[personal profile] cblj_backup
I just made a telemarketer hang up on me.

Caller: Can I speak to [your mother], please?
Sam: I'm sorry, she's not in right now. Can I take a message?
Caller: (rather snootily, considering) Well, is there a husband I can talk to?
Sam: No there is not; what is this regarding?
Caller: We'll try back another time.
Sam: Well, you see, you've been calling us a lot lately and I'd really like to know what this is regarding so that if you're trying to sell us something I can report your company for violating the no-call agreement --
Caller: (talking over top of me) We'll call again. *click*
Sam: *stares at telephone*

Awesome.

Date: 2008-10-28 05:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] revieloutionne.livejournal.com
I would say that the telemarketer here was calling for a company your mother already has service with (probably credit cart, expecially if it's Discover. Discover knows how to call people. A lot), which means that they're allowed to call under the national DNC list rules. Even if the call is pure "buy this additional service!" Hanging up that quickly meant you couldn't ask to be put on the company DNC.

Personally, when people point out being on national DNC to me, I just go ahead and put them on company DNC while trying to explain how they got the call. I don't succeed too often, though, because the kind of person who most needs to hear WHY they GOT A CALL when THEY'RE ON THE DO NOT CALL LIST is the kind of person least likely to listen.

Also, if you want to be slightly humane to the tmarketers, don't ask "what is this regarding" in those words. It's bad enough being asked that all the time, but getting the same phrasing from 90% of the people who ask? Makes it worse.

Of course, since I'm one of the nice telemarketers and my production is low, I may need find another job even before I reach the end of the year I'd be moving on at the end of anyway...

Date: 2008-10-28 05:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] copperbadge.livejournal.com
Telemarketing is a soulless job, I agree -- I trained for it but quit (I'm terrible on phones and the job wasn't what I expected).

Ordinarily I just say "we're not interested" and hang up, because I don't want to waste peoples' time, but these people were calling multiple times a day, and the guy I was talking to was really rude about the whole "Well, does she have a HUSBAND?" thing, as if he were somehow entitled to our time whilst calling in the middle of a working day, y'know? :D

Date: 2008-10-28 07:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] revieloutionne.livejournal.com
Oh, certainly there are telemarketers out there who take the inherent intrusion and make it worse. And the multiple calls a day is either faulty dialers or, more likely, people purposefully dispositioning calls incorrectly to make them more frequent, except hat I've only known the people who do that at my call center to do that to the "rude" ones (though some of my coworkers have a much broader definition of rude than I).

Also, assuming the telemarketers calling are following their rules properly, "We're not interested" followed by hanging up, if you're not the person the call's aimed at, or are but haven't identified yourself as so? Gets you cycled back into the list. We need to get to our contact and make enough of the pitch that we can be sure they have some idea what they're refusing, so we can all pretend they're refusing for a reason specific to the service and not on principle. (Exceptions granted for DNC and "I can't afford" and some rarer cases I can't name off the top of my head.)

At least I'm selling something I actually think is worth having, even if some of my calls make me despair a bit for humanity. (No, a shotgun in your lap is not protection against identity theft, sir. Nor a giant black lab, or not using the card, or having bad credit to begin with, or... yeah. I've gotten the shotgun answer more than once to the "Okay, you're not interested, but what protection do you have?" bit.)

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