Combating Telemarketers

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I actually enjoy getting calls from other telemarketers.

Beacuse they suck.

Ho-hum, a little laughs on somebody who only wants your money for himself, or the bosses new mercedes and golf-shares never hurt anyone.

 

Iku, a private non-public number is not helping much. There are some instance where you have to give it away, and some firms may sell the phone number to, well, telemarketing firms.

 

Unfortunately, my wife is not as rude as I am.

'Can I have your phone number?'

'No.'

That usually causes a bit of confusion for the 17-18 years old clerk who can't imagine why anyone would not give her their phone number (although the slack jawed blank stare is good). It tend to make the transaction take twice as long. I started giving out the number for 'Dial-a-prayer.'

 

Having worked asd Telemarketer, and having being pested by telemarketers, the way to get rid of them for good is easy - get a damn cellphone.

True. The marilith brings wisdom here, folks.

 

I politely say something like thank you, not interested, wish them a good day and put it off just like that if they are being offended or desperate or insistent or whatever.

 

If I have nothing better to do I put them on to my 'retarded' brother (a slight change in my voice and it's all go) and I see how much they can take talking to somebody who starts the conversation holding the phone the wrong way around

 

If you live in the US I know the Do Not Call Regulation very well. Here is some clarification on it.

First off if you are a active consumer (mean you have an active account or shown interest in the product within the last three months) a company or one of their affilates may contact you unless you provided and sign there internal do not contact list.

If you had no contact or no active accounts with that company or their affilates that company can not call you if you are registered on the National DNC (which only protects for a limited time frame). If they do contact without you having shown interest or bearing any accounts with the company and are listed on the national Do Not Call Registry you can call the DNC Registry and inform them of this. This can result in a fine of $11,000 and possibly the employee of the company.

 

Speaking as someone who has been in various roles within the telemarketing industry for a good 5 years, I can honestly say that the best thing to do with telemarketers is to hang up the phone. If it's really not a product or service they are interested in, there's no reason to put yourself through the hassle. If you really don't like telemarketing call, put your number on the DNC (mine is). That will stop 99% of the calls. Simply asking remaining telemarketers to put your number on their internal DNC will take care of the rest.

There is no way that anyone will be firing or fining an employee for calling a number on the DNC off of a predictive dialer. If a telemarketer is calling when you are on the DNC, I can almost garauntee that it isn't the employee's fault. Telemarketing companies run a predictive dialer which literally dials more numbers than their are employees to handle them. When the dialer has determined that the number isn't busy, an answering machine, or no longer in service (in which case it will simply terminate the call), it will then route the call to the next available representative (which is one of the reasons that there is always a delay when telemarketers call....sometimes there isn't a rep available right away). Employees making calls do not control the dialer settings or what numbers are listed on the dialer. What normally happens is the company periodically scrubs their list against the DNC to ensure that they aren't calling numbers on that list. Most companies only do this once every three months, since this is all they are required by law to do, so going onto the DNC won't stop calls from coming in right away.


Some interesting things to look out for if you don't want to get telemarketing calls: 10-10 numbers: You may have just told AT&T to put your number on their DNC but they have a loophole. If you dial one of their 10-10 prefixes, that constitutes an existing business relationship. Ergo, you are now back on the list. Request info links: Don't use those....because companies are able to figure out your phone number from their site by employing IP tracking, although they usually just do a reverse adress search from the adress you filled in when requesting the info. Since an inquiry actually counts as establishing an existing business relationship, the company can call you without recourse.

[ August 09, 2006, 04:41: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Drew,

Not all companies that call use an auto-dialer. My company has individual reps who have to verify that a customer is not on our Internal and the Federal DNC list and if they don't do their job by checking the list they will be terminated. That is within their contract.

For the company with auto-dialer the employee is not at fault but the company.

The funny thing is it also depend upon where the company is getting their DNC list from and how often it is updated. I know some times it can take up to and over a month before we see a customer listed on the DNC list and the company we use is expectional. That is what scares me about the DNC list.

I know most people hate telemarketers and I don't blame any of you. I personally though would like to see the DNC list go into a trash can and stop all together, this way the US and other countries calling into the US can have their free market over the telephone again. Stupid Feds and their rulings.

The DNC is just another added cost of doing business in the US. Which does have a negative affect on the cost of our goods.

 

Your right, but you can always tell these instances that the information you've given is not to be used for direct-marketing purposes. Some of these instances, like our universities ask your permission to sell your info for marketers, but most of these instances don't. You just have to tell each of them separately that your information can't be used for marketing purposes. I know it's a pain, but IMO telemarketers are more of a pain.

 

My brother just pulled a gem...

"Hello, is this the man of the house?"

"No, it's the dog. Woof-woof!"

And then he hanged up.

I overheard it and thought "What the...?" then he told me it was a telemarketer. I couldn,t stop laughing for a good ten minutes.

*EDIT*

I'm not an American.

[ August 10, 2006, 07:54: Message edited by: Disciple of The Watch ]

 

Wow, sounds like you Americans have nasty problems with these telemarketing schemes compared to us Kiwis. I'd only get a phone call from them say, once or twice every month and that's only if I'm staying home on a weekday during working hours. (say 11am-3pm)

 

I heard they have a pretty bad infestation of telemarketers of the worst kind in UK as well.

Telemarketers that are unpolite and don't listen to what the potential customer says give a bad name for the business. Too bad this way of doing business is more of a tradition with telemarketing. When will they learn?

 

Evidently, we do. Only a call or two per month you say? Wow. I'd say we have a telemarketer call on a daily basis. Sometimes several in one day. And they can call as early as 9 in the morning, to as late as 9 at night. So who know how many calls I get during the day while I'm at work - I only know about the ones that occur in the evenings (as I'm long gone to work by 9 in the morning).

I, too, employ the same tactics that Fel uses. There's almost always a delay between when you say "hello" and when the telemarketer responds, giving you time to hang up. However, I also have Caller ID, and if I don't recognize the number (espeically if it's an 800 or 888 number) and I'm even remotely busy doing something (and watching TV qualifies as remotely busy) I just won't bother picking up the phone.

 

I'm with Abomination on this. In all my many years on this planet, I think I have been called by a telemarketer maybe half a dozen times ever (and yes, telephones have been around for that whole time).

Certainly not enough to have developed complicated strategies for dealing with them. Not sure why you guys seem to be so plagued by them.

 

Wow, you New Zealanders seem to have it pretty good - I would say that at least 95% of the telephone calls that I get are from telemarketers. I average around 2-3 telemarketing calls a day.

I used to have my phone companies voicemail and I would normally get another 2-3 direct to voice mail messages from marketers. For the life of me I don't know why they think anyone would actually call them back but after having nothing but spam voicemails for several months I cancelled the service and went back to a traditional answering machine.

 

That sounds nuts, JSBB. I don't think that such a thing would be allowed here. Nobody would stand for such nonsense.

 

Well since I apparently sound like a five year old (sigh) I just say 'Sorry my parents are out. Bye!'

 

@HB: Get a caller Id. You probably get more marketing calls than you think. Most American telemarketers don't leave messages, though.

@Abdel: I call off the predictive all the time. The laws surrounding "existing business relationship" are so loose that, unless I'm picking numbers at random out of a phone book instead of calling referrals or customers that requested info from a website, the DNC laws simply don't apply in most cases. (Actually, I'm only recently getting back on the phones, and now it's for business to business sales.....so I never have to check the DNC when I prospect anymore.)

Regarding what to say to telemarketers....I wouldn't bother saying anything. It's the telemarketer's job to call you. He doesn't want to interrupt your dinner, disrupt your day, or argue with you about the merits of having a hard copy Encyclopedia Brittanica instead of a CD-ROM. Most telemarketers don't like the work and are doing it because no other work is available for them, so before you decide to abuse the caller, just hang up. Believe me, you're usually doing them, and yourself, a favour. I garauntee you that if you don't want to listen to the telemarketer, someone else will. This is why businesses continue to employ telemarketers. Telemarketing is the most cost efficient method of creating new busines available for most companies, so it isn't going anywhere.

[ August 12, 2006, 10:47: Message edited by: Drew ]