Death to Idiotic Telemarketers!

[gridlore]

OK, so I'm home sick today. The Creeping Yuck, been fighting it for a week, today it was just too much to get behind the wheel. Today, therefore, is given over to playing Nethack badly and cursing the fact that I'm still not able to upload my mind into a bush robot.

Then the phone rings. My cell phone, to be precise. Which is very weird, since usually the only person who calls me is kshandra, and she knows I'm home be miserable (moreso than usual, I should say.)

I get up to get the phone, it's not a number I recognize, and answer it. It's a telemarketer from the Mercury News. He starts his spiel, and not wanting to waste his time (I know a few people who have work this gig in the past, and they tell me that they'd rather hear a polite "not interested" early on rather than go through the entire script and get hung up on) I immediately said "Sorry, I'm not interested."

"Well," says he, "when was the last time you read The Mercury News?"

"a few days ago at work, but I.."

No use, he was off and running, despite the fact that I was still speaking! I stated clearly that I was not interested, and that I wanted this number removed from their call list.

Finally, he stops after saying that all he needs is my address to set me up for an offer I've refused eight times in 30 seconds.

With as much self-control as I could muster, I told him to get a supervisor. I took a few tries to get it through his skull that I wasn't giving my address, and really wanted to speak to a person in charge.

Best part? No hold. He put the phone down on the desk or table so I could hear him whinge about the "asshole" who wanted to speak with a supervisor.

When the supervisor got on the line, I politely told her about my issues with the call, starting with the fact that they called a cell phone, going onto to the bulldozer sales pitch, and ending with the fact that I overheard the rep's conservation. She sounded a bit put out by what had happened. I got an apology and a promise that the rep would be "spoken to about his pitch" and that my number would be marked as a mobile.

Crossposted to my journal and bad_service

Comments

Then there's my technique

[capplor.livejournal.com]

As soon as I recognise that this is not a person I wish to speak to (and lately there've been a LOT of surveys) I hang up with no comment. Perhaps not the politest, but it wastes the least time, and doesn't add to my own frustration level.

[kengr]

And the supervisor is clueless as well. Unless you used number portability to retain an old *non*-cell number, the *exchange* part of the number is sufficient to determine that a number is a cell phone.

So they are just too cheap to bother getting a list of what exchanges are cell phones.

[darthgeek.livejournal.com]

Cheap? It's free at Telcodata.us (http://www.telcodata.us</A)

[kengr]

Or at http://www.nanpa.com

But cheap can also include the labor of *programming* the list into their call system.

Assuming that their actually *is* programmable. Even though they are required to honor the federal "do not call" list a lot of places *still* use gear that can't be programmed to avoid numbers.