What to say to a telemarketer

[kickstart 1]

Never again will i start a thread about telemarketers !!!!

[Dareos]

its all your fault Kicksy!


so here's some cute puppies to make you feel better

[Howard]

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0WQDZAmcc805Oq2mHZtFB7L4DAHF3J5NH*vDcaM6vKigaLJWgMGd8lBLEGDEp2G5NVV9pmnmWmqUvXHPCA*wGtb!qEw1BX61y*5m i*W1HCP4j6PEFaRUD2FxLPRTSWppphuBrfW*g2xE/cutepuppiesbannersave.JPG[/img]

You fail at teh forams

[MadduckUK]

even the puppies are scared of this thread

edit: even the puppies are being a dick

[Dareos]

the puppies fight back!

[Uncle Psychosis]

Again, I've already answered that, as you'd know if you read what I said rather than just mouthing off with cheap insults about me being a "dick".

I've edited that now. Apologies.

The people that have that number are important enough to me to get out of the bath for. Telemarketers are not.

If I had calls that were important enough to get me out of the bath, I'd buy a cordless phone and keep it by the bathtub...

, and you certainly don’t have the right to assume that I have to cheerfully put up with illegal calls just because you don’t mind them.

Ok, if you're going to whine about me putting words in your mouth then I'm going to do exactly the same. I never said you had to be cheerful about getting unwanted calls. They piss me off too, but I don't resort to abusing or wasting the time of the people on the other end. I just say "sorry, I'm going to cut you off there, I'm not interested". Actually going out of my way to make their life difficult would just be stupid as far as I'm concerned.

Big Brother? Do me a favour.

Ok, the Simpsons. Panorama. Match of The Day. Nothing on TV is so important that missing 10 seconds of it really matters, is it?

And where did I say I abuse them?

"i'm going to make things as unpleasant as possible for them".

Unpleasant, abusive, same difference really.

Are you a cold-caller by the way?

No. But I did it for a few weeks one summer. It was horrible, because people like you decided that they had some kind of divine right to abuse people for doing their jobs. My coworkers, by the way---mostly single mothers and low income parents whose choice was "do this or the kids go hungry".

In case you missed this as well, I'll repeat one more thing I said earlier - I have no problem with people making cold calls provided they respect the TPS and any specific instruction from a customer not to call them.

In that case, instead of just being petty and mean to the person who calls you, you should actually get their details and pass them onto TPS. Being mean to the individual who called you is just petty and wastes *everyone's* time, including your own. I find it quite amusing that you respond to you precious sanctuary time being wasted by, erm, wasting more of it!

Oh, and I notice that you quote PART of what I said, and pick up on trivial points like getting my dinner interrupted,

Ahh, so you admit that getting your dinner interrupted *is* trivial. And yet you maintain that you get to be "unpleasant" to people for it...

but totally fail to respond to my main point, which was that telemarketers have no idea how inconvenient calls may be, because they have no idea of the personal circumstances of their victims, such as their age or medical condition. Maybe if you're young, fit and healthy you don't find answering unwanted calls inconvenient. But just because you seem to not find it so, it's arrogant to assume nobody else does either, and you certainly don’t have the right to assume that I have to cheerfully put up with illegal calls just because you don’t mind them.

Do you have physical problems picking up the phone? Are you not young, fit, and healthy? If not, I'll accept that perhaps you have a reason to be unpleasant to cold callers. Otherwise, you're just making something of a straw man to justify your own desire to be mean to people that call you.

Hell, if you want to be mean to cold callers then go for it to be honest---just don't pretend its because of the great inconvenience. We all like to be mean sometimes, its best just to admit it

[Moby-Dick]

Do you have physical problems picking up the phone? Are you not young, fit, and healthy? If not, I'll accept that perhaps you have a reason to be unpleasant to cold callers. Otherwise, you're just making something of a straw man to justify your own desire to be mean to people that call you.

be very wary of making assumptions about the phsyical conditions of HEXUS members.

[dangel]

Blimey, when did this thread turn into a cat fight?

I miss all the fun

[Saracen]

If I had calls that were important enough to get me out of the bath, I'd buy a cordless phone and keep it by the bathtub...

So now you suggest I have to buy a cordless phone, and remember to take it to the bathroom every time I have a bath, just to avoid nuisance calls that shouldn't be made in the first place? How about cold callers just not calling people that have asked not to be called? If they showed their victims a bit more respect by not calling, perhaps so many people wouldn't feel so negatively towards them.

Ok, if you're going to whine about me putting words in your mouth then I'm going to do exactly the same. I never said you had to be cheerful about getting unwanted calls. They piss me off too, but I don't resort to abusing or wasting the time of the people on the other end. I just say "sorry, I'm going to cut you off there, I'm not interested". Actually going out of my way to make their life difficult would just be stupid as far as I'm concerned.

You're entitled to your opinion. If you think it's stupid, don't do it. But I'm entitled to my opinion too, and in my view, it isn't stupid. I'm not seeking to tell you you should do it. How about having the same courtesy, and not telling me what I should or shouldn't do, and should or shouldn't think? I find cold calling extremely offensive, and arrogant, and I'm quite within my rights to waste as much of their time as I can, which is at least more than the cold-callers pestering me are, because my actions aren't illegal - theirs are.

Ok, the Simpsons. Panorama. Match of The Day. Nothing on TV is so important that missing 10 seconds of it really matters, is it?

No, it isn't. But it's MY time to decide to spend how I chose, not for some telemarketing droid to waste. So if they waste my time, I reserve the right to waste theirs right back.

"i'm going to make things as unpleasant as possible for them".

Unpleasant, abusive, same difference really.

Not, not at all, it isn't. Which is why I suggested you read what I said CAREFULLY, not put your own interpretation on it. I said I would make things unpleasant, not that I would BE unpleasant to them. The two are different. And I would point out that if you're going to keep someone on the line for as long as possible, being unpleasant/abusive to them isn't going to help, is it? It rather gives the game away, don't you think?

And, previously to that comment, I had already illustrated, not once but TWICE, what I meant by that, in posts #4 and #14.

Do you have physical problems picking up the phone? Are you not young, fit, and healthy? If not, I'll accept that perhaps you have a reason to be unpleasant to cold callers. Otherwise, you're just making something of a straw man to justify your own desire to be mean to people that call you.

No, I am neither young (though not old either, in my view), nor healthy. The reason I stopped acting as an Admin on this forum was because of health. Things have improved since then, but that isn't the point, is it? When telemarketers call me, despite the TPS registration, they have NO IDEA what my condition is, or any of the other people they pester. What are people supposed to do? Present a medical or personal justification to cold-callers before they'll stop pestering people that have stated they don't want to be pestered? And what's to stop people making it up? Or do I have to get a note from my doctor before they'll stop?

Uncle, you jumped straight into the assumption that I was abusing cold-callers, and straight into condemning me for it, and telling me it's because of a desire to be mean to people. But why should I even have to justify myself on here? The fact remains, these callers should not be calling me in the first place. If they are either operating from the UK, or operating from abroad on behalf of UK companies, they're bound by this law. Certainly, foreign callers not operating on behalf of UK companies aren't bound, but of those companies that call me, I have very rarely managed to identify one such.

As for my desire "to be mean to people", on what basis do you make that judgment? I refer you back to post #21, where I said

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'.

Does that sound like some curmudgeonly old grump that's just looking for an opportunity to be nasty?

Or post #30

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.

So, again you are making judgments about my personality, and based on what? Your mis-interpretation of what I said on here, specifically about illegal cold-callers. And again, I point out I've said I have no problem with legal cold calls. If I get one of those from a company I deal with, and whom I have not instructed not to call me, I'll deal with it politely, though fairly briefly .... and then notify the company not to call me.

Uncle, you seem to think I just go off on a rant every time I get a cold call, for no reason. You also gave the useful advice in your first post in this thread (#12) that people should register with the TPS

Get TPS people!

If all telemarketing operators respected that, and did what they are legally obliged to do, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we? Because, if that were the case, I wouldn't be getting cold calls and therefore wouldn't have anything to say about how I react to them.

And it isn't just TPS registration. As I said ages ago,

and why I have given companies I do regularly deal with (power utilities, phone provider, etc) written instructions that they are not to contact me for marketing purposes .

Most companies respect that. Maybe BT now do too, now that it's a legal requirement. But some companies still don't seem to get it. Or rather, I'm sure they do get it, and deliberately choose to ignore it ... or perhaps are utterly incompetent at meeting their legal obligations.

No. But I did it for a few weeks one summer. It was horrible, because people like you decided that they had some kind of divine right to abuse people for doing their jobs. My coworkers, by the way---mostly single mothers and low income parents whose choice was "do this or the kids go hungry".

Again, there you go with the sweeping "people like you .... divine right to abuse" generalisations. You don't know me, or what I'm like. You are judging on the basis of what OTHER people may or may not have done on the phone.

In that case, instead of just being petty and mean to the person who calls you, you should actually get their details and pass them onto TPS. Being mean to the individual who called you is just petty and wastes *everyone's* time, including your own. I find it quite amusing that you respond to you precious sanctuary time being wasted by, erm, wasting more of it!

Once more .... read what I've said before. I do do that, if II have the time and the mood takes me.

Ahh, so you admit that getting your dinner interrupted *is* trivial. And yet you maintain that you get to be "unpleasant" to people for it...

Dinner was just one example out of several, ranging from the trivial to the very serious, the point being that the selfish people making these illegal calls have no idea of the personal circumstances of the people they're pestering. But yes. If people are prepared to interrupt my dinner, or whatever, for their own selfish reasons despite my clear objection to such calls, I am absolutely justified in making things "unpleasant". As I said right at the start, all they have to do to avoid that is to not call me.

Hell, if you want to be mean to cold callers then go for it to be honest---just don't pretend its because of the great inconvenience. We all like to be mean sometimes, its best just to admit it

No, I don't like being mean. It leaves me feeling low. But so does being pestered by selfish cold-callers, and spreading it around a bit by wasting as much of their time as I can makes the best of a poor set of choices. My preference, BY FAR, is just to be left in peace at home. But these cold callers won't respect that.

And, if everybody wasted loads of cold-callers time, then perhaps cold-calling would become uneconomic, or at least the telemarketing companies would realise that it's in their interests to follow the TPS requirements. It is, after all, all a matter of cold, hard profit. If people make it unprofitable to call TPS subscribers, they'll stop doing it, and we can all be left in peace.

In that case, instead of just being petty and mean to the person who calls you, you should actually get their details and pass them onto TPS. Being mean to the individual who called you is just petty and wastes *everyone's* time, including your own. I find it quite amusing that you respond to you precious sanctuary time being wasted by, erm, wasting more of it!

And the above point is precisely why, in my opinion, you're wrong there.

Two things. Firstly, my time is mine to spend how I choose. And my technique (refer to post #4) doesn't waste much of my time. But by making, where I can, the caller's use of time thoroughly wasted and unproductive, I DO regard that as a suitable use of the few seconds it takes to pick up the phone every few minutes and string them along. Like I said, one waste of time deserves another. I'm merely repaying the courtesy.

Secondly, I'm doing my tiny bit to change the economics of telemarketing. It might not work, but it can't hurt - except for telemarketer's profits. Therefore, it is neither petty nor, in my view, a waste of my time. And there is only one person who's opinion about whether I'm wasting my time or not matters, and that's mine.

[Saracen]

be very wary of making assumptions about the phsyical conditions of HEXUS members.

Dead right.

I know of several very active members of forums I'm involved with that are very active precisely because of their physical condition. Forums, in that regard, can provide a very valuable social activity for those whose physical condition makes many other activities hard. They can provide a lifeline, a way to "meet" people, make friends, a way to avoid loneliness and sometimes social isolation.

Sometimes, when people spend a lot of time online in forums, it's because they have a good reason why they have so much time available to spend online.

I certainly make no claims to be in that category, and wouldn't necessarily make that claim even if it were the case, but it's an invalid assumption to make. I know the personal backgrounds of some Hexus members, and some on other forums too, but there are many, many people that might fall into that category about whom I have no inkling, and if they don't choose to tell people, nobody else would either.

[Saracen]

Never again will i start a thread about telemarketers !!!!

Not at all. Darn good discussion, even if it has got just a touch overheated once or twice.

I look forward to the next subject you ....erm .... kickstart for us.

[MadduckUK]

even if it has got just a touch overheated once or twice.

it has hasn't it? sounds like some people need to take there stress out on a telemarketer to me!

[Dareos]

I look forward to the next subject you ....erm .... kickstart for us.

Hang your head in shame






teehee

[kickstart 1]

Next one is going to be about handbags ! At least you will have something to hit each other with then !

[Dareos]

ooh oooh, prada or gucci.... or a little chanel clutch bag.


ahem, i realise i have just gone too far....

[DavidM]

Next one is going to be about handbags ! At least you will have something to hit each other with then !

You've been beaten to that

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=51341