I feel your pain, featherlou but you have to understand one distinction. Telemarketers are not Customer Service people. They are a plague on the earth. A Customer Service person provides wanted products/services. A telemarketer intrudes on your life to try to foist on you some product/service that you weren’t looking for and probably could get for less monet via legitimate means.
Apparantly she doesn’t. Seems phone solicitors are trained NOT to think.
Damn right, particlewill, when your job basically boils down to harassing hundreds of people a day shilling crap that they don’t want, don’t expect your ‘customers’ to be pleasant. And don’t expect people to be sympathetic to your work-related problems.
kicks self Or less Money either. Unless paintings are leagal tender in your universe…
Yes, this is all true. But these bastards have found a way around this. The guy was a Wells Fargo customer, and undoubtedly buried in the fine print of his signup was some legalese something to the effect of “from time to time Wells Fargo may solicit you for offers from itself or third parties. By signing this agreement, you are consenting to advance permission to purchase these products subject to you rejection of the offer. Without explicit rejection of the offer, you will be charged without further advance notice.”
Note that this skirts the issue of unsolicited goods entirely. You agreed to their terms, and you have a prior business relationship. By their legal definitions, these aren’t unsolicited, you agreed to take them along with their banking services, and you can “opt out.” But that doesn’t make this ethical. I would never do business with any company that pulled shit like this.
Please put me on your Do Not Call list. I’ve been slowly whittling down the number of calls using this. It was most satisfying when the calls from the local paper (about one call every two weeks) stopped. I can then be very pleasant knowing that this should be the last call I receive from that company for the next ten years.
And if you keep a list by your phone of when you made the request and they happen to call back, you can scream: FCC! FCC!
Hey, just do what my brother does! He tells them, “I’m sorry I can’t talk right now, the police and the coroner are here.” They never say anything after that! Some guy has put out a CD of his prank responses to telemarketers, I’ve heard parts of it, and its sooo funny. He had a carpet cleaning place call him and he asked if they could get out blood. Lots of blood. Human and goat blood. The telemarketer called the cops, who were quite amused by the whole thing.
The best thing to do is to simply hang up on them. The people calling you aren’t really the people behind disturbing you and being rude to them doesn’t help.
If you’re not going to buy the only reason to continue any discussion is to put yourself on their ‘do not call’ list. Reputable telemarketers (I know it sounds like an oxymoron but bear with me here) will abide but by the national list and their own. However, just hanging up won’t do it. Three weeks ago I got calls from Verizon Wireless. 7 calls in four days. After the last one instead of hanging up I told the tele-weenie to kick me up to his supervisor (rarely is a call center run by a manager, usually the person in charge is a step farther down the food chain). When the supervisor got on the line I explained what was happening, he confirmed by number and promised to remove me. No calls since.
Can everyone tell I’ve run a call center (as a supervisor, “FULFILLMENT SUPERVISOR”, that was me!) in the past.
But really, being rude only cheapens you. Though I admit it can make you feel good.
Can someone please 'splain to me how telemarketers stay in business? It seems like they are universally hated, no one seems to want or claims to buy their stuff (at least no one I know), but somehow they’re still in business. So how do they do it? Who are the people who buy their stuff? Maybe we could find out who they are and when we get calls, we could just give ‘em those folks’ phone numbers. “I don’t want your stuff buddy, but here’s the number of someone who does :D!”
When I moved into my new house I finally broke down and got an unlisted number. I was always too cheap to do it before, but the extra couple bucks it costs to keep the number out of the book has cut our telemarketing calls WAY down. We get maybe one a month now. It had got to the point at our old house that we were getting 3 and 4 calls just between 6 and 8 p.m. and I was getting ready to rip someone’s head off.
The calls I always hated the worst, though, were the ones that were computer-generated! If I don’t want to talk to a human being and buy something from them over the phone, why in hell would I even listen to a freaking machine giving me a spiel?
Oh, then there was the guy calling from the Police Association asking for a donation, and when I POLITELY told him I was sorry and we couldn’t help him out this year, he swore at me and hung up. I should have reported him.
You realize, of course, that this was almost certainly not a bona fide police officer? A well-known scam, that.
Boo.
Seriously, that’s rather much a bad call. Sure they’re trained to think. Specifically, to think of ways to get around the person screening the call. If that means being polite, or brusque, or simply overwhelming the person who answers with information to get passed on, you’ve got to find a way.
My B2B telesales position at a major, but soon to be defunct with the rest of them, DSL proivider involved some phone monitoring, as well as detailed call logs, showing how many dials, and how much time is actually spent on the phone. As long as my numbers were high, I could do no wrong. I relished scrapping with stubborn gatekeepers. My favorite:
“No, thank you, we already have a DSL.”
“Do you even know what DSL is?”
“Ummmmmmm, no.”
“Heh, thank you very much.” Click.
featherlou - you’re right… What I did was mean. I intendid it to be so, and I’d do it again.
BUT
to be fair, one gets on a LOT of call-lists when one has a new child in the house. Carpet cleaners, water-filter companies, lawn services, house painters, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, etc.
AND
after having spent quite some time getting OFF said lists, my son’s birth (and I’m not blaming HIM, mind you) has put us right back on.
THIRDLY
hi opal.
ALSO
I’m a very nice fella who usually asks not to be called again, and thanks the person before haning up. But, recently, I’ve been getting a little bit fed up.
HOWEVER
recently, there seems to be a rash of telemarketers who do not respond until after I’ve said “hello” a few times, and sometimes, no response at all. Folks from the State’s Attorney General’s Office say that some telemarketers are using computer-dialed phone systems. That when a consumer picks up the phone, it’s then routed to an operator. Sometimes, the computer gets ahead of the capacity of the call center, and there’s no operator to whom it can be routed. Hence, there may be no one there when I pick up and say “hello” a few times.
YES
I know I can just NOT answer the phone when the caller ID says “unknown caller”. But there’s too may important things that I’ve got going on for me to potentially miss an important phone call when I’m at home.
SO
I’ll continue to answer the phone. I’ll continue to be polite, for the most part.
ADDITIONALLY
I don’t for a minute believe that telemarketers DON’T realize that they are an annoyance to most people. So, they should be able to handle the territory that comes with the job.
I’ve had crap jobs, as have most people. So, I know what it’s like. I’ve been a telemarketer raising money for charitable programs; I’ve worked for two airlines; and I’ve been a corporate Travel Agent. All of them opening me up to people who feel that they have carte blanche to abuse me.
FINALLY
Was it wrong of me to do that?.. Probably.
Am I sorry?.. No.
Hi Opal?.. Definitely.
Would I do it again?.. Possibly.
Did the caller move on to the next call?.. Probably.
Did she gripe about me to her coworkers?.. Probably.
Should I care?.. No.
Grizz
Okay, fair enough, GrizzRich; I wouldn’t do that, but I certainly have no right to say what you should or shouldn’t do. I think you have a different breed of telemarketer down there than we do in Calgary – you have UberTelemarketers, it seems. The ones here seem much milder and pleasant from what I’m hearing (which translates into people not hating them with the hot, fiery passion of a thousand suns).
First off new parents get to lose their patience with people other than their infant once a week or so at the seven month point with no penalty. Its a law or something, so get over it. I think it starts with once a month at birth and then increases bell-curve like to peak at the 5 month point and then tapers off. IIRC, its called the “Cut them some slack” Act of 1989, and it was passed worldwide by our secret world goverment.
Second, the tape or CD is by a guy named Tom Mabe, and its called “Revenge on the Telemarketers”. The carpet cleaning one is quite funny. The guy selling the service keeps trying to get the sale, and Mr. Mabe keeps increasing his description of the amount of blood and gore until it goes way over the top. There is also one where a person selling funeral stuff calls and Mr. Mabe pretends to be suicidal. They guy reacts like its a sales opportunity. I don’t think these telemarketers are typical, but most of the ones on the tape are barely human in their reactions.
featherlou
…OOOoooohhhh…you’re in Canada! Well, then, that explains it. Canadians are MUCH nicer than Americans! I would assume that holds true for your telemarketers as well!
(BTW, I know that above statement looks sarcastic, but I truly don’t mean it to be so. I DO believe that, on the whole, Canadians tend to be a nicer people than Americans)
Engineer Don
Thanks for the support.
And, I bought that CD a few weeks ago at a used-CD shop (FOR A BUCK!!!) and can’t get enough! But my favorite was when the telemarketer asked to speak to the lady of the house. and Tom replied “This is she.” with his normal, man-like speaking voice, without cracking up.
Had to have thrown them for a loop!
Wrong. Telemarketers are people. They frequently have few salable skills, or are in dire economic straights, and have little choice about what work they take. They can do something easy, and get paid squat, or they can call hostile prospects, read them a script, suffer rejection 95% of their work day, have vicious pranks played upon them, and generaly have a sucky day, every day, but get paid slightly more than squat. ‘Slightly more than squat’ beats not paying the bills, so they sit at the computer, and take the shit.
Don’t let the economy fool you, don’t assume that because you’re lucky enough to have useful skills and a decent job, that everyone is so fortunate. Some people haven’t the skills or oportunity to find anything better. Telemarketers needn’t be articulate, or clever, or anything else, because they’re reading from a script, with contingent responses for every concievable objection, and a handful of responses for unexpected prospect reactions. These scripts are writen by true marketing profesionals, and are very sophisticated. The callers, on the other hand, are trained to stay on script, and have a job requirement to make a minimum number of calls per shift. Some places also have a conversion requirement, a certain percentage of calls that produce the desired result (sale, commitment, whatever). Make your numbers, keep your job. Exceed your numbers, get a bonus/raise/promotion. Miss your numbers, get a supervisor breathing down your neck/lose your job.
If you can get a telemarketer off the script, congratulations: You’re smarter/more creative than the script-telemarketer combination. Pull a prank on a telemarketer, congratulations: You’ve just abused someone held hostage by their paycheck. The cruelest thing you can do to a telemarketer is keep them on the line, string them along, and then no-sale them. That drags their numbers down, and puts them in supervisor hell. Some 'marketers get used to the abuse and rejection. Some actually thrive on it, finding it to be a challenge. The vast majority just suffer until they burn out, get fired, or find a better job.
If you really must vent (and I know you’ve plenty of reason to do so), take on the company that employs the telemarketers, or take on the companies/organizations that hire these marketing firms. They’ll provide a much more worthy target than shooting fish in a barrel.
dan,
you said:
No, I did NOT fall off the turnip truck yesterday :)! I don’t care who the guy was, you don’t swear at people who NICELY say that they can’t help out this year. I should have reported him to whoever he was working for, but I was so surprised to be called evil names by a complete stranger I couldn’t think straight.
I am old enough, too, to remember the days when the only solicitation calls you got were from actual bona fide volunteers of charity organizations asking for donations. Then someone got the bright idea that they could make money doing the solicitations for the charities, and the charities were happy because they didn’t have to find volunteers. And then more and more money gets eaten up by “administrative costs,” and the charity gets less and less of the total percentage. And people found out and made a stink. And telemarketers are now supposed to identify themselves as such when soliciting for charities. And there’s some charities that I don’t give money to anymore because they do things this way.
A thousand apologies, romans. I bet my post looked like I was lecturing you! I’m sure most sane people (as well as the majority of this board) know about this scam. I cannot remember where I heard of it (might have been Bob Levey’s column in the Washington Post), though.
Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t know what was going on. If I recall my source correctly, the author of the column or article contacted his local police department to check up on it, only to be told that a) no WAY would real policemen solicit in that manner and b) they were looking into it as a criminal investigation.
Again, sorry.
Ah, criminal investigation. I like the sound of that. I hate when hear about the old people some of these scammers take advantage of :(.
Though I despise telemarketers I try to be nice in case they are one of the desperate untrainables mentioned earlier in this thread. What irks me is that three times out of ten, my polite “not interested, thank you” is met with a click (hey, I didn’t hang up on you!) or insults. Feh.
I once cursed out a newspaper telemarketer because I’d already been called by that org twice that day and boy oh boy did she yell back. Suddenly I was getting calls from every telemarketer under the sun. Coincidence? Uh, probably not. 