Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

How to deal with telemarketers

This is beautiful.

Salesman: Good evening, can I speak to the person who looks after your telephone bills please? I’d like to tell you how we can save you money on what you’re paying now.

Malarkey: I’m sorry, we haven’t got any telephones.

Salesman: What do you mean you’ve got no phones, I’m calling you now aren’t I?

Malarkey: Yes I know, clever isn’t it? We use tin-cans joined together with string. It’s not perfect but we pay nothing for our calls. (Makes string twanging noise) (Twang!)

More here… [via MetaFilter]

[five minutes later]

I’m in pain after reading How to deal with kitchen salesmen from the same blog.

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Comments

0 responses to “How to deal with telemarketers”

  1. Squander Two

    Amateurs.

    If there’s a pause for a while before they come on, it means they’re using an automatic dialler. If that happens, immediately demand to speak to a manager. Explain that you have been on hold for five minutes, and that the only reason you held on was to find out who was making the call and make an official complaint. The great thing about this method is that they can’t find out quickly whether you’re telling the truth: they’re going to waste some time and money on verifying your claim. Even once their records tell them it’s not true, they’re still going to have the nagging suspicion that it’s their records that are wrong, because dialler software is really bad. And they will investigate your claim, because, if you’re right, they’re breaking the law (and you could always let them know that you know that): a pause of a couple of seconds is OK, but ringing people just to have them on hold is against telecoms regulations in the UK.

    Why just annoy one person when you can worry half the company?

  2. Matteus Von Mustard

    I just tell the telemarketer that someone in my household is really interested in speaking to them and then put the phone down on the desk. Easy for me, results in decreased deficiency for them and gives the poor wage-slave a brief respite from talking to people.

    you can read about my technique here: http://apocalypsewatch.blogspot.com/2005/02/taking-action-1-telemarketing.html

  3. Matteus Von Mustard

    That other comment is really good though, if it works that’s wicked.