This sounds like me trying to land dates.

I just tell my three-year old that it is Nemo or Lightning McQueen on the phone. He tells them about his dumptruck, puppy, and apple juice. It is especially amusing when he is done talking to them and the survey/telemarketer is still on the line.

Just put do-not-disturb on your phone at dinner time. Vonage now offers it, as do most of the POTS carriers and other VOIP carriers.

As soon as I read "Aluminum Siding M-----f-----!!" I just burst out laughing at the thought of watching someone say that to some telemarketer or phone survey person. I admit, I might like your Dad's approach better, even if it is less effective.

At least for the media surveys and some of the political ones, telling them that I work at / own an ad agency usually results in a very quick "Sorry, you're ineligible. Goodbye!"

I just hang up. They call again, I hang up. No big deal. But I do like the idea of putting a toddler on the phone, maybe I'll try that next time.

People like you are why I don't have a landline anymore. I don't care about your "survey". I don't care how much you get paid to be an intrusive jerk. You're not getting my phone number because it's unlisted ... and it's staying that way.

Mmmm...that stuffing sure looks tasty!

Meghann, your dad rocks. :)

"If you ever call me again, I'm going to contact my lawyer" also works great on psychotic ex-girlfriends.

"Sure, I'll take your survey, but only if you'll take my survey first."

Makes me want to have Meghann's dad over for dinner so he can answer the phone. It would be like dinner theatre -- very entertaining.

@rmz: I like this--- let's compose the survey for them.

please answer with one of the following: a) rubber b) silk c) duct tape d) nothing e) all of the above but only above the waist

Question 1: What is your favorite flavor?

My mother used to keep a whistle by the phone that she'd blow into the receiver!

I start discussing the finer points of anal rape, prison sex, extreme sexual toys, veering quickly into ethical questions associated with scatophelia (e.g., "if a meat-eater (expletive) into a vegetarian's mouth, is it okay? What if they only chew but spit it out?"), using the same Buy-In techniques they try using on hapless consumers so they have to express their opinions and experiences on the matter.

Unless mom's at the table. Then I hang up muttering, "Do Not Call List. Thanks."

If the phone rings at dinner time we don't answer and let the machine pick it up.

Things I've done to telemarketers/survey people:

1. Hang up (most common response)
2. Tell them the person they're asking for died.
3. Give phone to one of the kids
4. (most fun) Ask them to hold on, put phone down by PC speaker and continue playing my game with the voulume up.
5. Put the phone down and walk away until it makes the "hang me up dumba$$" noise.

As a political pollster who puts a lot of work into the field using call centers, I'd say this advice is fairly useless as a long-term strategy of avoiding being called for political surveys, which are not subject to the Do Not Call list.

The company that is conducting the survey through the call center generally supplies the call center with a list of numbers (householded in political work) or employs Random Digit Dialing. Each survey is a "different" list of numbers for the call center, even if they just called you last week for a different survey.

If you "soft refuse" (using the above term), the call center works down the list... but if they aren't getting the number of completes they need, they will try calling back (in an order that usually goes from something like answering machines, busy, etc, down to refused).

If you participate in a survey you likely will not be marked as someone to go back to over and over again, so don't worry so much about that. Often times its really worth participating, especially in something like an Aldermanic campaign poll or a poll for some other race like Mayor. Politicians use these polls to figure out what YOU are concerned about and to figure out what solutions YOU would like to see implemented.

If its dinner time, refuse or ask them to call back at a better time. If they need you, they'll call back then. At least at my call center, you can always ask them not to call back for a particular survey and they will not call you back.

Just keep asking them to talk dirty to you, over and over.

.....I've got nosy inlaws. No way in hell I want my children talking to them on the phone, unsupervised! My solution to mealtime solicitors is caller ID/answering machine. If my family thinks that screening calls makes me an insufferable boor, too bad.

.....I only manage about three family dinners a week with everyone present, and someone's going to have to be dying on the phone for me to allow an interruption!

My favorite technique for sales calls is to attempt to sell them something instead; when we moved last, I tried to convince one rep to buy a couch we didn't want to lug. Might not get you removed from the list, but I say that if they're going to interrupt my life then at least one of us should enjoy the experience.

Of course, there's always Calvin's technique for not taking messages as well - pop a balloon and yell that you've been shot.

I hate telemarketers as much as the next guy, but survey people are a bit different.

They're gathering information for a company or government agency. This information helps economists understand the economy or helps companies create better products.

So I'm cool answering their questions most of the time. I figure somebody's got to do it, cause from the looks of things nobody else does :)

Once I stopped thinking of the phone as a summoning device my problems in this area just melted away. My phone is only turned on when I need it to be on or the couple times a day when I check my messages. 24/7 connectivity and reachability is just not necessary for the vast majority of people

There is the telemarketer's survey... I don't know where it is on the internet, though.

My old roommate would listen to the shpiel for a minute, then say "well, lemme ask YOU something...do you know who played 2nd base for the Padres in 1978? No? Then I don't wanna buy anything from you!"

It was beautiful.

This is also the same guy who, when the original "singing Billy bass" thing came out, he called the number at 3am and said "are you guys selling many of these things? 'Cause I gotta say, it's the stupidest f*cking product I've ever seen."

@IconoclasticFlow: Now all you need to do is keep a balloon near the phone at all times.
(Which, in my experience with my four little sisters, is actually more likely to happen than you think. :] )

I always ask them how much they're going to pay me for my time answering their questions. When they tell me nothing, I say that they're getting paid to ask the questions, so I should be getting paid to answer them. That always causes a pause till their next response of asking me again. Then I start swearing at them. I start with "then fuck off!" I was amazed at one that listened to me call her every word known to get you an FCC fine if it was a radio station for almost 10 minutes. Then she hung up.
Here's the best part, she claimed the survey was for the US government.

If you don't want to be quite so forceful as threatening a lawsuit, a simple "No thank you. Please remove me from your call list" will also work.

They will only remove your name if you explicitly ask them to in some fashion.

My brother made a copy of this device:

http://www.engadget.com/2005/09/12/the-telecrapper-2000/

The calls he recorded are really funny. Almost makes me wish I had a land line again..well..no, it doesn't. Neat little invention though.

"I'm so glad you called, I need someone to tell me how to get blood out of a carpet, I mean a whole lot of blood"

Back in the pre no call list days my amoral pal figured that hanging up was only shifting the problem to someone else. He would always say, "wait, there is someone at the door, I will be right back." Then put the phone down. One marketer actually waited 15 minutes before he gave up.

You guys who think of ways to be the biggest a-holes as possible to the minimum wage pollsters and telemarketing shlubs are real heroes. Yeah, I know...they should get other minimum wage jobs like McDonalds before taking work that threatens they holy sanctity of dinnertime for the two seconds as it takes you to hang up the phone. Unprincipled MFers!

Anyway, my own polling days matches Sicilian's experiences exactly and the original poster's, not at all. The OP's experience sound much more there must be some fundraising or telemarketing involved.

Granted, I stopped abut 7-8 years ago, but there were two types of surveys...one where we were given your name for something you signed up for, and random-generated # surveys. In either case, a refusal, whether hard or soft, was the end of it. There was no comission involved so why would we want to call someone back who didn't want to participate? For the second type, it didn't matter how eagerly you participated or nastily you refused, you're not getting called again. How useful or telling is a poll where you only call the same people over and over? Polling that unscientifically makes me doubt the OP's veracity to an extent, given that he says he worked for "one of the biggest."

Finally, Greasy Thumb, let me ask you a question. Let's say you are eating dinner and you're interrupted by a knock on the door. It's a neighbor you vaguely recognize.He asks if you have a spare pen.

Do you demand he pay you for it, and when he doesn't, tell him to get lost and cuss him out? Why not? He's wasting more of your time than the pollster you won't just hang up on.

No one is pretending, least of all the shlub calling, that you taking the time to do it is anything less then a gracious favor. You're not as clever as you think you are.

@MrEleganza: Because you have to live next to the neighbor. You'll eventually see him again, whether you know him or not. Chances are you'll never talk to the telemarketer again in your life.

Besides, the reason for messing with telemarketers isn't necessarily to piss them off. It's because it's funny. Maybe you should get a sense of humor.

We put on a cassette tape about the ten commandments.

@capturedshadow: I like that one. +10 to your buddy.

I always ask the caller what they are wearing, then continue to do fake phone sex. That usually gets them off the line pretty quickly.

@GirlGoneRiled

I've been trying to make that very point for years. My wife used to just pick up the phone and answer no matter what. We have caller id. You know it's not anyone you want to talk to. Why answer? Hell, I don't answer the phone a lot of the time just because I don't feel like talking to anyone. I even do it at work.

> "If you ever call me again, I'm going to contact my lawyer" also works
> great on psychotic ex-girlfriends.

If that works, she's not really a psycho. ;-)

I don't understand why people answer calls they don't know. I haven't talked to a survey taker or any other kind of telemarketer in YEARS. They call back but eventually give up. Anybody who has any legitimate reason to talk to me will leave a message. Anybody who refuses to leave a message doesn't get to talk to me.

i tell charter they are being recorded, do not call me, send me a copy of the company's do not call policy and tell them i am going to sue them, and i still get 1 call from charter at 7pm everyfreaking day. >:

I also worked for one of the largest Market Research Companies in the country, and believe me,sometimes these tactics dont work either. My job was as a "refusal converter" and I actually called people who had refused up to 50 times, people who had threatened to sue, and just really did not want to hear from us again. Some companies in this business have no integrity at all.

Gee MrEleganza, if I was rude to my neighbor, he wouldn't come back. How come you can't take the same hint?

@VG10: Here's a tip: don't make empty threats.

Back when I had time on my hands, I used to use the telemarketer counterscript and the selling something back routine. Now that I ignore pretty much anyone's call, I find I'm never bothered - just wipe the answering machine's memory every 30 days or so when someone complains it's full. Come to think of it, I don't even know why we have it turned on. Anyone who I'd return a call to has my cell phone number anyway.

My mom used to keep a whistle next to the phone and blow it as loud as she could. That usually ended the phone call pretty quick.

I love the toddler idea. What great entertainment! "Here honey, it's the Genie from Aladdin. He wants to know what to get you for your birthday. Why don't you get your list?"

And yeah, I'm a shlub. I don't care. Telemarketers are like ticks - I'm sure God or nature intended that they serve some purpose, but darned if I can figure out what it is.

I finally found a great solution to this. I don't answer the phone at dinner time. Also, nobody important uses landlines any more, so I pretty much don't answer my landline, ever. If they're important, they'll call my mobile. Otherwise, they're in a perpetual bit bucket.

Also, AT&T Illinois' "Privacy Manager" ensures that anyone who's phone number cannot be resolved to a real name gets sent into a recorded hell.

@GirlGoneRiled: Thank you! I swear people have a Pavlovian response to the phone ringing. It's ringing to alert you someone is calling, not to make you drop everything you're doing so you can run and answer it. If you're busy, you're busy. If you don't feel like answering the phone, don't. Let voicemail pick it up. If the sound of ringing disturbs your dinner, shut the ringer off. It's really rather easy.

Just wish there was some way to make my cell phone (and the wifey's) ring my land line phones when I was at home. I've got land line phoens all ove rhte house but like to leave my cell on the 'to go' table when I come into the house.

For the record, the pollster pitch is pure crap. As a former statistician for the Census Bureau, I can tell you that most polls aren't even close to representative.

My wife worked on Capitol Hill for around 6 years, and I can tell you that politicians could give a damn about polling results. They don't want to know what you care about. They might possibly use them to guide their talking points so that they can feign interest in a popular topic, but they don't actually care.

In addition to that, a majority of political polls and surveys aren't neutrally worded and can't even come close to scientifically proving that the instruments that they use are free from bias. it takes entirely too much time and $$$ to produce a valid survey instrument for them to undertake the effort.

Just remember, why are they poling you? They want something. A response that they can aggregate and then sell. They'll give the summary stats away, but then sell the full results, or they have to his a response # to get paid. By completing the survey, you allow them to continue to exist.

Call me all you want, but I'll never feed the animals and give a response that gets credited to a production total. My wife hates it, but I'll take the survey and refuse any question. It's better than a non-response because it jacks up the data to have a response with all refusals.

I will, however, answer any survey given to me by the Census Bureau.

You guys are cracking me up. Something tells me that most of you answer politely (if at all) and maybe end the call prematurely and slightly rudely. I don't believe that you do these things you claim too that often, if at all.

With that said, I think that MrEleganza has an excellent point. People are people, no matter if you live next to them or not. Humans. Like us, right? Full of feelings and all of that other crap. Just something to keep in mind.

Well I love how every one tortures people for just doing their job. I'm a telemarketer myself and when someone tells me that their busy I say Ill call them back later, when they say they want to be taken off the list I take them off the list.

I just have a question for all those who LOVE to torture telemarketers have you tried just telling them to leave you alone, or maybe signing up for the Federal do not call list. The good companies follow that list.

By the way, I have a website where I have begun to write the "adventures" in the world of telemarketing.

http://talesofthetelephone.blogspot.com/

What I wanna know is: how do you stop those annoying pre-recorded election messages from clogging up your voicemail? It seems no do-not-call list or threats of lawyers can stop election campaign calls...

I used to work as a telemarketer making cold calls. It's a low-paying, thankless job. But starving students need money for books and food! There really is no reason to be rude: it may make you feel good to be mean, but it's just not necessary. just say "no thanks, goodbye" and hang up.

ok after reading each comment on this damn post, im going to be the artard that asks, whats with the "aluminum siding M----F---- joke", i dont understand and i feel ashamed.