I am really getting tired of telemarketers calling me, and lately they have increased their frequency to where i get 4-5 calls a day from phone companies, etc, trying to get me to switch. My method was to tell them I like my long distance and hang up on them. This apparently didn’t work and they still call. I finally lost it today and started swearing at one, but I’m annoyed, so what can I do to stop them? I know I have to have some rights in the matter and I’ve already changed my phone # to a unlisted and they STILL call. Help!
I am not sure if this is a federal law or not, but here in GA, you can tell the telemarketer not to call you anymore and to take your name off their list. If they call you back, then you can sue them. The problem is that usually you get calls from all sorts of companies.
Have fun with it.
- Ask them stupid questions
- tie up the line and make their time per call go up
- After talking to them in english, tell them in english that you do not speak english
- ask them if you can call them at home and discuss this further
- tell them you do not live there anymore
- tell them that they are talking to an experimental AI voicemail system and would they like to leave a message
- ask them what part of NO did they not understand
- tell them you will by their product if they will convert to insert favorite cult or group here
- ask them to buy girl scout cookies
- ask them if the line is bugged and act paranoid.
I think you get the idea.
Jeffery
I had the same problem, and appear to have fixed it. There are legal ways to get them to stop. If you tell them to stop calling you, and they continue to call, you can bring them to court and they’ll probably have to pay a fine.
The problem with that is a) you have to keep track of who calls and when so that you can prove you told 'em to stop and b) It doesn’t work with first-time telemarkers, of which there are many.
I got Caller ID, and found out that the bulk of the calls from telemarkers showed up as “unavailable” calls. I believe this is because they use PBX’s and such to call out of a business phone system. Very few telemarketers show up on Caller ID with an actual business name.
My local phone company just came out with something called Privacy Plus. Basically, when you get a call from an unavailable source, a recording comes on and says “This number does not accept calls from unavailable numbers. Please record your name for identification purposes.”
If they record their name, my phone rings with a unique ring, and when I pick it up it tells me who’s calling. If they don’t leave their name, the phone doesn’t even ring. As I only have one friend who infrequently calls from an unavailable number, this has worked GREAT! I was getting 4-5 calls a night, and now I get NONE!
Caller ID works great for this–I still get the calls but I don’t answer them. My new phone has all the bells and whistles on it and I have recorded myself saying “Unknown Caller” when I get an unknown caller on the Caller ID–then I don’t even have to get up to answer it.
Gail
“Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you, my friend–
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again…”
-Steely Dan
The whole problem with a lot of the methods suggested is that I don’t really have time for court or anything else. I told my local phone company and all they said is that someone has my phone number and is selling it to telemarketers? I get repeat calls from AT&T, MCI, Sprint, etc, so it wouldn’t be too hard to record their names and stuff, but I wouldn’t know where to go from there. I just get annoyed because I’m a student, I’ll be doing some in-depth studying and then the phone rings, and it’s someone who wants to tell me about their phone service. I tried the nice approach, telling them that I really like my phone service and don’t want to switch, but then they ask me what I like about my long distance and so on. But yes, they do show up on Caller ID as UNAVAIABLE, the problem is that my parents, who travel a lot, also show up as UNAVAILABLE (if calling from a hotel), so I pick up the phone regardless in case it is them. Are there any ways to get them to stop besides going through the legal system?
Changing your telephone number to unlisted is not going to work, you’re already in the system. Take it from me, you have to start out with a number that’s never been listed publicly.
Then you never, ever give that number to anyone you don’t actually want to call you.
And I mean never ever. I routinely refuse to give a phone number to store clerks who ask or insist they need one to complete a form or whatever. The only reason they need one is so they can either:
A. Have their evil minions call you during dinner.
or
B. Sell it to as many other companies as they can find who like to have their minions do so.
Likewise with product “registration” cards and such. These items are designed to gather your personal information either for internal use or for sale to others. I never return these cards, and I have become very adept at avoiding online registration. If you feel the need to be on a company’s mailing list, don’t give them your phone number. I like to give them the number for the phone line my computer is on.
They can call that one all they like.
I’ve had this same number for almost 5 years and I get maybe one or two telemarketing calls every few months, usually from my credit card people or a telephone company.
I tell the former, if they call me one more time I’ll cancel the card, and the latter “I’m not interested, and if you call me agin, I’ll personally come and kill you” and hang up. I’m not popular with these people, and that’s the way I like it.
That’s a great idea, Nickrz. I’d love to talk with you some more about it. Hey, could you post your phone number so I can call you?
Your Quadell
After listening to their sales pitch, bark like a dog. That’ll teach 'em.
(Yes, I’ve done it.)
Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
hey everyone, as someone who has slaved in obscurity in Customer Service, I’d like to say: let’s not shoot the messenger, ok.
The people making the calls just have a crappy job that they probably hate. They don’t want to to call you. Unfortunately, they require renumerative work to get along in this world. Please do me a personal favor, and don’t be rude or obnoxious, and death threats can certainly ruin their day.
No amount of hateful talk on your part is going to change their job. You need to change the company to do that, and that takes a little more effort than telling off the telemarketer.
A simple, I’m not interested, and tell your boss I’m reporting your agency to the BBB is usually plenty.
Just my 0.02, I realize these calls are annoying. I am not pro-telemarketing by any strech.
As a side note, if some of your calls are survey research, those numbers are randomly generated by Bellcore. No matter how unlisted your number is you can still show up on a survey list. I did phone interviewing for a while. Even though it was for a legitimate academic purpose, boy did it suck.
-rmariamp
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I’m sorry, but I don’t owe the boobs who can’t make a living doing something else anything. They are invading my privacy, and they called me, not I them. They pays their money, they takes their chances.
I don’t care if it’s Momma Leone supporting her ten kids on $5.95 an hour, tough shit. They took the job, they better be prepared for all manner of language from the people they are being paid to abuse.
What about getting an answering machine and letting all your friends/family know that you will be screening your calls? That way if they get the answering machine, they won’t hang up first, you can only answer calls you really want to answer and even if it is your friend/family and you don’t want to talk at that moment, you will know to call them back? Some phone companies also have voice messaging, and you can set that up to answer after only one ring if you are busy, etc.
rmariamp said: “…death threats can certainly ruin their day.”
That’s too bad, because I work nights and when the phone rings every hour or so (I used to get 8 or more calls a day, although it has eased up lately) it wakes me up. It’s very hard for me to get back to sleep during the day. I am an RN in an intensive care unit so when I’ve gone without sleep, this not only ruins my day, it also literally puts some very sick people in danger.
I can’t just turn off the ringer because my kids are in school or at the sitter and one of them has health problems; I need to be able to get important phone calls.
Caller ID doesn’t prevent the phone from waking me, but I never answer “unavailable” calls unless I’m really tired. God help the telemarketer who calls me when I’m really tired- I invariably begin to cry (and swear incoherently) because I am SO TIRED AND I CAN’T GET ANY SLEEP! I have seriously considered suicide simply because I am so tired. I hope my phone company gets that Privacy Plus thing Athena mentioned; that would be wonderful.
I’m a telemarketer. And trust me, saying “take my name off the list” is the best way to go. Cursing and the like may give the telemarketer an easy laugh at your expense - then again, it may make him set you up to be called tomorrow, so it’s not entirely wise. All the “telemarketer torture techniques” may amuse, but they don’t do anything about your callbacks. If you say “I don’t speak english” then you just get sent to the list for the bi-lingual folks to call.
One handy tidbit I learned at work is that you can have the credit reporting agencies not hand out your information (so you don’t get all those “Pre-approved” offers in the mail and such.
Unfortunately, this job has eliminated what little integrity I had left. But hey, it’s money, right?
A good little resource on how telemarketing works is at www.antitelemarketer.com
But don’t tell them I sent you.
Trip (don’t) Fall
Two words: Rape Whistle
Keep on tooting untill they hang up. They may not stop calling, but it sure is fun!
And most local phone service nowadays have a relatively inexpensive service to block telemarketing calls. Any calls made to your house from an autodialer type service (the ones that come up “unavailible” on your Caller ID), never get through. Ameritech, Bell Atlantic and Bell South (IIRC) and possibly SBC all provide this service. Ask your local phone service if they have something called “privacy manager” or the like. If not, demand that they get it, since the technology exists, and is infact the same technology as the caller ID… If this doesn’t work, keep the whistle by the phone!
Jason R Remy
“And it could be safely said that at that moment, in the whole of India, no one, absolutely no one, was f^(king a goat.”
– John Irving A Son of the Circus (1994)
According to radio personality (L. A. Area) Gary Owens, whom some people may remember from “Laugh-In,” a good way to fend of telemarketers–without being rude to the hapless employees–is to say, “Hello…hello…hello…I can’t seem to hear you, hello…” then you hang up. They won’t wast time calling back of they think your line is out of order.
Excuse me–IF they think…"
Don’t you mean “If they think?”
I’d guess that they don’t, it might give them headache.
Telemarketers exist because it works. If it didn’t work, companies would not do it.
So: get telemarketers started on their “pitch” - act interested for a few moments. Then just gently put the phone down on the desk and walk away. Come back in a few minutes and hang up. If you hang up righta way, they just call somebody else, but if you waste their time, it makes telemarketing less effective financially.
–
peas on earth
A friend of mine used to have a prepared sales pitch written down near the phone for such occasions. I think he would try to sell tham light bulbs.
Seriously, before you chew out some telemarketer, make sure it is one and not a market researcher. I used to do market research calls, and I would get chewed out and quoted telemarketing laws every single night. Most of the time we were looking for people for focus groups, which paid very well for a few hours of giving your opinion. We’re trying to do you a favor, people.
Dr. J
I find that asking them what kind of panties they’re wearing usually gets me on the “don’t call back” list. It seems to work for both female and male telemarketers.