h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Does anyone else think there should be a law to stop double glazing companies and other telesale marketers phoning you at any time of the day or night to try and sell their products?

During normal business hours of 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, I have no objection to them calling. (mainly cos I'm at work ) But I got a call last night at 9.15 PM Don't they realise that many people have children asleep by this time fo night?

The same goes for door to door sales persons!

Grrrrrrr

I'm in telesales, but that's different than telemarketing. Half of telesales is account maintenence and expansion, and the other half involves business to business contacts.

Telemarketing involves making cold calls all day to sell products or services to individuals. As a result, the only times they can get ahold of anyone is between 5 and 9 PM or on weekends when no one's at work.

Add that to the fact that who's calling you may not be in the same time zone (!) and it creates a mess. Your best bet is to ask to be taken off their lists, but you'd be surprised how many business run their cold calls through the phone book.

I'm not fond of telemarketers either, but for those of us in B to B telesales... well, I can understand what it's like on the other end. Please be polite, the person on the other end is just doing their job.

-Eagle1

Ahh appologies, telemarketing is what I meant.

If you were employed to beat someone over the head with a large blunt instument, would you expect them to be polite because you were only doing your job?

If I wanted double glazing, I would look in the yellow pages for glaziers. I don't need 3 calls a week from the same company offering something I don't want.

I have asked several times to be removed from their lists, only to be called again a few days later.

It may be an effective marketing policy, but that doesn't make it acceptable.

Well, I'd disagree about your analogy about being hit with a blunt instrument, but do agree about it being unacceptable on the part of the companies there. I know there's a few technologies out there (caller ID for instance) which can allow you to screen and block calls. Maybe if it gets bad enough you should look into them?

-Eagle1

P.S. That's a distinction in the US between telesales ad telemarketing, by the way. Such a distinction may not be there in England. Sorry about the bias.

I subscribe to Caller ID specifically to avoid telemarketing calls. Therefore I also avoid insulting the caller.

That doesn't solve the problem of disturbing sleeping babies, thought.

Telemarketers are prohibited from calling after 9 PM in the US. And they must cease calling you for the duration of one year if you ask to be removed from their call list. For some reason, non-profit and political organizations are exempt from these rules. Go figure.

I spend all day on the phone speaking to people who don't think they want to speak to me and yet surprisingly often find that they actually do, but I know how you feel. Admittedly I only speak to "Market Counterparties" (ie people in the industry) and not Joe Public but I know how irritating cold calling is. (Joins Eagle 1 on that side of the fence). As a rule, the people I talk to do have at least a passing interest in what I'm telling them about. If they don't we update the records and only speak to them about what they're interested in.

Those what phone and try and sell me a new kithen, double glazing or whatever usually get pretty short thrift although, as you say, they are only doing their job. I've found the simplest answer is simply say you can't possibly have a kitchen upgrade as you don't have a kitchen. Or indeed, you don't want any double glazing as you don't have any windows.

We had BT phone the other day trying to flog us one of their phone based services ... the guy who phoned was remarkably unfazed when he asked me "Can we interest you in a [insert service] for your family?" I simply told him we didn't have a phone to which he said, "Sorry for disturbing you" and put the phone down ...

Caller display does make a big difference - I put off getting it for ages, thinking it was pricey, but it's surprisingly cheap and definitely worth it!

Good way of getting rid of kitchen/window salesmen: tell them you rent

Good way number 2: pretend your an evangelical type and take the opportunity to try and convert them to something - anything: it's especially satisfying as it puts the boot on the other foot!

Good way 3: if you subscribe to the telephone preference service (the thing that says they shouldn't call you) ask for their company details as you wish to report them: amazing how quickly they go away!)

Sillys tory: I picked up the phone recently to hear a nasally female voice saying "Mrs Cloviscat?" so I said in my best pompous voice "Yes, but if you try to sell me anything I shall put the phone down!"... only to discover it was my baby daughter's paediatrician!

Tell 'em, you're busy right now but if they want to leave you their home phone number.... they never do.

If you look in your phone book(I presume you are in the UK?!?), there is a number for the "Telephone Preference service".

A friend of mine has done this and it has made a HUGE difference. They can get into trouble for contacting you if you are on the TPS.

NR Doll

We registered with the Telephone Preference Service and it does seem as if we get hardly any telemarketing calls now whereas we used to get loads and loads of the blasted things.

However, I recently heard that it can only stop those companies who have also registered with the TPS and that is apparently not very many.

Don't know why it has made a difference but who cares?
(Maybe it is because I am on h2g2 too much and no-one can phone in any more!)

I get a lot of calls from people trying to sell me classified advertising space (at work - not randomly at home (that *would* be annoying!)). I get on very well with several of them whom I deal with regularly, but there's one dodgy company which runs several "publications" who keep calling me every so often. They often try the hard sell, and it makes me so annoyed. It's got to the stage with several companies that they force me to be rude / short with them to get rid of them, because otherwise they won't take no for an answer and will keep me on the phone for ages. I would ask to speak to their manager, but I've had calls from senior people and their exactly the same, only more smug. I really hate the faux charisma and "mateyness" they put on. They're not my friends. Sometimes they ruin a perfectly good mood!

Otto

Telemarketers are a scourge, and it's a wonder anyone actually takes the job. Yeah, it's good to get on a no-call scheme, but it's also fun to bait the f*****s sometimes...

"Hello, can I speak to Mr or Mrs please?"

"There's no-one here by that name, would you like to try getting it right?"

Or

"Hello, can I speak to Mrs Gosho please?"

"May I ask who's calling?"

"Oh, I'm Karen from Acme widgets."

"Well, she's at work now, why don't you give me your number so she can call you back?"

"Oh that's ok, it's just a courtesy call"

"WELL I DON'T THINK IT'S VERY COURTEOUS NOT TO GIVE US A CONTACT NUMBER SO WE CAN PESTER YOU. DO YOUR FRIENDS KNOW YOU DO THIS FOR A LIVING? DO YOU KNOW WHAT RIDICULE AND DISDAIN THE WORLD HOLDS YOU PEOPLE IN?"

"*Whimper* ::CLICK:: "




"Hello, I'm calling to let you know that you've been pre-approved for a credit card"

"I'm replying to let you know that I work nights, and as far as my body clock is concerned, it's three-thirty in the morning right now and I've only had four hours sleep. Why don't you give me your home number so I can call *you* in the middle of the night and wake you up? "

Asking the telesales person what colour their knickers are is quite a good way of ending the call quickly.

Ooh, I never thought of that I can't wait to try it out Especially if it's a bloke

'bait the telemarketer' is my favourite sport.

Caller ID identifies telemarketers and european callers identically
as 'unavailable number' so i have to answer all calls, it might be my mum.

No telemarketer has ever pronounced my name correctly.

Official 'do not call' lists do not work.

The only effective way is to have them write 'jerk' next to your name on their list.

Best way of achieving this : " look, i'm most interested in what you have to sell me, oh...just one second please" (lay down phone next to
cradle and go back to what you were doing...after 3 minutes just hang up.

A while back, whilst clearing out a storage unit formerly owned by a boiler room telemarketer exec, we came across his call lists.
there were handwritten notes on each 'mark' that summed up what the telemarketer really thought about the guy he was calling.

I declare open season on all cold callers.

alec.

I must admit to doing something similar to people who phone the store where I work with stupid questions like

"I'm looking for a song by Kenny G, and I don't know which album it's on but I think it's called 'I'm in Love With a Vacuum Cleaner'. Could you look on your computer to see if you have it in stock?"

"Well sir, we don't have a computerised inventory because we buy up to a thousand used cd's every day, and because many of them are promo's they don't have barcodes, and barcodes is what stock control software relies upon, but if you'd like to hold for a minute or two I'll finish dealing with these five people at the register and then go to the far back of the store where our jazz section is (although why Kenny G should be filed in jazz is utterly beyond me) so I can check the tracklisting of each and every one of the 30 or so different Kenny G titles we have, because we pride ourselves on our customer service here at Acme Records, no matter how stupid the customer."

Well, the wording my not have been *quite as blunt as that, but I did walk away and leave a bloke on hold for 15 minutes last Saturday. He'd hung up by the time I got back to the phone Just no pleasing some people, is there

Personally, I dun like telemarketers any more than anyone else. But I've been there and done that in the ever-pressing need to keep the rent paid. I can aknowledge that telemarketing is a pain in the a*se, but the way people react to the people on the other end of the phone is little more than shameful at times. Telemarketers are just people trying to do a job, and trying to get the money to pay their rent/mortgage/credit card etcetera. Often they've tried calling during business hours, only to be confronted with no answer or an answering machine. So they call after business hours because it's the best time to get people and not interrupt their w*rk. And, as was mentioned, they may also be calling from outside your immediate timezone and not aware that it's only just ticked over past nine pm (which also happens to be the end of the legal calling time in Aus). Many telemarketers also work through outsourced companies, so when they say "I'm calling from company ABC", they're often calling from company XYZ on behalf of ABC - which causes problems with calling list maintainance. I know that there were several customers who I called who asked to be taken off the list - I removed them, or thought I did...but apparently the software the company gave us was buggy, so they ended up getting calls from one of my teammates a week or so later - but we couldn't do anything about it because it wasn't our software and we couldn't maintain it.

But honestly - most often when a telemarketer calls, you've not spoken to them before - you may have spoken to someone they work with, but not that person in particular. Instead of becoming abusive and trying to f**k with their head, how hard is it to simply say "I've already said no, thank you" and hang up quietly? Regardless of the jokes made, telemarketers are people too...and as I said, just trying to do a job and keep a roof over their head...

Addendum: They also have scripts and protocol to follow, so if they're calling for Mrs Such&Such and get MrSuch&Such, often the script won't let them follow through with the calls - which is why you get the "Oh, this is just a courtesy call"

Also, working in a call centre, they often work with automatic diallers and so don't actually have extensions, so CAN'T leave a number to be contacted back on - nevermind that the dialler dials for them so they've not got the space of time to accept an inbound call anyway...

Hmm... a bit of cross-border information:

Here, in Germany, there is actually a law that prohibits cold calling private house holds. So we don´t really have the problem here.

I forgot who it was, but somebody at the beginning was whining about telemarketers only doing their job and that people should acknowledge this.

Well, if you are doing this job, do it right. Part of it is getting yelled at...

And I knwo what I am talking about... I partly earn my money doing this in a btb-environment...

Ouzo

The people are trying to do their job properly...No matter what job you're doing, though, NEVER is it stated in the job description that you have to put up with people yelling at you and abusing you for doing what you can to earn your money...Yes, it goes without saying that people are going to abuse telemarketers, but there often is no need to.