Adventures with a telemarketer

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People just love to pray on college students.

30 minutes ago the phone rang, I picked it up.

Hi, My name is Andrea and I'm with (some publishing company I never heard of), and as a preferred customer of our company, I'd just like to let you know you've been answered in (some sweepstakes worth $100,000). The only thing you have to do is place a subscription for four magazines for 60 months.....

$100,000 sounds nice, so I inquired about it more, I found myself getting a sales pitch, along with an offer for a mens diamond watch. All I had to do was subsribe to four magazines for $11 month

Then I got transfered to another person who was to verify my order. She gave me another, but basicly the same sales pitch.

However she changed something, instead of paying monthly, I would make 12 payments of $56.

She then listed off the magazines I had to choose from. The default choices were

- Penthouse
- Maxim
- Hustler
- Rolling Stone

Well... such a thing might seem like a tantalizing idea, except for the fact that I'm fairly asexual. But relax, I could change those choices. So I did just that.

Now I find myself on the phone with yet another person. A supervisor who talked faster than anyone else trying to verify my order.

Now, before I confirm you order, please do remember that you will be billed $56 a month for 12 months and we don't want you to cancel once the order is processed becasue the order will be processed with each magazine you subsribed which will result in a cancelation fee....

So now I was getting peeved, talking to three different people, and not being able to understand half of what was being said becasue my roomate had the TV on, so I just asked outright to cancel everything.

The supervisor went from someone who was a nice and perky to someone who wanted to be rid of me as fast as possible.

Guess they just wanted my money and that was all.

I got two strategies for those guys.

Fast and effective - "can you call back in half an hour, I'm busy now" and hang up. Nobody has ever called back.

Scary but effective - "could I have your name, the name of your company and your billing address"
why? "So I can send a bill for my time - my hourly rate is $1000 (or some other astronomical rate)".

Actually, I found something quite a bit easier.

Most telemarketers mess up my surname. Once they pronounce it wrong, I just tell them that there is no one here by that name (technically true). That gets rid of them real quick.

Of course, the final solution is to get your name on the National Do Not Call list. They then have 3 months before they have to quit calling you.

For me, preferably:

Telemarketer: [fake aussie accent]Hello, this is Judy and I am here for...[/fake aussie accent]

Me: Not interested [hangs up]

Telemarketer: [real hindi accent]I hope he gets bad karma![/real hindi accent]

O.K., I confess...I used to be a telemarketer.Most "live" telemarketers won't talk to an answering machine; its a waste of time, you can't work your script,and where I worked, we had orders not to.So one possibility is to get an ansering machine and screen your phone calls.

But the 4 times the phone rings drives me up the wall.

Also, some telemarketers will talk to an answering machine/voice mail and I have to hear the whole pitch before I can delete it.

I really hate those recorded spiels. Some of them are like 2 minutes long! I can just delete 'em as soon as they start on my machine (that long delay tips me off).

My radio professor once did this: a t'marketer called him during dinner to pester him. Annoyed, he told the telemarketer, "I can't talk now, but if you give me your home number I'll call you while you're eating." Worked. I just tell 'em they reached a place of business, which is kinda true. I still get calls for the business that had my number 3 years after I moved here.

Last edited by ZedSimon on 25 Apr 2006, 10:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!! ! telemarketers! hate when I get the hindi ones. they annoy me soo bad I get the urge to ask "hows the weather in india?" I don't get calls that much anymore accept the few times a year offering the telephone servies that I never heard of. in past I used to have fun with thermo-guard windows and doors . they would call with a sales pitch offering window and door opener/closers, I dont like this because most of the stuff that is offered to residential users is low quality, plus I dont see a reason why to have a window opener/closer I mean Id see it if this sliding window was maybe a skylight. what I tell them is if I wanted that Id go to a commercial door supply house and get a door opener like seen on storefronts and mount the thing to windowsill. (they hate when people use commercial products (they last alot longer)

what really makes me mad about them is when they say its a "courtesy" call and demand only one person who don't live here (they used to demand for my mom and id find out its them free million doller offers (my mom's fault for falling into that scam!! !) me and my mom actually busted one playing with phone in a hotel room. years after I was still cleaning up after that mess!! !

kinda creepy not knowing how many people are walking around with my mom's identity

very lately it was NRA (for you hunters or gun collectors its national rifle association) they call every few days and kept demanding for my dad and one day i got fed up with the demands so i asked outwardly what do you want why you keep caling over and over,
I was told that they wanted to offer differant subscriptions. and to inconveniance them, I asked is there a time and a number we can call back at and I was told sorry this is a call center. they never called back since.

My mom used to silently click on the hold button and see how long the light would stay on while they talked to themselves.

zed simon, i once knew a guy (was my woodshop teacher) who use to answer the phone in a business like manner, heres a few of the greetings he used to stop the telemarketing.

phone rings: he picks up, "dick's crematrium ashes to ashes, dust to dust"

heres another, "dick's pizzaria, eat in or take out"

after this the phone stopped ringing in the classroom and at his home.

this would confuse the telemarketers into thinking they are talking to a funeral parlor or a pizza shop since you cannot telemarket to businesses unless you vend products to that feild.

I hate them recordings too, I have call Id and if its all 0's or 5's or 8's I won't pick it up and that ony happens around election time. I also hate when during the play time of the message it don't hang up. they are triggered by a noise or a voice that should be illegal for a dialler to do that.

One fun and effective way to get them off the line fast is to pretend that you're a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness (no offense intended to anyone who is one; just fooling around) and begin by saying, "Yes, do you feel that the world is getting worse and worse? Would you like to one day live in peace and harmony on the earth forever? Would you like some pink koolaide?"

The absolute fastest way to get them off the line is, as soon as you identify the call as a telemarketer, merely hang up the phone (without saying anything), and return to whatever you were doing before the phone rang.

Unless you are bored and want to have some fun, there is no reason to say anything at all. They are not being polite to you (except in a fake way), so there is no reason to be polite to them or to even answer them. You just simply hang up. No need to waste any of your breath or time.

I actually have an answering machine that is always on, and telemarketers call but never leave messages on my machine. However if I did not have an answering machine or when I am answering someone elses phone, I just simply hang up as soon as I realize it is a telemarketer.

Personally I think that anyone who purchases anything from a telemarketer is a fool. Think about it... some completely unknown person calls you up completely unsolicited, and then you are willing to give them your credit card number after a few minutes of listening to smooth talking ??? You would have to be gullible to do this. Unfortunately many people ARE gullible, which is why the telemarketing industry exists. I just have it as an absolute rule that I NEVER listen to telemarketers. There is no such thing as an honest telemarketer. Or even if there is, there are so many disreputable ones that it is not worth the risk.

I'll tell them I'm busy and have to do some thing but will be right back then lay the phone down and walk away back to whatever I was doing leaving them on the line as long as possible so they can't call anyone else. Once I walked by the phone five minutes latter to the guy calling my name he stayed on at least a few more after that.

One thing that my uncle does is he picks up the phone and sets it down, they will eventually hang up. Or he will set it on the kitchen table and eat cereal or chips in front of the phone.

My husband while not diagnosed as an aspie but actually may be one did this one one day, and I am sure that the person on the other end of the phone certainly heard us in the background!

He had got a call from a credit card company. My husband used to hold an account with them, but cancelled his card after this company was taken over and the interest went through the roof for no apparent reason. The company representative was plainly in India. My husband turned on the speaker phone so everyone in the house could hear the Customer Service rep.

First my husband was "invited" to once again be a card holder of this company. He said he would consider it since he did have his prior account for some ten years or better. He wanted all the information as to what was the "best offer" they could give to him. This customer service rep, while he could barely be understood, was telling him that under the companies new policies, that there would be a $59 annual fee, and the interest rate at 19.99% APR, variable with the Prime Rate, and could go as high as 27.99%. This is when the entire conversation became hysterical.... My husband asks this man in a very calm tone of voice... So what you are saying to me is you are going to f*** me with my clothes on. The man in India had no idea what my husband was talking about, and didn't know what to say. He was tripping over his words. My husband then said to him, Do you have a supervisor around? One that speaks ENGLISH? The Hindi man on the other end of the phone says to him, Sir, I am speaking English. My husband says, No you are not, I want to talk to someone who speaks English who has an English accent ! Me, I am rolling on the floor, because when he said he wanted to talk to someone with an English Accent, I am picturing in my head James Bond or Queen Elizabeth, that type of English accent.

On the line comes " Linda". Linda definitely speaks English the way my husband wanted. However, Linda has a very strong southern US accent, like she is from Mississippi or somewhere near there, you know the drawl. My husband then says "Thank God! I can understand you! He tells Linda that he had been a card holder with this company for some ten years until they were bought out, that he held revolving credit with them at no annual fee with a 12.99% interest rate. He told her that if she was willing to match that he would once again carry their credit card. She had tried to get him to agree to taking a card with the reformed company with no annual fee but with the initial same terms as far as interest rate. Then he did a 360 on her. He started by asking her where she was at, and she said Delaware. He rolled his eyes, and mouthed Delaware my a**, and so then he started asking her a whole bunch of stupid irrelevant things like about the weather and such, and this continued for 38 minutes. When everything was said and done, he had exactly what he wanted. When she said 15.99 for interest rate, he said back to her we agreed on 11.99. He turned that whole entire conversation around to work to his advantage.

That is how my huband deals with those types of telemarketers... when people call about selling windows or siding etc. his reply is this... "You'd have to contact my landlord about that. Sometimes he is asked if he will give out his landlords information and when he does, he said yes, my landlord's name is George W. Bush, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington DC. I am sure he would love to discuss home improvements with you, and hangs up. He does this because we live in military owned housing.

The problem with all these interesting strategies is that the computerized phone list will re-assign your number to another telemarkter another night.

If you feel that you have to talk to them the crucial words to get out are "NO"
and "Take me off your call list".They're in the bussiness of making sales, not
placing phone calls, so this usually works.

On the other hand, messing around with the person on the phonw will fail in the long term because they work for a company, and that company will keepcalling until it gets a firm "NO".