Telemarketers!

[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.)