As much as I would love to rain curses upon the telemarketer calling me, blow whistles or fire guns next to the mouthpiece, I’m afraid that such actions would only serve to get me placed on some sort of “Telemarketer Retaliation List” and the calls I would receive would treble in their frequency and rudeness.
Well I was trained that as soon as they say that, I must hit the CRD button and say bye. I have said Consumer Requests Delete to many telemarketers, and they say by and hang up.
I was also told at that company that it is illegal for them NOT to delete you from the DB.
This is a pretty interesting thread. Like others who’ve already posted, I don’t have any difficulty in simply and quickly ending a telemarketer call. Usually I say something like this: “we don’t receive any telephone solicitations. Please take us off your list. Goodbye.” End of story.
The situation is a little different when they call you and then present you with a recorded message–do you wait through the whole thing so you can say, “customer requests delete”? Or hang up? These are more frustrating.
When their recorded message ends with an ‘opportunity’ for you to leave your message for them, well, that’s when it can be more interesting. I had a friend in graduate school who knew that he would offend most sensibilities by leaving a very raunchy, explicit message for whoever has the pleasure of listening to the recorded messages. He would say something like, “Keep fucking me, Bob, that feels great, keep shoving that big dick up my ass . . . .” finally hanging up and keeling over in laughter, knowing how shocked he had made someone.
Then there’s the question someone asked earlier in this thread: why would they spend money to R&D a device that disables the device that keeps people from being bothered by their sales pitch, because clearly people who spend that money DON’T want to be called?
Well, I would guess that their reasoning goes something like this: it’s the very people who DO buy the telezapper that we want to reach. Why? Because they’ve just invested $50 in a device so that they won’t have to say ‘NO’. And why did they spend that money? Because they’re not confident in their ability to say, ‘no,’ and they know that they are susceptible to someone trying to get them to spend money on things they don’t really need. In fact, their ownership of the telezapper is proof positive of that very point! So, yeah, OF COURSE we want our company to figure out a way around the telezapper, 'cause that’s where all the weakest, most susceptible prey are gathered.
(Not that any of this justifies their practice of interrupting my dinner or making unsolicited calls.)
I was also going to respond to the “what’s so hard about saying no?” comment.
It’s not hard. It’s just damn fucking annoying. Especially when you’re bombarded with multiple calls a day. When I was looking to buy a car and checking out different loan programs, I somehow ended up on a WIDELY circulated call list. I was getting MINIMUM, 10 calls a night. That is NOT an exaggeration. I thought I was seriously gonna lose it. I had caller ID and wouldn’t pick up, and I don’t know if this was because there were so many different people trying to call, or if there were just a couple of very tenacious callers, but my phone was ringing literally, every 15 minutes. This went on until I got privacy manager from my phone company. The calls stopped after that. I’m still pissed that I have to spend 5 bucks a month though to keep from being harassed. And harrasment, this was.
All this Telezapper/Anti-Telezapper crap reminds me of the movie The Big Hit…
“I got the trace busta!” “I got the trace busta BUSTA!!” “I got the trace busta busta BUSTA!!!”
I have a friend who is an audiophile. Whenever he’d get a telemarketer on the phone, he’d use this little device that would make a high pitched “WHEEEEEuuurrrWHHEEEEEEEuuurrrr” type noise. He’s probably deafened quite a few telemarketers. And if they called back, he’d say “Sorry, there’s something wrong with my WHHHHEEEEEuuurrrrWHEEEEEEuuurrr” and hang up. They never called a third time. 
I don’t know what exactly it was, but he got tremendous satisfaction from that device.