Telemarketers are very annoying aren't they? Always calling when you're just about to sit down and have your tea. It seems to happen every day to me. I'm the luckiest man alive as I'm always being drawn to win a holiday to Barbados yet I seem to be spending too much on my phone....apparently. I have to have some sympathy because it's only some chap over in Delhi doing his job because no tool over here would do it. Yet still, I can't help but joke around, lead them on and hang up.

What are you experiences of telemarketers and how do you respond when they call?

no call list

No more stories folks?

A silence. Always works Raine.

JDInteractive said:

the org ate my post

I tell them I'm on the no call list and ask how they got my phone number.
they always apologize and say they wont call again.

those automated messaged are the most annoying how can you tell a recording to leave you alone

Raine said:

I know and it's always some really happy, jolly guy. It's important the public know who is behind the voice I think!

JDInteractive said:

He is called the dinner interrupter.
His main goal is to make you eat food thats gone cold by pretending to be sell cheaper telephone calls.

I screen calls like its going outta style...and if I do answer it and they start their spiel, I usually, very politly, tell them I'm not interested and to please not call anymore...if they continue to talk, I hang up...if they call back again, I get shitty...

I've had a couple of those craptastic jobs in my day, so I know what its like to have to make those awful calls. These days when they call im polite but brief: I know its your job, im not interested, good luck. I'll even let them get one good rebutal in. After that its "look, Im tryin not to scream on you, Im not interested, have a good day, etc". If im in a really good mood, I'll debate with them. If Im pissy its the !!click-up!!! and I keep it movin'.

If anyone is calling me on my house phone its probably a telemarketer, so I just tell them Veronica is not home

horatio said:

my frikkin web browser (again) wouldn't let me complete the form to put myself on this list

so if I hear a pause or a click before they say hello I hang up and continue eating my dinner.

ZombieKitten said:

Here you have to call the list people to be added to the list, but they won't do it if you have a hidden number like I do (which won't show up on people's caller displays). Wouldn't you think that people with hidden numbers are the same kind of private people who don't want telemarketers calling them? They should accomodate us even before they accomodate others!

veronikka said:

I thought that was you...

retina said:

you would think so

ZombieKitten said:

I still think it looks like that emoticon is jacking off. Such weird timing!

"Ooooh, no-call listssss..."

Byron said:

it is

veronikka said:

You didn't even let me tell you my "free steak knives" offer...

retina said:

I knew you would love it

I guess what I was doing was telemarketing for a mortgage broker a couple years ago. I was actually pretty successful at it.

Byron said:

gemini13 said:

I had a VERY short stint as a telemarketer during college, selling solar panels to old ladies lol ...I actually only worked there a day and a half. I got some old lady to agree to have someone come over for a demonstration or something, and when I told my supervisor about it, he and the company owner practically salivated and said something like "THIS is the type of person we want to get on the phone...she's old, she just wants to talk to someone...she'll buy something just to keep us there talking to her."...I felt like shit, like I had set her up .

So the next day I basically just cracked jokes about how stupid the whole thing was after every phone call I had, and the other telemarketers were laughing right along with me...which didn't sit well with the owner lol . At lunch time, he asked me into another room, and basically said I needed to cut out the jokes and be serious cuz I was disrupting the selling atmosphere, or I needed to quit. I laughed and said "I think I'll quit" lol...Gawd, I hated that experience.

Byron said:

I got out of that too because I could never offer fixed rates on loans, just those damned option ARMs. I finally started something of a revolt, explaining to everyone else what we were actually doing to these people, and I was called into the big man's office. He wanted me to stop talking to the other employees because "I was ruining morale". I told him, "This isn't The Boiler Room, and this market is going to tank because of what we are doing."

He told me that I was wrong and I quit right then and there, after a few other choice words.

They still beg me to come back, and I tell them that I would when hell froze over. And wouldn't you know it? The market is tanking.

When I was in college, I worked briefly at a phone sex agency.

During my first caller,
(oddly enough, Byron)
I (also) ended up selling some lonely old lady some solar panels.

My manager told me I wasn't supposed to do that & fired me right then & there.
[Edited 11/8/07 6:56am]

that damn value call recorded message woke me up again this morning.

every week that blasted thing calls, I've put in a complaint about them now.

I tele marketed for five years.

I've been annoying for 29.