Telemarketers!

[Suicune's Fire]

You know these guys? Yeah. They're pretty much the only people who call our home phones now, aside from charities. I wonder what everyone else does when they pick up the phone and hear a telemarketer on the other line, generally claiming they're from an electricity company or "the government." xD Yeah, right. Then they ask you a bunch of questions and try to sell you purposeless stuff. Fun, right?

So what do you do? I generally hang up if I hear that really long pause of silence before anyone speaks or you hear background noise, but sometimes I listen to them until they stop speaking, and then tell them I'm not interested.

Sometimes I go along with it and pretend I'm a kid. One time I was at a relative's house and answered his phone, and the dude asked to speak with my relative, and I was like, "He went to Africa, but you can speak to my dog instead!"

[[Desolate Divine]]

Umm, Xanthe, you know for the last week I have been a Telemarketer...?

But usually I will say the home owner/phone owner/whoever they want to speak to passed away recently.

[Caite-chan]

Here in the States we have a Do Not Call thing that you can sign up to be on and if they still call you you can report them if they do not take your number off their list.

Though a month or so ago Mom had someone call her and said they were from Microsoft and that something was wrong with my laptop. Thankfully Mom couldn't understand what they were talking about not to mention they had an Indian accent (no offence) and so she gave the phone to me. They said their was something wrong with MY laptop and I said well if there was something wrong with MY laptop why are you calling my Mom about it? They didn't respond right away and I would say it took a good 30 seconds for them to say something. She started to speak and I just hung up on them and when I looked at the number it wasn't even a full number it was missing like 3 numbers.

[EmeraldSky]

The Do Not Call list is a godsend--I do a call trace to confirm the number is a telemarketer, then report them on the official Do Not Call website.

That said, I have gotten some doozies that slipped through...

[Caite-chan]

I know there are certain ones that can still call you legally I just don't remember what ones though.

[[Desolate Divine]]

I was on the do not call list for my mobile. Except during the federal election the government said "stuff that" and called me anyway...

[Suicune's Fire]

Wow, wish we had a Do Not Call list. xD There's no such thing here. And lol, Jacob. xP You quit, so I'm allowed to! ;P

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Hahaha poor Jacob. I usually just pick up and say "sorry my parents aren't home right now" as soon as they pause to take a breath. I don't wanna waste their time by waiting til they finish their spiel but I've had no choice a few times because they don't stop talking! I want to just hang up but then I feel bad. xD

Making up funny stories with them sounds like it would be fun. Probably more interesting for them too haha.

[Caite-chan]

Trust me if they don't get the hint after the first no thank you then you shouldn't feel bad about hanging up on them. I never felt bad about it. xD

[Suicune's Fire]

Hahaha poor Jacob. I usually just pick up and say "sorry my parents aren't home right now" as soon as they pause to take a breath. I don't wanna waste their time by waiting til they finish their spiel but I've had no choice a few times because they don't stop talking! I want to just hang up but then I feel bad. xD

Making up funny stories with them sounds like it would be fun. Probably more interesting for them too haha.

Omg I feel the same! xD I hung up on one today (which prompted me to make the thread xD) and felt bad. She was like "Good evening, madam."

One day, one of my friends was chatting to a telemarketer and he pretended that he lived nearby, so he organised a coffee date at "the cafe around the corner." XD He didn't go or anything, so that poor telemarketer would have gotten stood up. So funny.


Trust me if they don't get the hint after the first no thank you then you shouldn't feel bad about hanging up on them. I never felt bad about it. xD

xD This makes sense! When they persist, it's SO annoying.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Omg I feel the same! xD I hung up on one today (which prompted me to make the thread xD) and felt bad. She was like "Good evening, madam."

One day, one of my friends was chatting to a telemarketer and he pretended that he lived nearby, so he organised a coffee date at "the cafe around the corner." XD He didn't go or anything, so that poor telemarketer would have gotten stood up.

Omg xD I kind of just want to start chatting to one of them about random stuff now. Or just randomly complimenting their voices like a creep. xD

[Caite-chan]

Do that because they can't hang up on you or so I've been told.

[[Desolate Divine]]

Do that because they can't hang up on you or so I've been told.

That is a lie, at least where I worked. Unfortunately I also couldn't tell people to get stuffed if they were rude.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

That is a lie, at least where I worked. Unfortunately I also couldn't tell people to get stuffed if they were rude.
Did anyone tell you that you have a beautiful voice though? xD

Were there any weird calls?

[[Desolate Divine]]

Well my leads list had a heap of mistakes, like wrong business names. My first call was wrong name. Turns out it was a church. Got yelled at by the pastor for trying to get money from them.

"I'm sorry!" *Slams down phone*

[Neo Emolga]

I just block them. If you're using an Android phone, there's an app called Should I Answer? (the one with the goofy green octopus) that allows you to put in numbers and block them. I tried it, and it definitely does the job. Honestly, as a marketing major, telemarketing is old and it's something that really needs to die off. Everyone hates it.

Also, if you really want to be devious...

http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

Give them a totally fake person's identity over the phone. If there's one thing people hate, it's their time being wasted, and having them run circles trying to figure out why the credit card isn't working or the address doesn't actually exist is an effective way to teach them telemarketing needs to go.

[Felly]

I just hang up on them once I realize it's a telemarketer. I have better things to do than listen to their spheal. n_n

My grandma once was very rude to a telemarketer that called. It was actually very annoying how she did it because she kept saying "GOOD BYE GOOD BYE GOOD BYE" and I'm like "oh my god, hang up the phone."

[Noblejanobii]

I have two opinions of these people. First, coming from a customer's opinion, I hate these guys because they often call when I'm home alone. I have found the most effective way to deter them is to speak in another language. It freaks them out and they usually hang up. However, looking at it from the telemarketer's stand point, I feel bad for the saps who have to do it, but not enough to not call them not notice things over the phone in Spanish.

I have also discovered that letting my grandma answer the phone is very effective as well. That was by accident though. I felt really bad for that telemarketer, she sounded so confused. XD

[Steel Lunpara]

"Hello. This is not a telemarketer. You have been selected-"
"Hallo? Entschuldigung, ich spreche deutsch nicht!"

That's not a bad idea. I'll have to do it next time. Well, next time I get a human, anyway. Usually the telemarketers I deal with are all robots, which makes it easy to hang up, but you can't really mess with them. Course, if they happen to actually speak German, the poor grammar and the fact that I just said "I don't speak German" would give it away...

[Otter Mii-kun]

My mom and I ignore all calls that we don't recognize the numbers, names, or locations of, via caller ID. Yes, I know CID can be spoofed, and I do check out strange numbers online to see where they really go to. (On some of the call-discussion sites, such as Mr. Number, people have had numbers show up that are not valid to use in North America, such as the exchange prefix starting with a 0 or 1.)
Even though our mobile and landline numbers are registered to the Do Not Call Registry, the registry is pretty much useless since apparently, everything is exempt from its regulations. The calls that I've checked out usually are from "lower your credit card payments" companies, home security system sales pitches (even though those calls claim they are not sales calls), and Medicare back brace scammers (since apparently Medicare sells patient info that should otherwise be confidential, and my mom is on Medicare.)