Every saturday morning at 9:00, without fail, the local newspaper (The Daily Bulletin) calls my house and wakes me up. And every Saturday morning I tell them not to call my house. Sometimes I ask nicely, sometimes I say rather calmly “Fuck you, don’t call my fucking house” sometimes I just hang up, and sometimes I yell into the phone “DON’T CALL MY HOUSE EVER AGAIN!” (Like I did this morning.) None of these ways are workign, and I’m beginning to believe they are calling my house out of spite.
It’d be one thing if it was afternoon, but I’m asleep at 9 A.M, and I’d like to stay that way until at least 12.
What should I do if (when!) they call again?
Well, first of all, allow me to apologise on behalf of the demon-spawn telemarketers that are pestering you. It must definitely suck. I have a second job doing much the same sort of thing for the local broadsheet here but at least we don’t start until 9:30 on a Saturday so that’s a whole extra half hour of peace for people here. Whoopee!
Anyway, I have a suggestion. I notice your first listed method is to ‘ask nicely’ but your overall approach seems to tend towards hostility if your other responses are at all represntative. These types of response are totally counter-productive. They provide a couple of minutes mirth for the rest of the call centre staff after which the telemarketer will dump you back in the callback file just to spite you.
Forget about asking for a super; I’d give you to one of my mates who’d suggest you speak to his supervisor (who is actually the guy sitting next to him) and so on until you realised you were being had. We actually got one guy up through about 5 levels of supervisordom once and a great day was had by all. You can threaten legal action all you like but call-centres and telemarketing attracts travellers and short term staff who couldn’t give a shit about the corporate pricks employing them and will be on a bus to the next hostel before it came to anything anyway.
Instead, stick with the principle that most people are decent and caring except when it comes to hostile and irate people. DON’T start spouting about rights or legislation. DON’T swear. DON’T raise your voice. Affect an appearance of friendliness and solicitousness however hard it can be at such an ungodly hour. Explain the situation and tell them you’d really appreciate if they’d tag your file with the privacy button or whatever other facility they have to ensure you’re not called again (and there WILL be such a device).
When faced with someone like that, I do whatever I can to help. In fact, about the only time I do call a supervisor is when I’m really trying to help out a customer or whoever. Today, I spent about 20 minutes on a customer who was trying to find out how she could switch to a more responsible newsagent for her deivery and it wasn’t even our newspaper!
Good luck with your quest. I can’t guarantee success, but it is the only way with any possibility of succeeding if you were dealing with me.
Reeder’s link has the straight dope, for the USA at least. There is indeed a federal law through which it tis possible for victims to collect penalties from violators. I’ve done it.
Collection is accomplished by way of Small Claims Court. You are probably out of luck if the violator has no assets to seize in your local jurisdiction.
Well Mersavets, the first 7 times (literally) I said politely, “Excuse me, I can no longer afford to have a newpaper delivered to my home. Will you please put my name on the do not call list? I’d really appreciate it, thank you.” When that didn’t work, I figured “Fuck it. They’re not going to listen to me anyway.”
Sometimes I wonder what will happen if each time they call me I allow the abuse to esculate.
But I am going to take the advice on the link that Reeder provided.
In that case, just hang up. Any legislation you have at your disposal will require you to make a reasonable effort to have the marketers fix the problem. From what you say, you have done this and evidently can abandon all hope of having them act decently. If it’s worth the hassle, your last option for recourse is the courts or whatever other tribunals you have. You’re all set now and I definitely wish you luck and more patience than you ever needed just dealing with the guys on the phone. You’ll find the company itself will be a little tougher.
Sometimes desperate measures are called for. You could turn off your ringer Friday night before you go to bed and then turn it on again at noon on Saturday. Some people are paralysed with fear at the idea of not being able to get phone calls for that long; personally, I’m toying with the idea of getting rid of phone service altogether.
I had the same thing happen to me with MCI. Every Saturday around 10am they’d call like clockwork and ignored my requests to be put on the DNC list. So, being the evil geek I am I set my modem to auto-answer at 9am and turned it off at 11am. It only took them two weeks to get the idea.
1b) Hello. Can I get your name (or the name of the organization)? Ok, please put me on your do-not-call list.
1c) Pray they ignore you.
1d) If they call you back within 1 year, you can sue them in small claims court. It’s been done; there is legislation that can award you around $1000 in certain cases. And you don’t need a lawyer. I assume the link above details all this.
If you don’t want to do the above, try this:
3 words: “Hold on, please.”
Then, don’t hang up, just leave the phone. Why not waste their Saturday morning / weekday evening?*
Then there’s call screening with your telephone answering machine.
Recommended by Steve Rubenstein, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle
I have a friend who never (well, rarely) answers his phone. We all know that when we call him we’re going to get his machine; after the message we start talking and if he’s home - and not busy - he picks it up.
This describes Mr & the future Mrs Stockton, as well. EVERYONE we know is aware that we will pick up if we are home. We NEVER answer the phone, we let the machine do the dirty work. We have about a 98% hangup rate (we’re not phone chatters at ALL, and we both have cell phones to call each other if we need to. Funny thing, I’ve never gotten a telemarketing call on my cell, in 1.5 years. Why not?
You CAN sue the bastards, or human-engineer a solution (this would be cheaper and less hassle). Call the paper and ask the nice person that answers the name of the CIRCULATION MANAGER at that establishment. Call back later and ask for that individual by name. Explain your predicament. Tell him you want to be BANNED from his calling list. Do the sob-story about working nights, or the tubercular grandmother, or whatever. Before you call back, you might want to search www.anywho.com for his home phone number.
If you get another call from the paper, call him at work on Monday and complain. If you managed to glean his home number from anywho, wait until about 3am and call him on Saturday night. Results, results, results!
These suggestions are great! Thank you. They actually made me feel better. Here’s hoping that I won’t actually need to use any of them though (I am an optimist at heart.)
Typically, our phone is tied up becase we always are online…even if we aren’t actually on the computer, we leave the modem dialed. The only time we are home and the phone isn’t busy is on Saturday mornings. Everybody who really needs to talk to us has our cell phone number…So I guess it makes sense to just turn the ringer off huh?
I had a similar problem. I wrote a letter to the circulation manager of the paper. No sob story–just told him I wanted to be left alone. Problem solved. YMMV
I never answer my phone. I let the machine screen the calls.
If the phone rings and I’m near it I check the caller ID box. It it says “unavailable” then so am I.
Every now and then I will answer. If it’s a telemarketer then I just harrass them. I waste their time like they waste mine. I’ll ask them every question I can think of or just play dumb and ask them to repeat everything several times. I’ve had carpet cleaner salesmen on the line for 45 mintues or longer.
If I answer and I get the recording that says “please stay on the line. we have a very important something or another for you” then I stay on the line until someone picks up. Straight away I ask them to hold. I set the phone down and walk away.
Sometimes I’ll tell the telemarketer I will ONLY do business with them if they give me their full name and telephone number. After all, they have mine. When they refuse, I tell them “I’m sorry, if there is no trust in our business relationship then I can’t do business with you”
As for the OP, get on line with the supervisor. Explain the issue and REQUIRE them to remove you while you are on the phone with them. Get all names and return numbers for whoever you talk to. Start to document everything.
You can also record the telephone converstation. Just make sure to ask first. Be very nice during the entire conversation and at the end inform them the reason why you are recording the conversation. Tell them if they call you once more you have more then enough proof to take them to court and win.
i’d just like to say, that treating telemarketers like shit because you hate telemarketing phone calls is like pissing down open “Men at Work” manhole covers because you’re getting screwed by the Water Works.
not only does it not work, but you are acting like a true blue boner.
You could try crying… You know, the prototypical weeping uncontrollably because you have finally reached your wits end. While you’re bawling tell them that you have tried over and over to explain that you don’t want a paper, but they keep calling. All you want is to be left alone on Saturday morning, and all that. Maybe they’ll take pity on you.
If that doesn’t work, you could always go right down to their offices, since it’s the local paper. Find somebody who is in charge of new subscriptions and chew his ear out. Promise them that every time you get called, he’s due for another chewing.
