Telemarketers generally have a script they're supposed to follow as they ask you a series of questions. Now EGBG (which may just be someone named Martijn Engelbregt, I'm not sure) has created a lovely counterscript that lets you take control of the conversation. I don't know if I'll have the chutzpah to try it, but it's very very funny in places, and I find the whole idea delightful.
Every time I see something like this I get kind of upset. It’s so…I mean, the odds are high that when you talk to a telemarketer you’re talking to someone who hates his job. If they’re rude, then maybe the person being called is justified in being rude back (though a little charity, Christian or otherwise, is always nice: two wrongs don’t make a right), but if they’re pleasant enough, then I feel like the person being called should really keep in mind that being rude to the person calling serves no purpose except to make that person feel shitty. When you deliberately try to make them feel terrible you’re only doing it because you’re angry at their employers, not at them: and you’re not hurting their employers at all.
IMHO, proper course with telemarketers is, #1, to hit junkbusters.com and follow their instructions to try to get your name off the major lists; #2, to ask any telemarketer that calls, politely, to take you off their lists, say you’re not interested in talking over the phone, and say goodbye. If they try to keep talking, hang up on them. And that’s that. Short, simple, isn’t rude to them personally unless they’re rude to *you* personally….
God, I don’t know why after all these years I canNOT let the telemarketing thing go. Maybe because the people who write these “scripts” are always so smug about it. It’s all so holier-than-thou, and all the irritation and so forth is directed at people who don’t have a lot of choices, instead of at the industry itself.
Hi, Catherine! I actually didn’t find this counterscript rude or smug or holier-than-thou; I thought it was kind of charming. It engages the person on the other end of the phone as a person. If they’re in a situation where they have to make as many calls as possible in a short time, then it’ll be up to them to disengage.
But to be honest, I don’t have any intention of using this script. My usual approach to dealing with telemarketers these days goes like this:
I pick up the phone and say “Hello, this is Jed.” There’s a long pause. I hang up.
Sometimes I wait a little bit too long before hanging up; but most of the time these days, if I do wait too long, it turns out to be a recording calling rather than a human, so after I ascertain that it really is a recording (“Wait. Wait. Stop. Is this a recording? Okay, I’m hanging up now.”), I hang up.
On the rare occasions when it’s a real human, I stop them as soon as I’m sure it’s a sales call, and I tell them to take me off their list. About half the time, they refuse to take no for an answer, and I tell them to take me off their list three or four more times and then have to hang up on them. I find it appalling when a telemarketer won’t take no for an answer, and at that point I lose all sympathy for them.
The rest of the time, they politely say “Okay, we’ll take you off our list” and we both hang up.
In Pennsylvania, the state attorney general instituted an anti-telemarketer program this fall; I registered eagerly.
For the previous three years, I got about 6-10 telemarketer calls per week. In the maybe six months since, I’ve gotten maybe a dozen telemarketer calls total. That program is certainly in the running for “most direct positive influence state government has ever had on my life”.
You may find this federal Do Not Call Registry of interest–I think it’s still being held up some by the telemarketing industry, though.
The current plan is that, as of July, people can sign up to be on a national list of people that telemarketers can’t call. And as of October, for telemarketers to call those people will be illegal. (I think non-profits and pollers are still exempt).
yeah, the computer thing is certainly making it much easier to deal with marketing calls. Will’s thing sounds cool, too.
the thing about the script — though you’re right, it’s not overtly rude — is that it deliberately sets out to fluster the caller. I mean, if *you* were doing the calling, and you had a quota to meet, and some guy started asking you about how you liked your job…. I dunno, it would feel like an attack to me. And it’s *so* much simpler to just hang up; following a script like that, if you’re going to take the time to do it, you really have to feel some serious desire to get some of your own back at the caller.
I remember one guy, when I was selling season tickets, who wanted to “know about me.” He kept me on the phone for an hour asking about my educational plans, yadda yadda, and finally let me explain the ticket plans. He wanted time to think about it and asked me to call back in a week, which I did. Another half hour later, he was all “can you call back again?” I did, a few days later, and after another half hour conversation, he finally decided not to buy tickets at all.
I was furious. This guy did me out of a TON of valuable time — obviously it meant nothing to him, but to me it could have meant a really good commission selling to someone who was actually interested in tickets. Obviously I still remember him, and it’s not with pleasure at having been engaged as a human being 🙂
Once, back in college, when I was desperate for cash, I signed up to do telemarketing (had a friend who’d been doing it for a couple years and really enjoyed it). Spent an hour being trained and then made calls for a few more hours. The start of the next day, I quit. I just couldn’t stand it.
We’re signed up on our state’s no call plan. It works well; we get almost no calls at all, except for the occasional autodialer from a local business. But before then, they were usually easy to get around: caller ID always listed them as Unknown Name, Unknown Number. We just didn’t answer the phone.
I almost never get sales calls; this is what comes of not buying things. I’m somewhat saddened that I don’t get non-profits soliciting me for money; I find that slightly odd, given the number of mail solicitations I get.
Anyway. I’ve been on the other end, soliciting donations for a non-profit. I would be amused if someone did this to me; it’s not a long script, only about 5 minutes. There’s no chatter on the part of the solicitee, so I don’t think it’s too bad. It is mean-spirited, though; I agree with Catherine here.
Far simpler just to say, “take me off your list” (if they call you back after that, you can sue them!) or use your hangup technique after hearing a pause.
I also mostly follow the plan of telling telemarketers to put me on the do-not-call list (note — I believe that some laws require that you ask for this specifically; if you say “list of people to not call” or whatever it doesn’t count) and then hanging up. But occasionally in the past I haven’t been able to resist messing with them.
My favorite time was when AT&T had been calling me repeatedly trying to get me to switch to their long-distance service. I finally told the telemarketer that I couldn’t sign up for their service because I don’t have a phone. This is not in the script. I could sense the person thinking “then what are you talking on?” but I stuck to my guns and _they_ finally hung up.
I tried to use a variation of this on a marketer selling subscriptions to the Philadelphia Inquirer (another repeat caller), who I told that I couldn’t read. Incredibly, this _is_ in the script, and they explained without missing a beat that the paper includes many valuable coupons, and amusing and easy to read comics.
Then there’s my acquaintance Volodnya Shptalnik, who frequently has telemarketers call, see his name pop up on their screens (I assume), say “Good God!”, and hang up.
My longtime roommate’s last name is serbo-croatian. If we got calls that asked for a Christine (long pause), we’d almost always hang up immediately. Of course, then she had to start running campus groups and applying for grad schools, so that method was no longed valid. She’s out of the country now, and it’s wonderful fun to tell telemarketers that–“I’m sorry. She’s in Spain.” Utterly unarguable.
My dad, on the other hand, once insisted to the telemarketer that he was his wife. Um, that sounds wrong. They asked for my stepmom, and my dad said, “this is she.” They really wanted to say, “you’re lying,” but of course, they can’t. So they kept refering to her in the third person. 🙂
telemarketers rule, i get so much money from you suckers!
I love this sort of troll or spam comment on a very old post — it’s like an “I feel lucky” search. Rereading this post and previous comments had me laughing out loud, and was a great way to start my morning reading.
Of course, a similar result could probably be achieved with an “I feel lucky” button on the blog’s Search box.
I usually do like this: I wait for them to ask me if a certain person is available. Then I tell them, “Yeah, I’ll go get them.” I place the phone down and forget about it for a few minutes. Sometimes I will yell at and abuse my “kids” in the background. Play loud music, or just do nothing at all.
Telemarketers should avoid to recall their customers all days ….