I’ve worked as a telemarketer twice (once booking appointments for home security – I quit when they told me to use scare tactics on old ladies – and once requesting donations from alum while I was in school) so I have some symapthy for them. But there are still things that set me off.
First, though, my standard reply to many of them is simply “Sorry, I only rent.” If it’s for home improvement, they know you can’t do a thing. If it’s for credit cards or home loans … they don’t really want renters – they want owners. This will often get me off of lists as well.
What I don’t like, however, is that pause before they pick up, or even worse a recording saying “please hold.” I politely wait until they finally pick up, then when they ask for me, I calmly say “Yes, this is he but I don’t appreciate being put on hold when you call me. Goodbye” and hang up. My other pet peeve is the “checkup calls” – calls to see if you got the junk mail they sent. For me, it goes something like this:
Them: “We sent you an application for a Discover Card three weeks ago and wanted to know if you got it and had any questions.”
Me: “I’m sorry, did I return the application?”
Them: “No, actually you didn’t.”
Me: “Well, there’s usually a reason for that – I’m not interested. Thank you for doublechecking, though!”
I mean, come on! You have to send junk mail AND followup on it? Geeez. Luckily I have a hard-to-pronounce last name, so it’s easy to tell when I’m dealing with telemarketers.
Yes, I despise the telemarketers, especially the ones who call at dinner time. But there is a great new thing here in Connecticut, the “No Call” List. Prior to us going on the list, we would get 3-4 calls a day. Since then, maybe one every other week. Ahhh, the silence is wonderful. It would be great if this went national, but I’m sure then the telemarketers would sue and it would be found to be a barrier to free trade by NAFTA, so maybe I should just be glad for what we have.
I’ve told this story on the boards before, but it fits well here. Note that this dialogue was completely unprompted, and in fact occurred when the parents of the child in question were outside and unable to hear the phone.
When my brother-in-law was 10, he picked up one of those telemarketing calls. It went like this:
BIL: Hello?
TM: Hello, is your mother home?
BIL: <sighing heavily> No, she’s dead.
TM: Oh, I’m sorry. Is your father there?
BIL: <another sigh> No, he’s dead too.
TM: <getting flustered> Is there some adult there that I could speak with?
BIL: No, <sigh>, they’re all dead.
TM: There’s no one there with you?
BIL: No.
TM: I’m sorry. Goodbye!
They got a visit from the cops that week for an abandoned child report.
Unfortunately, a “tele-poler” and “tele-marketer” are pretty similar to most people. The marketer tries to sell you shit, and the poller just takes 15-30 minutes of your time. Tell me which one is worse?
I try not to be rude as I know they are just people trying to make a living but for fucks sakes, they all drive me nuts.
LEAVE ME ALONE. IF I WANT SOMETHING I WILL CALL YOU. IF YOU WANT TO SURVEY ME, MAIL ME SOMETHING.
AAAAARRRGGHHH!
I’m normally polite to them, but firm. “hmm. you are indeed fortunate that you got me. I am the **only ** person in this household that doesn’t take a strong interest in making telemarketers cry. Just put us down as a ‘never call again’ and thank your lucky stars”.
At work, I’m less polite - especially to the folks calling for the guy who hasn’t worked here in 5 years.
Today, I made an exception. I got a call, they start in on their gig, they don’t pause for me to say I’m not interested, I finally say, over them ‘not interested’, but notice that nothing changes. It’s a recording. ** THEY** are calling ME and with a ** recording!?**. I called their home office and told them, that if they were the only folks providing the service, I’d still not hire them, so share with their marketing dept. that not only is it not working well, it’s doing negative things to their potential customer base.
Mangetout yes, we have unlisted phone numbers here in the States, but the telemarketers also have automatic dialing machines that will call each number in sequence, so being unlisted won’t help.
TitoBenito, check thisout! I think you’ll love it.
Ever since I let the telemarketer from the phone company sell me caller ID with Privacy Manager, I’ve been telemarketer-free. It screens out all unidentified numbers, and is worth the monthly cost.
The phone companies create and profit from a paradox of evil - the telemarketers pay to be able to call us, we pay to get them off our backs, the phone company wins!
Before I had this magic device, I would use this SOP: “Can you tell me the name of your company and your name again? Okay, thank you __. We do not accept phone solicitations. Please put this number on your Do Not Call List." I’d write down the info the telemarketer gave me and the date on the bulletin board next to the phone, and if I heard from them again I’d say " promised to put this number on your DNC list on (date). I am reporting you to the state office of consumer affairs an the Better Business Bureau. Do not call again.” Then I’d report it, using the staff names, dates, times of the call.
I’m surprisingly polite; I listen to the whole first sentence, wait for them to draw a breath, then interrupt and tell them I’m not interested, or no thank you, and even wait for them to blurt their goodbye before hanging up.
EXCEPT for two…
Residential Long Distance marketing. These guys are in the phone business in the first place; they probably have the exotic ability to determine who might be interested in their phone service… i.e. people who make long distance phone calls. I do not. Ever. Make long-distance phone calls from home. Why? Mostly because I live 80% of my life in hotels and factories, and have a phone card through work that I always use. So I’m just disappointed that these guys don’t bother selecting the high-probability customers.
That one jerk from the “policemen’s union”. I gave, just once, to the State Patrol benevolent fund, three years ago. Now I get calls from the Fireman’s Fund, and the Seattle Police Guild, saying “we want to thank you for your past support and we want to count on you again this year…” I remember which jurisdiction I gave to, and it wasn’t the firemen. Then I realized it was the SAME GUY… it’s a fundraising company, this guy has nothing to do with any of those agencies. So I told him to can it and tell his clients that until their union stops contributing to waterfront deaths (long story, stupid tragedy) they can jam it.
I see them on my caller ID & do nothing but chuckle.
If I could hear I might say inform them to take me off their list & if they don’t Im gonna sue. I saw a guy who did that & makes a lot of money suing in small claims.
Okay.
I used to be an at-home telemarketer.
It was for a charity; they wanted your junk to collect.
I once called some guy at 7 p.m. He yelled at me that he was sleeping! How am I to suppose people are sleeping at 7 p.m?
Of course one guy answer “Yo keiro taco bell.”
He thought it was his daughter calling.
Even without caller ID you can usually spot telemarketers by the slight pause after you go “Hello.”
Here’s what’s happening. Most telemarketers have computers that generate and dial the calls and hand off to a real person only after the computer has determined that another real person is on the other end of the call. It distinguishes real people from answering machines by the pause after the “hello”. Real people go “Hello” and wait for a response; answering machines go “Hi, this is blah, blah, blah…” with no pause.
So if you go “Hello” and there is a pause on the other end of the line, you can bet it’s a telemarketer’s computer busy handing off to a real person. Sieze the opportunity and hang up before the handoff is made.
I use bnorton’s technique. If you’re not talking right away after I pick up the phone, I hang up. As I see it, if you really want to talk to me, you will call back. That’s happened once and my father called me back, albeit a bit befuddled.
I almost always take part in marketing surveys or polls. Those people don’t want my money and they usually don’t take very long, although I once got sucked into one that was 20 minutes long and I started to lose track of what was being asked and I believe I started giving contradictory answers.
JunkBusters’ Anti-Telemarketing Script. The premise is that telemarketers use a script, so why shouldn’t you? It’s a series of very polite questions, culminating in a request to be taken off their list. If they call you back within TEN YEARS, you can sue them in small claims court. The website provides details.
Since we started using the script, our telemarketing calls have dropped to an average of about one per week. We used to get 4-5 per day. It really works.
My favorite response of all time was one I heard on a morning radio show. It may have been a setup, but it sounded like a real recording.
The Guy answers the phone and telemarketer trys to sell him storm windows. The guy, sounding obviously drunk, say great, what time yall coming by/? can you bring some beer?
He goes on to explain that he is under house arrest and is out of beer, and that he would be happy to set up an appointment if they would bring beer.
He then lets the telemarketer talk for a bit, then starts getting irate. He says he already bought windows from them, and they came out and installed them, but they were just a shiney bare metal. So he painted them a real glossy white, and now that wont open and hes pissed off. He asks to speak to the telemarkters supervisor. The telemarketer is now only too happy to get rid of him. As soon as the supervisor is on the phone, he is all of a sudden sober, reasonable, and intelegent. He explains to the supervisor that he bought set of windows from the first guy, and that now the guy keeps calling him. He tells the supervisot that the telemarketer says he finds him attractive, and that hes a married man and he is now affraid to go to work because this telemarketer keeps calling his house and telling him he knows where he lives, and keeps threatening his family. He threatens to involve the police. The supervisor says hell take care of it, and that he has never had any problems with the emmployee etc…
I was laughing so hard, I had to pull over to the side of the road
I have seen a few of these threads, and I am convinced that I do not even get a percentage of the telemarketer calls that some of you do. The ones at my house seem to come in spurts. I’ll get a ton of them for a week or so, then silence for a month.
Unless the kids are having a meltdown and I absolutely cannot take a minute to listen, then I do listen to their spiel. I take the first opportunity to tell them that I am not interested. In all home improvement calls, I simply tell then that I rent my home. If it is a survey, I participate if I have the time. Several of the surveys are thinly disguised sales pitches, ending with someone offering to come over with my free gift for participating, as long as I listen to their sales pitch. I always decline.
Back when I first got my own place, I used to get pressured into buying things, or applying for credit for things I had no interest in purchasing. I was raised to be exceptionally polite, and I felt rude saying no. This is no longer a problem for me. All I have to do is glance at my $2000 set of encyclopedias, and “No” just springs to my lips.
I do not purchase anything unsolicitated over the telephone. If I want to purchase something, rest assured, I will call you. Just saying “I’m not interested” works 95% of the time. I only hang up if they continue to argue past that point.
Then never read a magazine that has polls. Never use an almanac. Never vote for a candidate who takes polls of constituents. Never buy a product that uses marketing research. Nobody HAS to sell products over the phone, most telemarkets are paracites. But telepolling provides a much needed resource for a countless number of people, companies and organizations. No one says you have to take the poll, but you have to understand it must be done. And yelling at some 19 year old kid, working for almost minimum wage to pay for college so he doesn’t have to make telepolling a career, will not change the fact that some one HAS TO DO IT.
I cut them off, and tell them that we never buy from telemarketers. Then I ask to be put on their “Do Not Call” list. I do not abuse them.
I worked as a telemarketer for a couple of weeks once when I needed some money. It sucked. I wouldn’t do that job now because I don’t like the idea of hassling people at home, but I also know the person on the other end is just doing their job, and so I don’t abuse them. I also know they’re probably working for a company that has unrelistic expectations, and they don’t have time to waste talking to someone who doesn’t want to buy from them, so I end the call as fast as possible.
I don’t get very many telemarketing calls since I went ex-directory, I guess the telemarketers haven’t caught up with the sequential dialling technology over here yet (the few times they have got me by random chance, it was some poor guy with a list of numbers on a sheet)
As an aside, I never take part in any product-related consumer surveys; you just end up getting on loads of lists for junk mail.
As it is, I recieve about two or three pieces of junk mail a week; I write ‘Unsolicited mail, please return to sender’ on the front and pop it in the post box, usually this gets me taken off the mailing lists.
There are national mailing and telephone preference lists in the UK; add your details to these and the telemarketers and junk mailers are supposed to avoid you, but it’s apparently not 100% water tight.
There are other methods of gathering information - and ones which are less intrusive. What essential information does a survey by phone provide, that a survey by mail does not? Not to mention the ongoing effort by ecommerce people to build up profiles of consumers via their purchase records -which has its own issues of invasion of privacy and rights to information, but at least when Amazon and the like run their OLAP routines, they don’t drag me out of the bath to do it.
(By the way, bnorton, thanks for resolving my perplexity over the strange pause at the beginning of telemarketing calls…)
