generation has a great deal of trouble hanging up on people in mid-sentence, you know, “it’s rude”. They have to have some kind of closure of the conversation before they can hang up, and of course telemarketers aren’t gonna give you that. I had the same problem myself, for years.
Finally one day I realized, “Hey, they’re just sitting there, getting paid minimum wage for working their way down a list of names, they get paid for completing the call whether they sell anything or not, so it’s OK to hang up on them.”
So now as soon as I determine that it’s a telemarketer (and not, for example, one of my daughter’s tongue-tied boyfriends), I just interrupt to say flatly, “We’re not interested, thank you,” and I hang up the phone. It’s extremely amusing to hear the tiny voice still talking frantically on its way down to the set. Click.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Have you ever stood in the aisle at the local Whatever and wondered “Why the hell don’t those idiots make it in green?” Or “In a larger can?” Or, “In a smaller size?” Or whatever?
Those idiots want to make whatever it is you will pay them for. But they need to know what you want first!
Market Research is a neccesary product of the Capitalist Economy. The truth is that most products in this country are designed to meet the needs of nice people; they are the ones who tell manufacturers what they want.
Not necessarily the best way of dealing with telemarketers, but certainly an effective one.
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
We got a call the other day from a guy selling subscriptions to a newspaper. I was polite, but firm. It took a minute for him to catch on:
ME: Hello?
HIM: Hi, my name is Josh. (pause)
ME: Uh…hello Josh.
HIM: Hi. I’m calling from the Chicago [major newspaper]. We have a special going on the Sunday edition of our paper.
ME: Oh, no thank you. We don’t read that paper.
HIM: (long pause) Well, see, we have this special.
ME: No thank you. We don’t read that paper.
HIM: But maybe you would like to try a trial subscription.
ME: We have read your paper. We don’t really like it…at all.
HIM: Oh…well, then thank you for your time.
ME: No problem.
It was fairly easy. You don’t have to be rude. Just be firm. If they call again (this is the first they’ve called since we moved in) I’ll ask to be put on the Do Not Call list.
Homepage: www.idreamofjeannie.com
Occupation:Wish granting
Location: I’m still stuck in this damn bottle in Cocoa Beach, Fla.
Interests: Getting Major Nelson in trouble, getting Major Nelson out of trouble
–Custom profile courtesy of UncleBeer
I never hate myself in the morning. I sleep till noon.
–Custom sig line courtesy of Wally
And that includes the scum that actually make the calls.
Why should I have any pity on the telemarketing scum that has just finished disrupting whatever I’m doing to try to sell me something?
Which is not my problem.
If they did, they wouldn’t call me.
WTF? Why shouldn’t we be rude to assholes that disrupt our lives to try and sell us some useless crap? If you don’t want people to be rude to you, don’t start off by being rude to them and doing things like calling them with a sales pitch. All of you telemarketing scum and former telemarketing scum have a lot of nerve demanding that people be polite to you when you refuse to be polite to them.
I used to just say ‘I don’t buy shit from telemarketers’ and hang up, but I now attempt to either entertain myself or make the person choosing to call me miserable after reading all of these whiny appeals for politeness from telemarketers.
Kevin Allegood,
“At least one could get something through Trotsky’s skull.”
It’s called common courtesy you pompous toad. You speak as if the telemarketer’s sole purpose is to seek you out in the hopes of wreaking havoc of your otherwise blissful existence.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, has been solicited by telephone and/or mail and/or electronically and/or personally. These folks are earning their way, like most of the rest of us. That, in itself, deserves your courtesy.
BTW, I have never been treated rudely by a telemarketer…never.
Also, if you ever donate money as a result of a phone call from a charity, be prepared to be swamped by other charities shortly afterward. It seems these agencies sell your name to each other.
Not calling people you don’t even know to sell them something is also common courtesey. When telemarketing scum learn to pick up that bit of common courtesey, maybe then they’ll deserve courtesey on my part.
I don’t care what their purpose is, I only care what their actions are. And by their actions they disrupt whatever activity I was involved in before they called and interfering with the use of my phone. If they would refrain from such discourteous actions, I would treat them with courtesey.
Mail solicitation doesn’t bother me since it doesn’t disrupt my life or interfere with my personal communications. Telephone solicitation is horribly rude, disrupts whatever I’m doing, and interferes with my use of my telephone. Also, the fact that these assholes are rude to everyone merely demonstrates that they don’t yet realize that they are being rude, and so deserve to be discouraged from their actions by the people they bother.
If they were earning their way while showing basic courtesey themselves I would agree, but telemarketing slime ‘earns their way’ by discarding common courtesey, so they deserve none in return. You want courtesey? Don’t open up with discourtesey.
If I want to buy something from you, I’ll call you. But if you’re a telemarketer, I don’t want to buy anything from you anyway.
I have never been treated politely by a telemarketer. Every single one of them calls me when I’m doing something I’m interested in and interferes with my use of my own phone. Polite treatment by a telemarketer would involve them NOT calling on my phone, which the wretches never seem to grasp.
Since I never buy from or contribute money to people behaving as audaciously rudely as telemarketers, this is not a risk for me.
Kevin Allegood,
“At least one could get something through Trotsky’s skull.”
Common courtesy is extended to those who deserve it. Someone stealing my money (in that I pay for the phone that they use for harrassment) and time deserves no more courtesy than a burglar breaking into my house does. Think about it. The telemarketer steals (however briefly) the use of a device that YOU pay for for their own ends.
<sarcasm>
And of course, that makes it all right.
</sarcasm>
Nope, they’re making money from stealing from me and harrassing me. It doesn’t matter if it’s only fractions of pennies that they’re stealing, it’s still theft.
If a telemarketer has ever called you without your express prior consent, you have been treated rudely, whether you think so or not.
If you pick up the phone when a call-monkey is trying to harrass you, even if you don’t buy anything, you’re put on a list of available callers. Again,let me point everyone to http://www.junkbusters.com/ and http://www.antitelemarketer.com/indexd.htm for good ideas about how to drastically reduce the number of calls you get from telemarketing-scum.
Howcum we all feel that we have an obligation to answer a ringing phone? The realization that I have no such obligation was very liberating. We have caller ID, we check it, and if you are unidentified, or if we just don’t want to talk at the time, we don’t answer. Friends will leave a voicemail, especially if it is important. If someone knocks on your door you don’t feel obligated to invite them in, do you? That ringing is a knock, and by answering you are letting to person on the line into your home. Excercise your right not to answer.
