This worked for me yesterday:
Me (answering telephone): Hullo?
**Telemarketer: **HelloSirI’mCallingFromBowaterZenithWeAreCurrentlyCarryingOutSomeWorkInYourAreaAnd (gasp for breath) WeWantedToTellYouAboutSomeOfOurFantasticOffers (gasp for breath) NowIKnowWhatYou’reGoingToSayNext…
**Me (interrupting):**Nevertheless, etiquette demands I say it; Thank you and goodbye. (hang up)
**Stoneburg ** : Please don’t feel guilty. You are just doing a job. The people who scream bad things and try to make you feel like garbage are just nasty people. Do what we used to do when I worked focus group calling, put them on speaker phone and make fun of them. Have a good laugh. If they really knew how stupid they sounded, they would stop. Also don’t take it personally. It is really stupid to assume that you do that because you want to. And people really are that dumb that they think they are singled out to be called. Man, people really do think that the world revolves around them. And it is great that you give out the do not call list info.
Anyone who makes another person cry for doing a job is low. That is dispicable. Someone should make you cry.
And do you know why people use telemarketers? Because it works. If it didn’t work, they would not do it.
Here is the website, by the way. It took me all of 5 minutes to register my number and respond to the email.
Stoneburg
It is my sincere wish that everyone you call tells you to fuck off.
Please find a real job and quit -
-annoying people
-using their own phone subscription to bother them
-preying on the old, feeble and weak
-justifying your rudeness by claiming to brighten an old person’s day
-claiming that you can’t make a living any other way
You can most certainly find a real job. Maybe you could get Lamia to help you find one.
Bubba
Well, that’s a valid point of view, but if no one is inherently deserving of respect why should you expect telemarketers to respect your privacy? What have you done for them to earn enough respect not to be bothered by unsolicited calls during dinner? At least I could say that I’ve encouraged others to be polite to them; you’ve done the opposite. I’m sure there are people working as telemarketers who have convinced themselves that those who cannot politely say “No, not interested” deserve to be annoyed. I think that’s wrong, but I don’t see how your professed moral views could allow you to.
I have explained this already, but I’ll try again (I’m kind of an optimist that way). Losing one’s temper is understandable, especially when one has been annoyed. But there’s a big, big difference between losing one’s temper and advocating the widespread premeditated bullying of the lowest ranking employees of a business you disapprove of as some sort of righteous crusade against evil.
I don’t approve of smoking or the tobacco industry. Breathing secondhand smoke also makes me physically uncomfortable, but I don’t start screaming at smokers on the street because of it. I certainly don’t encourage other people to do so. I guess I could attempt to justify such behavior by saying that smokers have done nothing to earn our respect, that they’ve done much to lose our respect by being obnoxious in public, and that by making smoking unpleasant for them we’d not only be discouraging them from bothering others but helping to save their own lives while also driving the tobacco companies out of business…but really we’d just be a bunch of jerks screaming at smokers on the street.
And you think this leaves you in any position to look down on telemarketers? Temptation to repay rudeness in equal measure may be understandable, it may sometimes even be irresistable, but it’s never the right thing to do. If it were, telemarketers would be fully justified in calling you up more often because you’re rude to them.
Well, I have never “responded in kind” in the past, and I’m the product of the American public school system so I’ve been in such situations often enough. I suppose you might catch me on a particularly bad day and I’d lose my temper, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to at least think that it might be nice to try.
Let me rephrase: no one is inherently deserving of respect, but no one is inherently deserving of disrespect. Everyone starts at zero. When a telemarkter calls me, he goes into the negative. Assuming he’s never met me, he has no reason to be disrespectful to me (if he has met me, he’s got all sorts of reasons, but that’s a different matter entirely). So, when someone is disrespectful to me for no reason at all, I see no reason to be respectful back to him. It’s not going to convince him to change his manners, and it just makes me feel like a doormat. By responding to disrespect with disrespect, at the very least I have the feeling that I’ve fought back or defended myself, even if that feeling is wholly illusory.
If it helps any, consider that every single time I hear from a telemarketer, I lose my temper. That’s how much it bothers me. Hell, just reading about is enough to get my blood pressure up.
I honestly don’t see the difference. Maybe it’s just me, but once I lose my temper, it generally stays lost. I lost my temper on this issue about seven years ago, and haven’t seen hide nor hair of it since then. And one of the reasons it makes me angry is that I see the telemarketers as the bullies, not myself.
But we’re not talking about people selling stuff in the street, are we? We’re talking about people coming into my home, without my permission, disrupting whatever it is I’m trying to do, just to sell me something I don’t want. A better example would be, what if someone came into your house and started smoking? And even if he’d put it out when you asked him to stop, he’d just light up another one twenty minutes later? At what point do you start telling him to fuck off and leave you alone?
I think you’re wrong. I think it’s exactly the right thing to do. I’m not looking for moral superiority, I’m looking to be left alone. I don’t care about being the “better person” if it doesn’t do anything to keep people who are trying fuck with from fucking with me. Which is why I signed up for the Do Not Call List, because it was clearly more effective than cursing at drones. That doesn’t invalidate the cursing done previous to the implementation of the list, though.
I admire your restraint, although I have no intention of emulating it.
If somebody is rude to me, I don’t see how their humanity makes it improper for me to be rude right back to them.
If all humans are worthy of respect, than why the f*ck can’t telemarketers show me some freaking respect by not calling me?
And by the way, I don’t see any moral difference between purposeful and knowing behaviour. The example given in law school is the person who runs a police roadblock knowing that doing so will kill a policeman. His purpose is not to kill – his purpose is to get where he is going. He knows that a policeman will die; he may not want it to happen, but he doesn’t care.
As I recall, most criminal codes regard knowing behaviour and purposeful behaviour as equally culpable.
In the same way, I believe that the fact that a telemarketer does not WANT to annoy people does not make him any less contemptible. Just MHO of course.
Hello there Bubba. Unfortunately your wish hasn’t come through yet. Today, nobody told me to fuck off. One person just hung up, which was a bit rude, but that was pretty much it.
On the annoying part. Yes, it is annoying. I try to minimise the annoyment but there’s just no way that it will go away completely.
I don’t prey on the feeble or the weak. I’m sure that this statement of yours reflect your own set of morals more then mine, personally I don’t have the heart to prey on the feeble and weak, I’m kind of “over-empathic”. I think I covered that in my post but you must have missed it.
I’m not justifying my rudeness by claiming to brighten someones day, because I am not rude when I call people. Unless you consider calling them in the first place to be rude of course. On occasion I do stop to chat with lonely people before moving on, without trying to sell anything, only because I feel sorry for them.
Of course I can make a living another way. I’ve applied for several other jobs and will probably not be doing this for too long now. However, I don’t think I’ve ever made this much money before. I make almost twice as much as when I worked in customer services, was the #1 seller today and will probably keep making a bit of money. Without being rude by the way, I find that by being nice I get people to respond better to me, maybe you should try it. 
I’m curious, how has the Do-not-call list affected your business? Has there been a cutting of staff, drop in sales, etc.?
I’m almost inclined to believe that there would not be a noticeable drop in business, since the ones who take the time to put themselves on the DNC list would be the ones who didn’t buy before. Although some people who would have caved to the sales pressure before DNC are now on the list and thus represent lost sales, this is probably made up for TSR’s no longer wasting their time on people on the DNC list…
Yes, we (I, at least) consider just calling to be rude. That’s pretty much the gist of the nub of the point of the thread. But I’m not going to get on your case about it, because it looks like your own conscience is already doing a better job of that than I could.
The Do-Not-Call list is awesome, the only problem is that not enough people know about it. If you think about it, this benefits us telemarketers and the companies more then anyone else. I don’t have to waste my energy talking to someone who won’t ever buy anything or have him/her be rude to me or whatnot. The company gets more effective results since less “customer hits” are duds, meaning they get more bang per buck.
I try to inform people of it EVERY OPPORTUNITY I GET. If I call someone who is very negative towards telemarketing or seems agitated simply by me calling them, I always give them the number to the DNC register (I posted it above) if I can and tell them how it works. Usually they are extremely grateful, and somewhat surprised. I guess they don’t immediatly realise that they are basically making my and other telemarketers jobs easier as well as saving themself the annoyance. It definetely hasn’t made the business less profitable, probably the other way around.
On reflection there might be a big difference in how telemarketing works in the US and here in Sweden. I have absolutely NEVER had a telemarketer be rude to me when I have been called, neither are they very insistant. It usually goes like:
Them: “Hi I’m Sven Svensson, I’m calling from NT, I’m wondering if you want to subscribe to us”.
Me: “Nope.”
Them: “It only costs XXX right now if you…”
Me: “Nah, I’m really not interested but thanks anyway.”
Them: “Ok, have a nice day/evening. Bye”
Me: “Bye.”
The techniques used by US telemarketers, if the above examples are accurate, are extremely poor. I’ll try to explain how I get sales.
Obviosuly I introduce myself (that’s the law) and my company (also the law):
“I’m <RealNameHere>, I’m calling from ACME Inc. Hi”
Since I end my sentence with a greeting they will automatically respond with “hi” or something simmilar, meaning we have now made a rudimentary connection, unlike if I had started off by presenting our offer. Basically now I am a person to them, I have a name and I’m associated with ACME Inc, they have said hello to me.
Then I ask a question:
“Have you tried our products X and Y before?”, “Are you using X and Y” or something simmilar. Once again they will automatically reflect on whether they have or haven’t, and give me an answer. Now they know me (by name and place of business), they have shared something with me and spent a few seconds communicating with me. We’re forming a relationship.
If the answer is Yes, I will ask a couple of more questions. What did they think of the product, have they been using it long, how did they come into contact with it, are they using it now, why did they start/stop using it… This means two things:
Obviously I will guide the conversation here towards positive responses by asking slanted questions. “So you thought it had a positive effect?”. But I am also extremely prone to spin-off conversations. “Well some friends who are into cross-country skiing was using it” will obviously mean that I spend a few minutes discussing the joys of cross-country skiing with the customer. Basically I am trying to create a bond between us. I also try to be humorous if I think the person can handle it, but mostly I am just charming, interested and understanding (well… when I am working that is ). Of course I adapt to whoever I am talking to.
After this I will have enough knowledge to present our offer(s) in the most positive light as well as have enough trust to make a deal over the phone.
If he says No, meaning he/she doesn’t know about or haven’t tried the product, I will give him a (very) brief description of it. If he/she at this point says he isn’t interested I will offer him a sample, usually by some pseudo-reverse psychology (“Well we have these subscriptions… but I don’t think that will suit you, no exactly, yeah you’re right. Ok so I’ll just send you this sample and you check it out, if you like it and think it works we can discuss subscriptions later”. If he/she DOES seem the least bit interested, see above.
If the person is pregnant, breastfeeding or on any medication that may not be compatible with our products, I will usually just not send it out, if they are interested I will send them a sample and make them promise to talk to their doctor before using it. If they are hard of hearing or don’t seem to understand what I am saying, I will claim I called a wrong number and excuse myself. If I get the impression that they are feeble-minded I will just make some distracting small-talk and then bid them a good day (this is a problem since it can sometimes be hard to tell and it happens that you are in the middle of closing the deal when realising that the person isn’t fully mentally capable, making it a veritable verbal acrobatics act to get out of it).
I think the business here is at least somewhat self-cleaning. The other day our second best seller got fired because he was too “pushy” towards the customers (and somewhat decieving, phrasing it to intentionally make them believe that the product was free with no strings attached). Basically they caved into him but then called and complained that they didn’t really want the product. The company doesn’t want (too much) bad will, and neither does telemarketers (it’s not like people don’t distrust us enough already).
Hmm… that turned out to be a very long, and more then slightly off-topic, reply. What I ment to say was that Yes, I like Do-Not-Call lists and I’m sure the companies do as well. We’re instructed to respect them 100% (if someone says they are registered we excuse ourself and hang up immediatly) and we are free to tell people about the list, some of us do that more than others. Hope that answered your question (and then some! )