How to deal with telemarketers ...

[TheAlien]

And TheAlien, as far as I'm concerned, telemarketing of any kind is just evil and I'm not here to defend it.

I understand. Fortuantely I don't work for a company that does any kind of hard-sell telemarketing. Seventy percent of our calling is just adjusting your account to actually save you money or get rid of fees and the rest is loans to consolidate your current bills and stuff. I'm on the DNC list and I actually hate random "Sales Calls" trying to sell me something.

I'm only entertaining the possibility that if you get called while having amazing sex with your spouse (or amazing sex with your hand in my case) and you want to take your wrath out on somebody, maybe the guy on the other end of the phone is the wrong person to do that with.

Are you kidding? I turn off the phones!

So maybe you would scrub toilets instead of doing that. But would you let your family starve, or end up being a burdon on society?

It sure beats working the streets!

[Antiriad2097]

What annoys me the most is that in the UK we have the Telephone Preference Service (you can find it online and sign up free there).

Its supposed to remove your name from all call centres and it makes it illegal for them to call you unless you have requested their business.

It has greatly reduced the number of calls I get, but it makes the ones that do get through just that bit more annoying.

I neer give a straight answer and hang up when I'm satisfied I've wasted as much of their time as they have mine.

[miner2049er]

Just because someone has to take the other side of the argument, here goes:

You did it really well. You're a natural at this argument stuff.

TELEMARKETING SPOILER WARNING::

Create your message on the answering machine to say hello...pause 3 seconds, then create your normal message. It'll drive the dialer and telemarketing people nuts!

I'm gonna do that, hopefully it'll tick family off to. Get into your spiel then I come in and say "Err, you're talking to the machine, there's nobody home."

.. we have a message that will be played to the customer asking them to hold.

Maybe this an American thing, because in general I have the opinion that you use the hold option more than we do in the UK, but if somebody, machine or person, called me and asked me to hold, I'd lose it. That call would end right there.

WOW, that ended up being a lot longer than I wanted. Sorry about that.

We have a man on the inside now though.

So maybe you would scrub toilets instead of doing that. But would you let your family starve, or end up being a burdon on society?

I think most people would flip burgers first, though toilet scrubbing must have its perks too.