Telemarketing
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Telemarketer : I am calling from CP market research. We are conducting survey on current economic condition. I would like to ask you few questions. Do you live at unit x / y street ? Me : No Telemarketer : Is your number 02xxxxxx ? Me : No Telemarketer : What is your occupation ? Me : I am a burglar. Long pause..... How long is this going to take because I am in the middle of something....
Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf * Math is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated.
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Telemarketer : I am calling from CP market research. We are conducting survey on current economic condition. I would like to ask you few questions. Do you live at unit x / y street ? Me : No Telemarketer : Is your number 02xxxxxx ? Me : No Telemarketer : What is your occupation ? Me : I am a burglar. Long pause..... How long is this going to take because I am in the middle of something....
Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf * Math is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated.
Don't get me started on the cold-calls we get from offshore call centres. My wife's approach is more direct; if she hears an Indian voice at the other end she tells him/her I don't know have any friends in India and she hangs up. :)
"I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot." — Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68). "I don't need to shoot my enemies, I don't have any." - Me (2012).
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Telemarketer : I am calling from CP market research. We are conducting survey on current economic condition. I would like to ask you few questions. Do you live at unit x / y street ? Me : No Telemarketer : Is your number 02xxxxxx ? Me : No Telemarketer : What is your occupation ? Me : I am a burglar. Long pause..... How long is this going to take because I am in the middle of something....
Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf * Math is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated.
Many years ago, when answering machines were a novelty, I got one for the house. I recorded a message, in my very best Mexican accent, "Sorry senor, they're not here right now. I'm just here to pick up their TV and stereo and jewelry and stuff for cleaning. Leave a message and they'll prob'ly call you back." It was good fun... But it backfired. A few weeks later I got a call from the police at work, to tell me that my neighbor had called them to report that my house was being burgled. I told them not to bother checking it out, and explained the misunderstanding, then had to deal with the snoopy neighbor when I got home. I changed the message...
Will Rogers never met me.
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Don't get me started on the cold-calls we get from offshore call centres. My wife's approach is more direct; if she hears an Indian voice at the other end she tells him/her I don't know have any friends in India and she hangs up. :)
"I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot." — Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68). "I don't need to shoot my enemies, I don't have any." - Me (2012).
I have an air horn beside the phone for the day when I finally get a human being at the other end of one of those PPI calls... :-D
Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water
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Telemarketer : I am calling from CP market research. We are conducting survey on current economic condition. I would like to ask you few questions. Do you live at unit x / y street ? Me : No Telemarketer : Is your number 02xxxxxx ? Me : No Telemarketer : What is your occupation ? Me : I am a burglar. Long pause..... How long is this going to take because I am in the middle of something....
Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf * Math is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated.
When we lived in Westminster we used to get a lot of calls offering debt consolidation as was popular then. Twat: We can consolidate all your debts into a single payment. Me: I don't have any debts. Twat: What about your mortgage? Your car loan? Credit cards? Me: I own a beach front house and two apartments in the city all paid for CASH [They're in Hungary but no one asked]. This appartment is in Westminster and is worth over 1/2 million pounds [I never mentioned it wasn't my flat :-D]. I have a family car and a vintage sports car both paid for. I have no loans, credit cards or any debts of any sort beyond the £50 telephone bill that arrived this morning and will be paid by direct debit in a day or two. When I want to buy something, EVEN A HOUSE, I use my money to buy it and not a loan. Now how do you think you can help? Twat: Err...
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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I have an air horn beside the phone for the day when I finally get a human being at the other end of one of those PPI calls... :-D
Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water
I can handle them up to the point when they call me 'mate' or 'pal' or some such 'friendly name'. That is the point I tell the sunshine to go elephant them self.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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I can handle them up to the point when they call me 'mate' or 'pal' or some such 'friendly name'. That is the point I tell the sunshine to go elephant them self.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
Auntie Beeb touched on something similar many years ago. Their reporter said that some call centres were employing UK nationals to try and help them to practice UK accents. They'd also give them morning updates on weather, road conditions, sport, etc, to try and convince the hapless victims they phone that they're UK-based. One of them called me once and asked me if I'd had a great day at work. I said, yeah, it's not bad for 11am on Saturday. How the hell did he know where I was. :rolleyes:
"I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot." — Ramón Maria Narváez (1800-68). "I don't need to shoot my enemies, I don't have any." - Me (2012).
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When we lived in Westminster we used to get a lot of calls offering debt consolidation as was popular then. Twat: We can consolidate all your debts into a single payment. Me: I don't have any debts. Twat: What about your mortgage? Your car loan? Credit cards? Me: I own a beach front house and two apartments in the city all paid for CASH [They're in Hungary but no one asked]. This appartment is in Westminster and is worth over 1/2 million pounds [I never mentioned it wasn't my flat :-D]. I have a family car and a vintage sports car both paid for. I have no loans, credit cards or any debts of any sort beyond the £50 telephone bill that arrived this morning and will be paid by direct debit in a day or two. When I want to buy something, EVEN A HOUSE, I use my money to buy it and not a loan. Now how do you think you can help? Twat: Err...
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
When I still lived in the UK the "no win no fee" claims industry was in high gear. As well as being cold called regularly (despite being ex directory), you could get hassled and literally followed by a whole range of people with clipboards in the middle of town asking if I'd had an accident in the last year. I used to love taking them up on their Spiel, occupying their time for up to half an hour with details of where I'd fallen over a missing paving slab in town somewhere and how the twisted ankle I'd suffered had prevented me from driving to see clients, leaving me out of pocket. At the end when they wanted my details to set up an appointment with an "accident specialist lawyer" I'd say something like "and therein lies the moral of the story. I was too busy staring at this girl's behind and wasn't looking where I was going, so it's completely my fault" and walk off. I have also seen it from the other side of the fence though. I did cold calling at a truly terrible telemarketing company for about a month when I was 18. I was young and needed the money. When I saw my pay packet was incomplete I went to the admin office and saw a queue of about 20 other people there complaining about the exact same thing. Admin couldn't (or wouldn't) help us so we went one by one into the management office, each person telling the management to elephant off and then walked out. A few years later I took a job doing B2B IT sales to pay off my student loan which also involved barbaric amounts of cold calling. Again I needed the cash and they paid me pretty well because I was doing international sales on account of me being fluent in German. There the problem was that although I was calling German, Austrian and Swiss companies, the number they provided us with was a UK number. So clients in Europe had to call an overseas number to order from us and instead of localising the main website and store, they built a completely new website which was totally unusable and full of language errors. We also didn't have any German-specific promotional stuff to send to clients either. It's no wonder we didn't sell very much. I actually knocked up some Html newsletters and flyers based on the English templates which got me an impromptu interview with the head of development, but he was far more interested in his messenger chat than actually listening to me answer his questions so I could tell instantly that working for him would be difficult at best. The experience has motivated me though. I knew pretty quickly that I didn't want to be
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Telemarketer : I am calling from CP market research. We are conducting survey on current economic condition. I would like to ask you few questions. Do you live at unit x / y street ? Me : No Telemarketer : Is your number 02xxxxxx ? Me : No Telemarketer : What is your occupation ? Me : I am a burglar. Long pause..... How long is this going to take because I am in the middle of something....
Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf * Math is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated.
I get the Indian voice telling me it is from Micrsoft and wants to repair my computer. CCO Your windows computer has a problem Me I don't have a windows computer -!CLICK!- I think I will go with the air horn next time, I'm a great believer that a little pain is an excellent teacher.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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I can handle them up to the point when they call me 'mate' or 'pal' or some such 'friendly name'. That is the point I tell the sunshine to go elephant them self.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
I have incoming caller ID. If I don't know the number I don't answer the phone. No-one I don't know has ever phoned me up about something that was of benefit to me. If they are a real person they have the option to leave a message on the answer phone and then I can ignore them at my leisure later.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
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Telemarketer : I am calling from CP market research. We are conducting survey on current economic condition. I would like to ask you few questions. Do you live at unit x / y street ? Me : No Telemarketer : Is your number 02xxxxxx ? Me : No Telemarketer : What is your occupation ? Me : I am a burglar. Long pause..... How long is this going to take because I am in the middle of something....
Zen and the art of software maintenance : rm -rf * Math is like love : a simple idea but it can get complicated.
For the first few years of married life, my wife and I decided not to have a television. (This was in the days before DSL or cable modems). I used to love to field the calls from the cable or satellite companies. The scripted responses came to an abrupt halt when I would say, "I don't have a television." One guy simply said, "I... uh... I guess you don't need cable then." Another tried to convince me that I should go buy a TV. Fun times.
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I have incoming caller ID. If I don't know the number I don't answer the phone. No-one I don't know has ever phoned me up about something that was of benefit to me. If they are a real person they have the option to leave a message on the answer phone and then I can ignore them at my leisure later.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends. Shed Petition[^]
ChrisElston wrote:
I have incoming caller ID.
If I don't know the number I don't answer the phone.You just gave me an idea. I have an old laptop with its modem hooked up to the phone line, purely used to intercept the Caller ID info that gets sent between the first and second rings, and send it to a log (it was a hobby project I wrote years ago). Methinks I should extend that database to mark the undesirables as such...when one of those numbers is subsequently recognized, send ATH1 / ATH0 commands to the modem to immediately pick up/hang up...or send it fax noises... :-)
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Many years ago, when answering machines were a novelty, I got one for the house. I recorded a message, in my very best Mexican accent, "Sorry senor, they're not here right now. I'm just here to pick up their TV and stereo and jewelry and stuff for cleaning. Leave a message and they'll prob'ly call you back." It was good fun... But it backfired. A few weeks later I got a call from the police at work, to tell me that my neighbor had called them to report that my house was being burgled. I told them not to bother checking it out, and explained the misunderstanding, then had to deal with the snoopy neighbor when I got home. I changed the message...
Will Rogers never met me.
Should have changed the neighbour instead... :laugh:
Why can't I be applicable like John? - Me, April 2011
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Beidh ceol, caint agus craic againn - Seán Bán Breathnach
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Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
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Just because a thing is new don’t mean that it’s better - Will Rogers, September 4, 1932
