This telemarketer has had it up to here with all of you people at home hanging up on her every time she needs to sell you something! Randall Whited in Austin, Texas, received an earful recently, when he answered the phone shortly after hanging up on the unnamed telemarketer.
“If you don’t want to get contacted if somebody wins, then don’t put your name in it. That was just such a girl thing to do. Wimp,” the telemarketer yelled.
Whited said he called the company to complain, but not much happened.
“Someone that I spoke with said that it might have been her 400th hang up and she was just frustrated herself but that’s not my fault,” Whited said
We think her tirade seems pretty gentle, considering the things we can imagine someone saying, but then again our brains have been seared by the vulgarity of the Internet.
And as for the telemarketer, if all Whited did was hang up on her then we’re surprised she’d take it so hard. She should read some of the things our commenters say they’ve said/done to telemarketers.
“Angry telemarketer calls back, berates man after he hangs up” [WIS News 10] (Thanks to Megan!)
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I used to have fun with them as a kid. If it was a carpet cleaner, I would deny that we had carpets and claim wall to wall interior grass. The pause at the other end of the line and the “what?” almost made it worth the interruption. Sometimes I would put on a thick Welsh accent and pretend not to understand what they were saying or feign deafness and act as though the telemarketer was a relative calling. If they were polite, I stayed polite while stringing them along a bit. If they were rude I would whistle into the phone. This phase lasted until my mother found out what I was up to and started playing games with them herself
I have only a cell now.I almost miss them. Almost. Poor little parasites.
I worked as a telemarketer for about six months. Every third or fourth call would result in an angry, foul-mouthed tirade from the victim. I can’t say I blame them, but what they failed to realize is that the people actually doing the calling have little to no control over the list of people that we call. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re on a Do Not Call list or you’ve told people repeatedly to never call back, because we don’t have a choice in the matter. The management handles the lists of who to call, and if we don’t do our best to get results on each call then we lose our jobs.
We make notes in the record when someone requests not to be called, but the management just deletes those notes from the system without looking at them most of the time. That’s why a lot of our “customers” would get called every day of the week at dinnertime despite being on the Do Not Call list and yelling at us to never call them back.
A bit off topic, but that was my telemarketing experience in a nutshell.
Yup, it is rude.
I choose my own actions in life. My own manners, my own ethics and my own morals. They have nothing to do with yours. Or anyone else’s.
What someone else does right or wrong has nothing to do with me. I and no one else chooses how I conduct myself on the phone or anywhere else.
Do you feel any differently?
I do not care if someone calls me unsolicited. That is a person trying to make a living. It takes three seconds to say “Thank you, I’m not interested” and hang up.
We live in a day and age where people have decided to model their conduct based on the lowest common denominator. Instead of being the bigger person, people say “they did it first.” Basically, people are looking for an excuse.
Well, you are your own person. Conduct yourself as you wish.
I would suggest making sure that people not assume they are talking to a telemarketer the moment the person asks for you. When I worked at a bookstore, one of my jobs was to call people and let them know when they books they had ordered had come in. Every so often I’d get someone who’d hang up on me (or say very rude things) as soon as I asked for them. So I’d notate in the account that I’d tried to contact them and what had happened. If they hadn’t called or come by the store on their own to check on their book within a week, back to the publisher it went.
Er…that should be “*the* books they ordered” not “they books”
Been checking out The Consumerist for months. I had to register to comment on this one.
I have been getting telemearketter calls from Card Services, carpet cleaning and Auto extended warranties. I have my number in the FTC’s Do Not Call list, been there for years but I still get calls. THese people have finally pissed me off and I lost it 2 weeks ago. I yelled an expletive in the order of go have sex with yourself and never to call me again. They have *69 and called me back. It was the supervisor of the telemarketer demanding I apologize to the person and to never talk that way again to him!
I hung up and they didn’t. They were on the line holding up my phone for close to 20 minutes! I really should have told them to apologize to me for disturbing me at close 9.00 PM I swear it was that late.
I temped at a reception desk, at the kind of office where the only calls the execs wanted were from people who knew the direct lines. So, I had to figure out if the calls I got were solicitors or the frequently misdicrected customer, and say things like “and to what is this call referring?” Once the solicitors realized they were being blocked, some of them would start shrieking at me, as if that sort of behavior would prove that they had legitimate business.
Happened to me once. Let’s just say they certainly didn’t try for a third call.
The story is really funny. Although the article from the link at WIS News 10 left me scratching my head. What was she talking about?
If you don’t want to get contacted if somebody wins, then don’t put your name in it. Huh? What does that even mean?
And then the last line of the article, Whited says the Attorney General’s office told him the company broke Federal Trade Commission regulations by not releasing the information. What information? There’s nothing else even in the article about anyone not releasing any information. Did somebody write that article stoned or something?
@Shadowman615: A little digging reveals that the company identified itself as Awards Claim Center, so the telemarketer presumably was meaning either “We’re only calling you because you put your name in for an award” (sure) or “If you don’t put your name in for an award, we won’t have any reason to call you again.” The FTC reference is to the OP’s calling the company and being stonewalled about the nature of their business. The story got pretty chewed up by WIS.
Looks like this outfit is straightforward scam, not telemarketing:
[800notes.com]
I have a friend who works as a telemarketer. It’s one thing when he gets hang-ups, but he’s also had people threaten to come down to the office and shoot him. If you are on the do-not-call list, file a complaint. If you aren’t don’t get upset about it.
On a funny side note, at a previous job he once had to call someone who had won a drawing for a $2000 canoe in a raffle. The winner’s wife hung up on him thinking it was a scam. He called back. That guy was really happy he did.
There is a company in my area that calls and asks you if you’ll answer a few questions for a survey. I was bored so I answered. They said they’d put me in a drawing. A couple weeks later they called and said I’d won 1/2 off on siding. I’ve won twice now!!! Now I just need to see if I can use both coupons at the same time. It seems to be a legitimate company using a sleazy tactic to get around the no-call list using the survey exemption.
Ugh, I am so glad I got rid of my landline and do everything via cell now. I remember when I was a kid my father answered the phone and it was a telemarketer asking for my mother. He said she wasn’t home and they hung up. Phone rings again, I answer, and the exact same telemarketer asks for him by name. I yell upstairs for him to pick up, and then I listen on my end as my father tells the guy, “You JUST called here.” Telemarketer literally shouts, “F*@# you, man!” and hangs up.
Yes, telemarketers are people. And they are also assholes.
@Blitzgal: That’s what I thought until these past few months. On my cell I receive a call from various numbers about twice a week. Sometimes blocked, sometimes not that all have the same message:
“This is the final notice to let you know that the warranty on your vehicle is about to expire…”
Surprisingly vague. The weird thing is is that it always leaves a message as well, usually half way through the recording; not so much the fact that my car is from ’99 and was purchased used. Then one day they started calling my work….. they are following me.
There IS a do not call list. Telemarketers are just people doing their jobs. You don’t have to listen to their whole spiel – a simple “No, thank you, but I am not interested at all.” Then hang up. Their jobs are a pain in the ass as it is, why make it worse?
@thekingb: Yes, there IS a do not call list. And I’m on it. The sleazy bastards who ignore it deserve whatever I feel like dishing out.
Also, I’ve NEVER heard of a telemarketer giving out their real name or the name and address of their company when asked, so I can file a complaint about them ignoring the DNCL. If I ask them they either (rarely) hang up, or (most often) continue with their spiel as though I hadn’t said anything. Usually their numbers are blocked on my caller ID, too.
I get Spanish speaking Telemarketers all the time (phone is in my wife’s name who has a Spanish last name). It’s funny to tell them “English por favor’ have them get a English speaking telemarketer on the line and then say “no habla English” and have them go back to the spanish Telemarketer.
My favorite thing to do is to say that I lost all my money on the midget races.
In a recent episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, Larry David pretended he was mentally retarded (can I even say that nowadays?) in order to turn someone off from renting the office next to him. Have some fun and try something outrageous next time they call. You’ll find that if you can make *them* hang up on *you*, the odds of them calling back are slim.
My best trick:
Hang up, but note the number in caller ID. Call the number back. It will ring, then click. When you hear the click, say “Hello?” as if you just answered the phone.
The telemarketer will think (s)he is connected to the person the computer dialer dialed. “Mr. Jones?” “Yes!”
Proceed to make an appointment with the window salesmen, whatever. They’ll have “your” address. They will confirm it with you. Just say yes.
This action results in salesmen going to stranger’s houses with no knowledge on behalf of “Mr. Jones”. That should be an interesting scene.
For added fun, pull this trick again and again. Make ten or twenty appointments, all over town. See if you can waste 100 hours of their time for a 30 minute investment. It’s very satisfying!
One side note: When they confirm your address, be near a computer connected to Google maps in case they ask for directions. Or just make up directions and get them lost.
You DO NOT have to take that stuff. There is a place on FTC.GOV that you can file a complaint. Use it!
I did and received a letter from the FTC confirming that they were taking the matter seriously.
@purplesun:
Hey, thats great. Good for you.
If you did though, I still wouldnt say that necessarily makes you “psychotic.”
By 2007, if you decide to take a job becoming a tele-marketer, if you don’t understand going in how hated you are going to be to the people you call (sometimes repeatedly), then I feel you deserve the treatment you get. A job is a job; i get that…But 98% of the time, you are disturbing people, and I feel little sympathy for telemarketers otherwise. You took the job, deal with the reactions you get.
Anyone still using a landline? I gave up on those 8 years ago when I got my cellphone.
@innout3x3: ding ding.
I had a friend in graduate school who, as soon as he realized it was a telemarketer (he had a difficult to pronounce last name) he would say hold on, I’ll get him. Then, after about 5 seconds, clear his throat on the line which usually prompted the pitch to begin. Then he would start meow-ing until they hung up on him. He did a really good meow. Really sounded like cat which made it all the more funny (or perhaps it was the rum and coke, it is blurry but I seriously think it was the call that would make us laugh). Unfortunately, we only got to witness 2 such performances but they were grand.
My grandfather would regularly fall asleep on the phone with telemarketers… or pretend he was senile. He’d randomly say things like “Damn it Nixon! You’re fucking up the country!” (in 2000-ish…) or start going off about the air raid sirens…
I still think his best performance was on my birthday when I was 16. Some lady called to convince him that he should buy a car phone, pay something like $250 for it a month, and it’d only have 100 minutes on it. Every time he would tell her that he wasn’t interested, she’d continue on with the script. He kept trying and trying, and I finally realized what was going on, so I dragged my 4 friends into the room to watch… He covered the mouth of the phone and started laughing, then uncovered it and let loose with a whole bunch of incoherent jibberish. It must have surprised the lady because she stopped talking and asked him if he was ok, and he started barking like a dog, then flopping the phone around, and babbling more… then he started crying and talking about the voices in his head “make them stop! make them stop!”
She hung up at that point… which was good, because me and my friends were laughing so hard that we were crying.
@NikkiSweet:
LOL at work!!!!
That is the funniest thing I’ve read today!!!!
As someone who did a few phone soliciting jobs in my youth, I must say that immediately hanging up on the intruder is much more merciful than even the polite “no”. Why? Because telemarketers are taught to counter-pitch the initial refusal. I was instructed not to let the fish off the hook until I’d gotten three very definite refusals. Unless you really have some interest in their pitch, you’re just wasting your time and theirs by staying on the line. And any telemarketer that is so thin-skinned as to get personally offended by someone refusing to let their privacy be disturbed or their private phone line be tied up with something so unimportant, really needs to find another line of work.
I usually politely ask them to hold. And I leave them on hold indefinitely.
It’s poetic justice.
There is a serious issue here that is being overlooked. And this issue is personal privacy. I live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area but my cell phone is from Arkansas, where I moved from last year. When I am not on company time, I want to be left alone! I have “No Solicitation and No Trespassing” signs on my property. Why? Because I don’t want to be bothered. I am lucky to live in a city where even city utility workers ASK before they come on your property. It’s called being polite. I don’t and won’t have a landline. I don’t even have cable, I use AT&T U-Verse.
My job is corporate security and one of the things that I have to do is to follow up on complaints from store managers about unwanted phone calls. Both from telemarketers and collection agencies. I have filed many complaints with the AG about both. ALL of our company phone numbers are on the DNC. All of them. If one of our managers blows an air horn in some tele-idiot’s ear neither I nor our management cares. These people interfere with our business. As far as collection calls go, we take our employee’s privacy VERY seriously and WILL NOT COOPERATE with them at all.
Even the congress hates telemarketers. Remember what happened just a few short years ago?
My mother always asks telemarketers why they do this. “Can’t you find some honest job, like being a prostitute? At least people want their services.”
Hey, just had to chime in here.
I have also worked as a phone rep, and most of you seem to be under the delusion that there are all kinds of “real jobs” out there that I could have gotten. I must emphatically call Bulls–t on that one; I live in Arizona, and the only jobs that don’t involve food, wiping old people-butt, or the prison system are usually Telemarketing.
I would like to see any of YOU try to find a job that pays more than 6.50 an hour doing anything else out here.
For the record, I have NEVER been anything less than polite and professional to ALL of my contacts, and have gotten threatened with rape, murder, arson, and everything else you can imagine, just so that I could eat. It’s frustrating enough having to deal with morons who have a sense of entitlement in person without having to read their snide garbage here. Try it for a day, your tune will change.
@Vastarien202: And telemarketing is a “real job?” Is that what you’re saying? Working at a fast food place pays about the same. CNA work pays about the same. What you DON’T GET is the fact that the industry itself is SCUM. I don’t give a damn how polite you were, you were INVADING THE PERSONAL PRIVACY of every person that you called. Most people don’t want to hear about siding and extended car warranties and the other garbage that people like you peddle. I just filed a suit against a funeral home that REFUSED to stop calling my wife’s cell phone. And I also filed a police report so that the next time they called, it would be considered criminal harassment. If you call me, you do so at your own risk. It might be cussing you or using my old police whistle or even firing a blank by the receiver. But they will stay off of my phone!
@Vastarien202: For the record, I have NEVER been anything less than polite and professional to ALL of my contacts, and have gotten threatened with rape, murder, arson, and everything else you can imagine, just so that I could eat.
If you ever called someone who did NOT ask to be called, then you were rude, even if your words were polite. Unwelcome cold calls by salesmen are rude, period.
@Vastarien202: It’s frustrating enough having to deal with morons who have a sense of entitlement in person without having to read their snide garbage here. Try it for a day, your tune will change.
Why would I? I’m an educated professional and can get better jobs than that.
@Vastarien202: given that choice i’d go with food, old butt wiping or prison.
You also left off cleaning.
A PERFECT opportunity to hang up on someone twice
I always thought they would call back after I hang up on them in the middle of their sell, and berate me for being so rude to them.
I’ve been called back and berated by the same douchebag telemarketers. They call up (with bogus caller ID info) claiming you’ve won a prize. I said it sounded bogus, because the prize is an SUV, and I wouldn’t enter a competition for an SUV. I said goodbye and hung up.
A few minutes later, someone called back claiming to be the manager of the previous telemarketer–using a caller ID of 000-000-0000. They berated me for passing up such an amazing prize. I said that there was no way I was going to trust a company that lied about their phone number, and hung up again.