Disconnecting Telemarketers

Anonymous Scientist at UMass sent in a story about opt-out telemarketing laws, and several people submitted this story about a spam bill in the Senate. New York's telemarketing law does work - since we put our number on the list, we've gotten a couple of calls from charities (not covered by the law) and a couple of calls from Time-Warner Cable, asking us to sign up for cable. Time-Warner's calls would be banned, except that we have a pre-existing business relationship with them - you see, we already have cable. Update: 05/18 15:30 GMT by M : Oh, and if you live in New York: NYNoCall.com.

Comments

Re:101 Way to Waste Their Time

[pjdepasq]

I like to do one of two things:

1) Ask them when they are going to get a job that they can be proud of. That usually gets them flustered.

2) Do a Seinfeld, and ask to recall them at their home when they don't like to be bothered.

Re:101 Way to Waste Their Time

[ImaLamer]

When I worked in telemarketing I loved this:

ME: "This is *** from the *******, how are you doing today?"

THEM: "Fine ***"

ME: "The reason for my calling is that we are running a great special on [sales pitch, price etc] - do you think you would be interested?"

THEM: "Sorry ***, I don't think I am"

ME: "Ok, is there any particular reason?" (Three No's! We had to get three no's)

THEM: "No, no reason... but can I ask you a question?"

ME: "Sure"

THEM: "When you die will you be accepted into the kingdom of heaven?"

And the Jehovah's Witness bit comes about. Only one thing worse than a over-the-phone sales man... a Christian selling his wares.

Re:101 Way to Waste Their Time

[FyRE666]

The longer you keep them on the line, the less opportunity they have to close a sale with someone else.


You could also say:

"The longer you keep them on the line, the less opportunity they have to annoy someone else."

I'm glad I'm costing them money - I really enjoy it! If I'm having a bad day and get some tele-marketter on the line I can't resist cracking my knuckles and giving them a force 11 down the phone with a big grin on my face. I have an otherwise useless talent for spewing profanity and pure evil, and having some faceless drone willing to act as the punchbag - for free! - is a godsend. After reducing one of these scumbags to tears, or provoking them into less than professional dialogue I feel a warm inner-glow :-)

If you work for scumbags, and earn money for scumbags, you are by extension, a scumbag.

Re:101 Way to Waste Their Time

[jchristopher]

People who work for telemarketers work on commission. When you stall, "parrot," or anything else, you're not wasting the company's time, but the person's time -- and, consequently, their paychecks. The longer you keep them on the line, the less opportunity they have to close a sale with someone else.

Oh, boo fucking hoo. Any dirtbag that would take a job like that deserve what they get. (just like the campus parking patrol people - you couldn't pay me enough!).

Put very simply, if there weren't any people willing to work for the dirtbags, they wouldn't be able to call you - period.