What to say to a telemarketer

[autopilot]

But they CHOOSE to ring me - I don't ring them.

No, they don't. At least the person on the end of the phone does not have a choice, it's there job. If they don't they get fired. They will probably get fired anyway, because these companies treat people like dirt and put them under a massive amount of pressure with impossible targets. So yes, the company chooses to call you, but the poor sod actually making the call has too call you, it's his job.

No one likes cold callers and i hate companies that do it, i completely agree with your sentiments. It drives me crazy. But note the word 'companies', it's the company you and i should have a beef with, not the employee. If i was angry with PC world, i would not walk into the nearest PC World store, grab the nearest employee and just abuse them.

Everyone is trying to earn a living, and to take jobs doing this is not a nice thing. You have to understand how this industry works. When i worked in a cold calling centre as a desperate student we did not get a basic rate, it was purely commission based. The outcome was that everyone usually earned bellow the minimum wage. Unbelievable, but true and that how virtually all the industry works. i averaged about £12 a day. If you have a nice job and good income, you probably don't know what it's like down that spectrum of the employment sector.

For christ sake people, have a bit of humanity.Try and separate the individual low level employee from the company. Be a bitch if you want, just remember it's not the dude on the phones fault, his is just trying to make ends meet doing a crappy job. If you are really that bothered, track down the company (just talking to the salesman for a bit will do that) then do a bit of research, phone the highest person to can find (preferably board member level) and give them the crap they deserve. Even more better, find out who they are, get there phone number and have some fun with them Don't get me wrong, some people in life do deserve the crap. But 99% of telesales employees don't need any more grief in their life.

Saracen, just out of interest matey, what do you do?

[Gerrard]

Well, double glazing companies stopped calling pretty quickly after conversations like so...

"Blah, blah blah...We are looking for a show home for our double glazing, are you interested?"
"Yes I am."
"Great! How many windows does you property have?"
"1."
"1?"
"Yep, about 1m square."
"In your entire property?!"
"Yep. I live in a single room in a barrack block on a militray airfield."
"Oh, that's not really what we are looking for."
"Didn't think you were. Have a nice day."

Some were a bit more smart asking up front: -

"Hello, are you the owner of the propery?"
"Nope, that would be the Ministry of Defense."
"Eh?"
"I live on an airfield"
"Oh right. Nevermind then. Bye."

Now I very occasionally get called by a voice recording; which I can't have fun with.

[daniel_owen_uk]

Windows is easy, grade 1 listed building, yah can't do jack to one of them.

I have TPS so only thing I really ask is for the name and address of the company, then I ask how they like being fined.

[b0redom]

Sorry Autopilot, but I reckon if you sign up for the job, you're as bad as the people at the top. If you don't like the abuse don't do the job. Go flip burgers or something.

If people are interrupting my personal time and space, when I'm in my own home they deserve everything they get.

[Saracen]

No, they don't. At least the person on the end of the phone does not have a choice, it's there job. If they don't they get fired. They will probably get fired anyway, because these companies treat people like dirt and put them under a massive amount of pressure with impossible targets. So yes, the company chooses to call you, but the poor sod actually making the call has too call you, it's his job.

To a point, that's true. But nonetheless, it's the individual that chooses to make that call, and that chose to take that job. Either way, he or she is the one pestering me and he or she is the one who's day I will make as unpleasant as possible. Like I said, ALL they have to do is not phone me. Or to put that another way, all they have to do is not illegally phone me.

No one likes cold callers and i hate companies that do it, i completely agree with your sentiments. It drives me crazy. But note the word 'companies', it's the company you and i should have a beef with, not the employee. If i was angry with PC world, i would not walk into the nearest PC World store, grab the nearest employee and just abuse them.

Nor would I walk into any shop and abuse staff, whether I have a complaint or not. I would make my complaint clear, but I would treat the staff member courteously .... partly because it's more likely to achieve a result, and partly because they're just doing their job.

But there's a difference between any shop worker and a cold-caller. The shop worker is not infringing on my privacy or private life. The cold caller IS, and is doing so both deliberately and usually illegally. The shop worker is just working in the shop, probably doing their best for modest pay, and as often as not, dealing with obnoxious customers. Them, I will go out of my way to be polite to, even if I have a complaint. One some number of occasions, for instance, I've asked to see the manager in a restaurant to complement them on a good meal, or a particularly good waiter ore waitress. One such manager asked me to write to head office, and I did so. The waitress concerned got a really nice letter from HO, and a big bunch of flowers. I got a hug next time I saw her. Similarly, one another occasion, through my own stupidity, I messed organising a particular flight change on a trip. I caught the girl from the travel agent just locking up to leave for the day. I told her the problem, and she unlocked the shop, turned the alarm back off and sorted me out. Again, I wrote to head office with a highly complementary letter, explaining how she'd gone 'above and beyond'.

Everyone is trying to earn a living, and to take jobs doing this is not a nice thing. You have to understand how this industry works. When i worked in a cold calling centre as a desperate student we did not get a basic rate, it was purely commission based. The outcome was that everyone usually earned bellow the minimum wage. Unbelievable, but true and that how virtually all the industry works.

Sorry, autopilot, but how the industry works is not my problem, and I'm afraid I don't have to understand it. I have no problem with people working in call centres, and will, as above, treat them politely and courteously, PROVIDED they're not cold-calling me.

If you have a nice job and good income, you probably don't know what it's like down that spectrum of the employment sector.

I know what it's like at both ends of the spectrum, because I've been there, in both cases. I've known what it's like to worry about the knock on the door, and the unpleasantness of the sound of mail arriving through the letterbox, in case in contains another bill you can't afford. I've also known what it's like to buy expensive cars, and to do so for cash ..... or rather, bank transfer. Neither situation nor experience affect my opinion.

.....

For christ sake people, have a bit of humanity.Try and separate the individual low level employee from the company. Be a bitch if you want, just remember it's not the dude on the phones fault, his is just trying to make ends meet doing a crappy job. If you are really that bothered, track down the company (just talking to the salesman for a bit will do that) then do a bit of research, phone the highest person to can find (preferably board member level) and give them the crap they deserve. Even more better, find out who they are, get there phone number and have some fun with them Don't get me wrong, some people in life do deserve the crap. But 99% of telesales employees don't need any more grief in their life.

If telesales people don't need more grief in their life, don't ring me. As soon as they start showing me the courtesy of not ringing me, despite being ex-directory and TPS registered, they won't suffer any abuse from me, will they?

What tele-sales people earn, or how crappy their job is, is not my concern. Them breaking the law by calling me, when it DOES affect my life, is my concern and I regard it with contempt. Nor do I accept that the individual bears no responsibility for this. They took the job, and they make the calls.

Autopilot, I have taken companies to taken over this. For instance, BT. Despite repeated requests not to keep making marketing calls, they persisted. I kept a log, I wrote a formal letter instructing them to desist, which they ignored. I wrote to their then-Chairman, Sir Iain Vallance ... not once, but twice. How much notice do you think they took? Did Vallance (or his office) even have the courtesy to bother answering?

So I put in a formal, written complaint to the Information Commissioner's office, and closed both my personal and business BT accounts.

[finlay666]

As part of my mobile phone contract I made it totally clear on the communication side that I did NOT want any 3rd parties contacting me, same with my old one yet when my contract was nearly up I was inundated with calls

It's flipping annoying to put it lightly

[Zak33]

Everyone is trying to earn a living, and to take jobs doing this is not a nice thing. You have to understand how this industry works. When i worked in a cold calling centre as a desperate student we did not get a basic rate, it was purely commission based. The outcome was that everyone usually earned bellow the minimum wage. Unbelievable, but true and that how virtually all the industry works. i averaged about £12 a day. If you have a nice job and good income, you probably don't know what it's like down that spectrum of the employment sector.

auto .... mate...I dont agree with that at all. When you take a job, it's for money. If it's commission based, you do what you have to, to be paid. I of all people know hat commission is like...I lived 15 years on it.

But you decide who to work for. It's not forced upon you. And cold calling is not right. It's sad, it unsettles tens of thousands of weak willed, unwell and unstable people.

And if you asked not to be called, and a governement initiative is created to prevent it...and it still happens, then that cold caller deserves all the time wasting they get.

I worked in a DIY store when I was at school. It was low pay, heavy work, and it wore me out, and made my back ache terribly.

So I stopped it. I had too. Ditto cold callers..if you can't stand the heat, get outta the kitchen.

When you ring me I WILL waste your time...and I'll enjoy it.

I'll also continue to post all thre junk mail back to them in the reply paid envelope. Sometimes to each other.

[Saracen]

... Sometimes to each other.

Now that's a wrinkle I hadn't thought of.

I'm being out-sneaky-ed.

I must be getting old.

Alright, I KNOW I'm getting old. No need to rub it in.

[Uncle Psychosis]

But there's a difference between any shop worker and a cold-caller. The shop worker is not infringing on my privacy or private life. The cold caller IS,

"invading your privacy?"

yes, its really inconvenient to answer the phone.

Seriously, if the total inconvenience and outrage of having to answer a telephone and say "sorry, I'm not interested" turns you into some kind of maniac who has to abuse the person on the other end then I dread to think how you handle real problems...

Sam

[Dreamscape]

Sometimes to each other.

That, quite frankly is Genius!!

[MagicFreebiesUK]

I think this is the best way to deal with them.

http://howtoprankatelemarketer.ytmnd.com/

That is genius

[MagicFreebiesUK]

Here's another one from Mr Mabe - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJlznnJR-lU - bit harsher this time

And you've got to love this one WARNING NSFW - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_wbyx1PCmc

[autopilot]

Blimey! I'm not asking people to like it and not get cross by it, but you are aiming your anger at the wrong people. Just put the phone down on them. I just don't like all the self satisfying, bitching, bullying and smug elitism. It's quite clear that many people would actually like them to phone so that they could try out oh-so-clever lines. It also tells a tale when all these 'pranks' are based over the phone, nice and safe like. I bet the geeks that make up this stuff would not have the balls to people in real life. I don't see any websites with loads of things to say to someone who stops you out side a super market to offer you a product ( People will now miss my point and tell me why thats different).

It's won't help either, if anything pissing off the wrong nutter (and there are plenty work at these places) who knows a great deal about you (albeit illegally) could be a bad idea. it certain wont get you any of the lists.

I'm sorry, it all just makes me cringe a bit. But i fully understand and share people dislike for cold calls, i guess we will just have to agree to disagree on parts, such as everyone finding it so easy to pick and choose jobs

[Saracen]

"invading your privacy?"

yes, its really inconvenient to answer the phone.

Seriously, if the total inconvenience and outrage of having to answer a telephone and say "sorry, I'm not interested" turns you into some kind of maniac who has to abuse the person on the other end then I dread to think how you handle real problems...

Sam

A very patronising response. Unless you know my circumstances, you have no idea of how inconvenient answering the phone might be. Do you know my age? Do you know if I'm disabled? Do you know if I, or a loved one, has a serious medical problem. Do you know if I work from home, and some telemarketeer pestering me might mean that business calls can't get through and I lose work because of it? And so on.

And telemarketeers certainly don't know any of the above, and more to the point, they obviously don't care, or they wouldn't place calls to people on the TPS in the first place.


Or, regardless of all these possibilities, maybe I simply don't want phone calls from marketing people at home, for any reason, ever. I don't want to be dug out of the bath (yes, it's inconvenient), and I don't want to have my dinner interrupted, or my favourite TV program interrupted either, for that matter. That's inconvenient, too. My home is my refuge, and I expect peace and quiet. I am VERY selective about who gets my home phone number. I take the trouble and cost of having two phone lines - one a general purpose line, and one a private line. There are less than a dozen people that have that private number, and for a very specific reason, which I don't feel inclined to explain. So I most emphatically don't want some idiot trying to sell me double glazing on it. And that is MY choice to make, not some marketing drone.

I handle real problems just fine, thankyou. Goodness knows I've had enough practice at that. I am normally a very polite and courteous person. But if telemarketeers are prepared to ruin my peace and quiet in my own home for their own selfish purposes, then I will quite deliberately make the experience as thoroughly unpleasant for them as I can .... and I feel absolutely justified in doing so.

[Saracen]

........ i guess we will just have to agree to disagree on parts, such as everyone finding it so easy to pick and choose jobs

For my part, I didn't say I thought it was easy, and I'm not bitching about just any old cold calls, but cold calls to ex-directory numbers on the TPS. Doing so is illegal, and if someone has bothered to put their numbers on the TPS, they have taken the trouble to explicitly opt out of cold calls. Anyone that still makes such calls does so despite having specifically been informed the person doesn't want calls, yet they call anyway. They deserve whatever they get as a result.

Some people don't mind cold calls. Some people may well like them. Fine. Marketeers can cold them them with impunity. But when someone has explicitly requested not to receive such calls, making them anyway is not only illegal but arrogant and offensive.

And again, someone offering me something outside a supermarket is a very different situation. Very, VERY occasionally, it might be something that interests me, but generally, they'll get a "no thanks" and I carry on past without even breaking stride. But such a person is not intruding, illegally, into my home life, are they?

[Rave]

Oh FFS. I've been on the TPS for years, and I've had precisely 0 marketing calls to my home phone number in that time. If I were to get one, it would, I am almost certain, originate from outside the UK, and be the result of a 'brute force' mass dialling attempt. I get the odd one on my mobile every couple of months. The fact is, the people making these calls are Indians (or other relatively poor people in the 2nd/3rd world), who genuinely don't have the option of a burger flipping job at McDonalds. Once they're finished disturbing you in your home, they may well be going home to a corrugated iron shack, or a tent. Abusing these people isn't just unkind- it's pathetic, and furthermore, it's utterly Un-British, a disgrace to a nation that once believed in good manners. I increasingly want to emigrate, not because immigrants are spoiling the country, but because indiginous British people are turning into a race of insufferably rude, intolerant bastards who I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire.

So, Saracen, you're not rude to people who stop you outside the supermarket. I take it though that you spit in the face of door-to-door salesmen who interupt your dinner, and tell them roundly to get the **** off your property? Because IMO that's even more disruptive than phoning you.