Telemarketers…
By blog on May. 1, 2009.
For this entry, I must set the mood. Follow me, if you will. 7:00pm this evening. My SO and I are just sitting down to a nice dinner she had cooked. The phone rings… “Good evening sir, I wanted to talk to you about your Gas account, are you happy with your current provider?” Blah, blah, blah, blah. “No, I am not happy with my current service provider, because they don’t stop people like you from calling when I am about to sit down to dinner.”
The telemarketer realises my frustration and asks if there is a better time to call back… Mr telemarketer, do you really think I want to talk to you? I told him that I would rather he never call back again, as I make it a rule never to buy anything from anyone cold calling me. The telemarketer politely finished up the conversation and I went back to my lovely dinner. After dinner, I went and signed up with the Telephone Preference Service on their website so I wouldn’t get any more of those annoying calls.
It is kind of amusing to ponder all the different ways you can get rid of telemarketers though. Before I get into that, however, I do want to say that if you are a telemarketer, please don’t take this personally. I know that it is a job which sucks, that you are often met with rudeness and open hostility, and I am almost certain that you aren’t respected by the people you work for, it is just a matter of the people who you call needing a way to vent their frustrations at the annoying intrusions into their lives that this kind of marketing is. That being said, lets get onto the good stuff!
In The 40 Year Old Virgin, Trish tells a person who she believes to be a telemarketer to go jump off a tall building. This is too harsh for reality if you ask me, but still funny. In Seinfeld, when Jerry is called by a telemarketer, he asks them for their home phone number, saying he will call them back when it is convenient for him… When the telemarketer says they aren’t supposed to do that, Jerry suggests that the telemarketer wouldn’t like to be called at home, the telemarketer says no, and Jerry responds with ‘Now you know how I feel’ and promptly hangs up. Another one is to only respond to telemarketers with the word yes, which will eventually get them to hang up, its funny and I do want to try it the next time I have a telemarketing call. But the greatest one that I have seen is on YouTube, Tom Mabe pranking a telemarketer by pretending to be a homicide detective. This is hilarious and I so want to try this out!
Ahhh, rant over and frustration diminished.
Category: Technology