Fun ways to screw with Telephone sales people

[Orbot_Vectorman]

I've been getting calls from a construction company recently, and it is bordering on the harassment territory. Any how I got a call yesterday from a different company, this time some solar energy company. So after getting annoyed with how the ***** on the line was trying to keep me on the phone, I finally looked up "WTF BOOM" on YouTube, cranked up my speakers and all the volume sliders on my computer, and with the phone close to the speaker I played the video, needless to say she was not happy.

Any way, I was kinda curious, what are your favorite ways to get back at these telemarketing ass holes?

 

[Marter]

Politely tell them I'm not interested, say goodbye, and then hang up.

You know, because they're people, just like you and I, doing their job and trying to pay the bills.

 

[seris]

in the most serious voice you can, tell them that they have reached the local police department in your area and ask em what their emergency is

 

[Muspelheim]

None. Considering I used to work with telemarketing. Ringing people up and trying to flog whatever is on the menu is not something they do for fun. To irritate you. They do it because it's their job. As pointless, stupid job as it is.

Of course, there's the difference between polite telephone salesmen and the shove-the-foot-in-the-door salesmen. But as a general rule, no, they are not arseholes. Just people doing a pointless job to pay the bills.

And to be frank, the best part of getting out of that job was not having to deal with utter twats that treat you as if you just shat their birdbath. It's nothing more to it than saying "No, thanks" and hanging up. Particularly if they're under instruction to not listen to a "No".

 

[maidenm]

My favourite way is my dad's method, wich is making them laugh. He once made a woman laugh so hard she lost her train of thought, apologised and hung up, still laughing. Since it's a job, and not one I belive anyone would have as their first choice, it's kinda nice to decline their offers in a fun way. Sure, it's not always easy, but when you do succeed it makes you feel a bit better.

 

[Pyrian]

"It's okay that we're doing bad things, because we're just doing them for money!" Huh?

 

[Rendahli]

One thing I enjoy doing is to limit myself to only saying the word yes and seeing how far along in the conversation I can get before they realise what I'm doing. Or you can go along with them for a bit and then try selling them something back. I think I have too much time on my hands...

 

[Auron225]

My favourite way is my dad's method, wich is making them laugh. He once made a woman laugh so hard she lost her train of thought, apologised and hung up, still laughing. Since it's a job, and not one I belive anyone would have as their first choice, it's kinda nice to decline their offers in a fun way. Sure, it's not always easy, but when you do succeed it makes you feel a bit better.

That sounds nice, but how? Just start telling random jokes? It sounds like it'd be difficult to make a joke out of whatever they're saying.

OT: Not quite the same thing, but a fair few years ago we were getting prank called every other day. Not very well - whoever it was wouldn't say anything but we'd sometimes hear them sniggering down the phone. My mum finally got sick of it one day; she picked up, heard them trying to contain their laughter at them wasting her time once again, and so she blew a whistle as loud as possible down the phone. The hung up quickly and never phoned again... I hear that sorta thing can really damage ears, but they'll get no sympathy from us.

I like messing with people who phone and are quite obviously scam artists, but I don't mind telemarketers so much. They're just doing their annoying-but-it-pays-the-bills-and-they-have-to-eat-too job.

 

[Muspelheim]

"It's okay that we're doing bad things, because we're just doing them for money!" Huh?

Bad things, eh? Are they calling you up in the middle of complicated surgery or tearing you away from managing a power plant or something?

 

[Sgt Pepper]

None. Considering I used to work with telemarketing. Ringing people up and trying to flog whatever is on the menu is not something they do for fun. To irritate you. They do it because it's their job. As pointless, stupid job as it is.

Of course, there's the difference between polite telephone salesmen and the shove-the-foot-in-the-door salesmen. But as a general rule, no, they are not arseholes. Just people doing a pointless job to pay the bills.

And to be frank, the best part of getting out of that job was not having to deal with utter twats that treat you as if you just shat their birdbath. It's nothing more to it than saying "No, thanks" and hanging up. Particularly if they're under instruction to not listen to a "No".

Thing is, though, it is irritating when I'm drawn away from whatever I'm doing, be it eating, reading, playing a game etc to answer the phone to someone who has zero chance of selling something to me anyway, all they've done is interrupt my leisure time for nothing.

 

[maidenm]

My favourite way is my dad's method, wich is making them laugh. He once made a woman laugh so hard she lost her train of thought, apologised and hung up, still laughing. Since it's a job, and not one I belive anyone would have as their first choice, it's kinda nice to decline their offers in a fun way. Sure, it's not always easy, but when you do succeed it makes you feel a bit better.

That sounds nice, but how? Just start telling random jokes? It sounds like it'd be difficult to make a joke out of whatever they're saying.

Oh it's not always easy. Dad started doing it after making a very so-bad-it's-good pun about the product being sold. Sometimes he makes obvious jokes or movie quotes where it fits.

Of course, there's a small amount of luck needed too. After hearing "go to hell" followed by a slam 200 times already I doubt there's many jokes that can cheer you up. If you can't think of anything funny to say, it's usually best to just be nice.

 

[Daniel Janhagen]

If they don't get the message "No, I am not interested. At all.", which is often the case, and they often start raising their voice and accusing me of being stupid and uninformed for not immediately jumping on this "amazing deal", I just hang up. I don't have time for their abuse.
Also, I briefly worked at one of those places, and I don't get why they would waste time shouting at me, a lost cause, when they'd probably make more money just going to the next number on the list.

 

[Mikeybb]

Politely tell them I'm not interested, say goodbye, and then hang up.

You know, because they're people, just like you and I, doing their job and trying to pay the bills.

I used to mess around with them, but eventually found myself just following suit with your own actions.

They're just people trying to hold down a job, in the end and likely would rather be working elsewhere if the job market would allow them.


However, I still retain my pranks for a certain kind of cold caller.

You see, there are some that occasionally call us that claim to be from 'windows' and say they have 'detected viruses on our home computer'.
Oh no!
...but as luck would have it, they can help.
Yep, you know where this is going.
Straight to a website where you can download their free security software.

For those kind of scammers, I keep them on the phone as long as possible, being slow and having as many problems getting to the website as I can concoct.

 

[Pyrian]

"It's okay that we're doing bad things, because we're just doing them for money!" Huh?

Bad things, eh? Are they calling you up in the middle of complicated surgery or tearing you away from managing a power plant or something?

"It's okay that we're doing bad things, because nobody's getting killed by it!" Huh?

And yeah - bad things. Nuisance, at the very least. Harassment and annoyance, typically. Preying on instinctive politeness and, all too frequently, the elderly and/or befuddled. I don't reserve sympathy for "just doing the job" - especially when the job description includes "banal minion of evil" right off the bat.

 

[babinro]

Politely tell them I'm not interested, say goodbye, and then hang up.

You know, because they're people, just like you and I, doing their job and trying to pay the bills.

This.

As someone whose been in telemarketing/customer service for over a decade this is pretty much the ideal response.

Unfortunately, there are some projects that require multiple 'no' answers before they can let you go for quality purposes. It sucks to have to 'pressure' someone whose clearly not interested on a cold call but that's what your job demands to remain employed. So if you say 'I'm not interested' and they continue talking, say goodbye and hangup. No stress on you, no quality marks off the rep. Everyone wins.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

I knew a family where the brothers all had the same first name. When anybody would call for them without mentioning a nickname or a middle name, they would just pass the phone around saying, "Oh, you must be trying to reach my brother, I'll give him the phone."

Personally, I do nothing, because I would hate to have that job, so I feel kinda sorry for them.

 

[Muspelheim]

Thing is, though, it is irritating when I'm drawn away from whatever I'm doing, be it eating, reading, playing a game etc to answer the phone to someone who has zero chance of selling something to me anyway, all they've done is interrupt my leisure time for nothing.

That is true, it's irritating. However, my point is that the person on the other end of the line isn't doing that because they want to interrupt your leisure time. Believe me, I hated the time of the shift when office hours were drawing to a close and people could be expected to be home on their own time. Because of that very reason. They're not calling because they're dicks, rather because the firm that has placed the order (or the telemarketing firm itself) aren't putting in the effort to keep the numbers registers in keeping with whatever they are trying to flog.

(And hell, between you and me, I wish I could mail an apology card to all the people I bothered.)

Honestly, what I'd like to see would be legislation regulating how telephone sales are done. A respected opt-out feature that is easy to sign up for and free of charge that makes your number barred from the telemarketing databases or somesuch. I believe there are registers that lets you opt-out from telemarketing calls already, but they should be much more binding. That'd at least encourage the firms to limit their calls to businesses that might actually have a use of 20 kilo buckets of soap.

"It's okay that we're doing bad things, because nobody's getting killed by it!" Huh?

And yeah - bad things. Nuisance, at the very least. Harassment and annoyance, typically. Preying on instinctive politeness and, all too frequently, the elderly and/or befuddled. I don't reserve sympathy for "just doing the job" - especially when the job description includes "banal minion of evil" right off the bat.

Heaven's above... I can see the thread of logic, but that is just... Dramatic, I think is the word. But I get it. It's your opinion.

 

[Phasmal]

Ew.

Lucky you haven't had to work in a call centre I guess.
I have.

Mine was an inbound call centre so I wasn't calling people up unless they had asked me to, but still, you wouldn't believe how shitty people can be. Or maybe you would I guess.

Nah, I'm just not into messing with people just trying to make a living.

 

[Frezzato]

I think I got a telemarketer fired, totally unintentional by the way. He was calling for AT&T UVerse and I said the download cap of 250GB was stupid. He tried to use that by accusing me of downloading, but I countered with the logical argument that I had two PC towers, two notebooks, some consoles, plus when you add in VOIP and HD streaming, I could imagine my household very easily exceeding the 250/month limit.[footnote]Of course, with the latest promotion I just might be tempted[/footnote] He paused, then started angrily yelling into his (I imagine) headset in agreement with me. It was something to do with "those people" and how they made his job so much harder. I tried to get him to calm down but then he yelled, "NO! I HAVE MY RIGHT TO AN OPINION!!!"

He ended it with a loud "THANK YOU!" and hung up. I never raised my voice, never said anything sarcastic, just the facts. And he cracked.

 

[Qwurty2.0]

Politely tell them I'm not interested, say goodbye, and then hang up.

You know, because they're people, just like you and I, doing their job and trying to pay the bills.

Whoa.

Whoa.

Whoa...

Treating people like... people?

This forum has truly descended into madness.