…then sorry, but I wanted to say that I have a little gadget that goes in between the phone and the wall and it has a chip with a recording on it which in essence tells the telemarketer that the person they have reached is not interested and to please remove them from the list. When I notice a telemarketing call, (usually by the 3-4 seconds of silence when I say “hello”) I just hit the button and put the received back on the hook. The phone disconnects itself.
I find this saves my time and the marketers’, though it is impersonal.
The few times when I wasn’t near the device and the person started his/her speech about the “courtesy call”, I interrup and just ask point blank if he or she is trying to sell me something. They usually answer yes and the call ends there.
I forget what the thing is called, but it is available from Daymark for about 19.95.
I also wanted to say that I feel for you kids who do this, but you probably already know that the odds are stacked against you, don’t you? I just did an informal poll of my co-workers and they all answered in the negative when I asked if they had ever bought anything from a telemarketer. There are about 30 people who work in the same wing of my hospital.
I was over at a friend’s house for recorder practice last night. He got a call from a telemarketer. This is what we heard, after he listened politely for several minutes:
“I’m very sorry, but I can’t subscribe to your newspaper because your paper is my sworn enemy! When I first moved here, I got an offer saying ‘You just moved in? Great! Here’s a free month of newspapers!’ And I took them up on it, and after the first few days I realized that I didn’t really have time to read all these newspapers and they were just piling up and making a mess so I called in and said I was glad to get them but it just didn’t make much sense for them to keep delivering them, so they stopped. For about a week. And then they started delivering the papers! Again! And I just ended up throwing them all away, unread and unwanted, because I hadn’t gotten my recycling bins yet, and I know that’s a terrible waste but what are you going to do? Anyway, imagine my surprise when, at the end of the month, I received a bill! For newspapers that were supposed to be free! Oh, it was just horrible. Anyway, that’s why I can’t ever subscribe to your paper again. Oh, thank you for understanding. Have a nice day. Bye!”
If this was a true story, I’m guessing that your friend was not being billed for his free month of newspapers but for the next month. I think that newspapers are often paid for in advance. He should not have received the bill since he had already called to cancel, but apparently they didn’t get the cancel message the first time (since they were still delivering newspapers and everything.)
This summer, my sister-in-law got married. As you might imagine, on her wedding day the in-laws’ house was a den of complete chaos. My husband and I were hanging out in their kitchen when the phone rang.
My husband (expecting yet another phone call from some family member with some sort of problem) answered the phone with a cheery “[SIL’s] House of Utter Mayhem!”
The telemarketer stammered, “Uh, uh, uh, this is [telemarketer] from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and…”
My husband interrupts him and says, “Look, my sister is getting married and things are in complete chaos around here. We are in no shape to consider subscribing to your newspaper now. You should just call back on another day.”
It may have been better if he had said, “What would I want with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel? I already subscribe to the Minneapolis Star Tribune!” Then the telemarketer would have been utterly confused!
“Hello, sir. I was wondering if you’d be interested in taking part in…”
“Where is God gone?”
“Uh, excuse me sir?”
“I mean to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? WHITHER DO WE MOVE?!?!”
I telemarketed for around ten years and am in the process of trying to start my own TM company, which will operate from the back of the poolhall I own(hows that for boiler room?)
The company I worked for kept a Do Not Call file, we actually called the DNC file every 6-10 months, the conversion rate was slightly less than a cold call.
I am convinced the best way to get me off the phone(or any other TM)is to hang up,most companies will not call right back,( tho we kept a slam file also and ran about the same conversion as the DNC list) or to say NO ,and only NO, everytime you are asked closing questions.What we look for are objections as to why you dont want to give us money.Well over half my sales started with a negative response.
I had a customer use the AIDS objection, my response was "hope you’re hanging in there"and continued the call. Dont know if he was lying or not,my guess is he was.
Got the Seinfeld objection often ,I rattled of my REAL home phone number and continued,no one ever called me and man I wish they would have.
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When kids answered the phone like this I would say in a firm voice “when will they be home?”. Without fail they would say five thirty or in a few hours.Just food for thought parents.
The average employee lasted about three weeks at the company I worked for.I think that is why most TM’s sound confused and are easily toyed with.I,however, would have enjoyed getting some of you on the phone.
I am totally impressed with how polite most of your are. What is this waiting for a pause to say you are not interested and then hanging up. Once I have figured out that they are not some body I don’t want to deal with I say “not interested” and hang up. None of this take me off your list stuff. Like I am going to take notes about what company it is and keep track of it so I can sue them.
As for other people making some lame excuse like the pot is boiling etc. What the hell? These callers are not your friends they are not being polite there is no reason to be polite back.
As for the idea that it only takes 6 seconds to hang up on the telemarketer: as many people have pointed out you have to stop what you were doing find the phone answer it and the remember what you were doing.
I think that telemarketing only works because we hang up so quickly allowing them to move on quickly to another sucker. As a nation we must take a stand everyone of us must for the next year or so must listen patiently to the pitch ask lots of questions hem and haw then say NO. I guess to surveys we should just hang up. But I don’t get many of those calls so it doesn’t bug me.
Just one last little rant. Telemarketers do nothing for those that they are calling. The idea that they have something useful that will really help the people that they are calling is so vanishingly small that it is not worth considering. Especially since there is often very little that the receiver of the call can do to determine if it is a real offer or some kind of scam. Advertising on TV and Radio at least subsidizes something so the target of it gets some benefit. They are parasites on our free time and really deserve no sympathy from us. Sure you are just doing your job but why should that give to the right to bug me in my home on my time.
When all the work is done, and I’m
bored, I like to leave Bert and Ernie,
or Cookie Monster to answer the
phone when telemarketers call.
When the local paper called,
Cookie Monster was hungry, but
he took the call, but strangely,
when he asked if “Does that come with
cookies?!?!?” they hung up on him.
I’ve seen this mentioned a couple of times and it is worth the cost. I only had one problem with using this system. My mother is unlisted and Caller ID kept showing her as Unavailable, so I wouldn’t answer…Oops! What I did was get what they call Ringmaster Service on my line. It’s a little extra a month, but it allows you to have up to three different phone numbers attached to the same line. You tell the difference among them by the way the phone rings.
I give my original ph # to any potential bill collector’s because it’s listed and can be accessed easily anyway. The second # is for business associates, and the third is for family, friends and members of my Church ONLY. If I get a call at suppertime and it doesn’t have the “magic ring,” I simply don’t pick up because anyone I would want to talk to has the correct number.
The only problem I’ve had with this is that my husband unintentionally contributed to a charity that had randomly called the family and friends number, so now I have them calling me back and selling the number to others. To remedy that, I’ll probably have to get it changed.
“oh, sorry, i’m not Mr. Clayton_e, but i’ll go get him for you if you’ll just wait a minuite.”
then check back 2 min later, if they’re still there say, “he’ll be here in just a min”
and do that over and over until they hang up
I was a telemarketer for a summer (needed the cash to pay for my Ivy League edjookashun) and if someone did this to me, it would totally make my day.
Well, maybe not my entire day, but my next 15 minutes or so would be real pleasant. You see, we weren’t supposed to hang up, so this was essentially a free break for me, heh. Great chance to give the ole vocal chords a rest.
I was only there to collect my hourly pay, so I’m game as long as you are.
