7 Surefire Ways to Guarantee Business Failure

[Von Pookie]

Mind you it can be useful - once you've realised their problem just insist that nobody of that name lives here.

We could always tell when it was a "marketing" call--they would ask for my dad, whose name is pronounced "Vern" but is spelled "Verne". They would always, ALWAYS ask for "Vernie." Didn't matter if they were from the US or not...

 

[Oorang]

I love to play with telemarketers. I politely tell them I am not interested and ask them to remove me from their list. If the call does not end at that time I feel perfectly justified in whatever nonsense I decide to engage in

 

[Smitty]

I love to play with telemarketers.

I give them the names and numbers of people I don't like.

 

[Norie]

Another, rather sick maybe, is to tell them the person died.

Oh, how many times have they then asked for the householder -got to cover all bases.

 

[SydneyGeek]

I give them the names and numbers of people I don't like.

I've got en email address that I only give to marketers and spammers. I never hear from them again...

Denis

 

[snowblizz]

Ah. Telemarketers...

Besides the ones trying to sell me magazine subscriptions I actually had an interesting experience "recently". This past summer I was as usual working at a company in their salary office, now it was in the middle of a acquisition and merger so the organisation was mildly put fluid. The room I was sitting previously belonged to a woman who had recently left the company. However, apparently she had somekind of outward communicating funciton, with shareholders and such and was thus listed on the company pages. So suddenly the telephone is jumping off its hook with people having all sorts of wierd questions that I had no way of answering or indeed could forward to anyone, since A) I couldn't use the telephone properly and B) most people were now transferred to another phone exchange not connected to the one where I was sitting.
There was this one time I got someone, I'm guessing selling outsourcing as they sounded Indian, who wanted to talk to the IT department, and I had to tell them that I, literally, was unable to forward them there. By the sound of it they didn't quite believe me.
In retrospect it was almost fun, but at the time vastly frustrating. Because I was reduced to a complete idiot. "No sir, I do not know who does that", "no sir, I can't connect you anywhere" etc etc. It was another perfect Dilbert moment. I'm thinking about the suggestion in "Clues for the clueless" to act like you were a temp carried into the building in a black plastic bag.

 

[SydneyGeek]

A friend of mine used to ask telemarketers for thier personal phone numbers. When asked why, he'd reply that he wanted to be able to ring them at some inconvenient time. End of conversation...

Denis

 

[Peter_SSs]

In Australia we now have a "Do not call register" where you can register your phone number. Telemarketers (apart from a few exceptions) are supposed to check this register before cold-calling a number or there can be negative consequences for the calling organisation - fines I guess if prosecuted.

For me, it seems to be working very well. Rarely get any of these calls any more and if I do I press them for their organisation name, registration number etc (or that of the Australian 'employer' if they are calling from an overseas call centre) so that I can report them for breaching the "Do not call register" rules. The call usually ends quickly after that and doesn't seem to re-occur.

Before we had this register, a colleague had what I thought was quite a good system. They let their answering machine pick up every call. The message was something like ..

"Hi, this is Peter and I'm probably at home. If you have a legitimate reason for calling, please start to speak after the tone and I will pick up. Telemarketers can use this opportunity before the tone to hang up."

 

[TinaP]

Before I added my number to the US do not call registry, I got a call from a telemarketer that wanted to sell me windows. Of course, she started by saying she wasn't calling to sell me anything, but her next question was "What kind of windows do you have in your home?" I told her stained glass, which is true. The poor woman had no idea what to say next. Once she composed herself, she admitted, "Well, I guess you don't want new windows."

It was nice hanging up after talking to a telemarketer with the knowledge that I got the best of one of them without getting angry.

 

[Expiry]

I like the ideas.



A call center based in Grand Cayman?

Or even better, my last company put one in Manila...

At least they would get cheap envelopes.