How dare you not let me interrupt your dinner! You are such a jerk! You could at least buy one useless thing.

The nerve of some people!

Sounds like the perfect opportunity to hang up again, no?

yeah sir, i was calling from visa to make sure you were happy with our service, but now i wish fire and death upon you!

Stupid OP, why didn't you take your name off every telemarketers' list in the country?!?! How dare you get annoyed by them calling you and retaliating by hanging up on them? I just can't believe it!

It would have been more funny if the telemarketer used a phony irish accent and said "May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead" or something similarly cryptic.

I tried something fun recently with a telemarketer. I let my 4 year old handle the call.

I like to answer the phone:

"Thank you for calling Bob's Pizza and Abortion. Your loss is our sauce."

It usually takes a moment to sink in.

I've had this happen a few times. of course instead of hanging up i usually just set the phone down and wait for them to hang up (if it's a machine i press the code to get a operator say hi and then set it down) because this messes with they call quotas a lot more than just hanging up and letting them move onto the next guy.

had one stay on lime for 10 minutes just saying 'hello hello' he called back after i hung up :).

Hanging up on somebody is generally considered rude. Calling people up and bitching them out for being rude is also generally considered rude. Not sure what was being sold, but it almost seems like he may have signed up for something. I'd call this a quid pro quo rudeness thing.

Telemarketers rarely call me twice.

So it sounds like this was a call based on some survey card or contest drawing, since the caller referred to potentially being notified of winning something. However it doesn't appear that Randall has won anything.

So the telemarketer is scolding Randall for signing up to be notified of winning, when the reason for the call is not to actually notify him of a win? Brilliant.

Too bad the victim didn't use some social engineering tricks to track down the telemarketer's identity, and then call them at home a hundred times. That would really give them something to think about.

Air horn. Air horn. Air horn.

Several years ago a telemarketer called, and I hung up in the middle of her first sentence - "I'm calling to tell you about our special promotion...click" not three seconds later the phone rings again, and I pick up and she says "Ha ha!...that you are eligible for and can save you hundreds of dollars..." I hung up again. But she was so damn proud to have gotten me back on the phone to finish her first sentence, it was kind of funny.

@smokinfoo: Ah that is so wrong yet so hilarious. I have to remember that one the next time some telemarketer calls me.

My father died when I was in high school and I picked up most of the telemarketing calls that came into him since my mom couldn't handle it. This was before the DNC list so we got calls for him several times a week for months.

I learned lots of fun tricks. My favorite one was to start crying and screaming "he's dead! he's dead! can't you even leave him alone in the grave!" There were lots of other fun tricks too, including pretending to be him. The telemarketers usually believed that a teenage female was a 50-year-old man.

@smokinfoo: Dude. Wtf.

It's been posted before, but still funny:

Even better than hanging up.

Funny, the same thing happened to me yesterday but I did not pick up when they called back. I am trying to sell my timeshare on craigslist (yes, now I know not to buy timeshares new), and I keep getting calls from online timeshare listing services even though it says not to contact me with commercial interests on my craigslist ad. I told the lady this and that I was driving so I couldn't talk then hung-up. Almost immediately I got a call back from the same number but decided not to pick up because I thought she might be mad. Not that I cared but I was driving and didn't want to deal with it.

Anyways the company is Vacation Realty Group and I would not do business with them.

@ axiomatic - may I please borrow your four-year-old?!

@axiomatic: I am so going to do that with my four year old, she already loves answering the phone.

@vildechaia: LOL, he (my son) actually told me later he had fun on the call. Hopefully there is not a Winnebago he agreed to purchase on the way to the house or something. ;-)

When they ask to speak to one of us, I always reply,
"When would you like to schedule an appointment?"

We're booked weeks in advance. We do take VISA and Mastercard.

They stutter, stumble, apologize, hang up. Works every time.

We're just that important that our home phone is used for scheduling. $70.00 a visit, too. Heh, heh...

Ask telemarketers to sing. If they are blase about it. Ask them to put some heart into it.
Might as well have some fun with them. If they get all uppity. Remind them. They are the ones calling you. So if they want to waste your time. Become an entertainer. Or simple ask, "can you woo me like Frank Sinatra?"

There is so much fun that can be had with paid callers. It is also why I am strongly against robofailers. If I am feeling in a good mood. Why not have fun.

My brother loves to pass the phone to my 5 year old nephew when he gets calls like this. Nephew talks about one of three things: Dinosaurs, Spiderman, and the bug he saw that day, on the walkway. Its cute.

I recommend suing telemarketers. I just beat one in Santa Monica Small Claims. And they sent their New York corporate counsel! (They're a huge international company.)

Anyway, I couldn't have done it without the help of a guy in Sacramento -- a total stranger who went out of his way to advise me. His name's André-Tascha Lammé, and I found him through his site, KillTheCalls.com

He started it after he was getting 30 calls a day from mortgage brokers. He doesn't do this for a living or anything. Like me, he was just pissed off that they were using his phone and eating his time.

[killthecalls.com]

P.S. If it's an out-of-state company and you're in California, they have to have an "agent for service of process" on file with the Secretary of State. You look that agent up on the SOS's website and then just have the court serve them certified mail for $15. To sue them in L.A. and maybe in California, you have to have that in-state address -- they can't be sued at an out-state one. But legally, if they're doing biz in the state, they must have the AFSOP.

@valarmorghulis: Usurping a personal communications medium for purposes of solicitation is near the height of rudeness.

It's actually easier and faster to have somebody serve the Agent for Service instead of relying on the Court to do it. In California, anybody not a party can serve the papers for you. The information on companies' agents for service of process can be found here:

[www.sos.ca.gov]

Also, if the company is "suspended" - meaning it didn't pay its Franchise Taxes or file the right paperwork - it cannot defend itself in a lawsuit until it fixes the problem. Hotcha!

so i am the one this happened to and still have yet to find out the name of the company. their number is 1-877-777-1618.

I have a good friend who finally thought up a clever way to get rid of telemarketers. When they called, he would begin talking in a fake foreign language. He answered all their questions in the fake language until they got frustrated and hung up on him. I have never tried it, but he swears it works every time.

I just say loudly "NO" and hang up. I never give them the chance to record ANY type of a positive response.

"But you said YES."

i telemarketed, if that's even a word, for a short time.
getting hung up on was the best possible end result for a call,
considering how sometimes i knew the customer wasn't buying
yet was required to continue trying my best to sell them something.

every customer that hung up immediately was work i didn't have to do.
this lady was probably just having a horrible day and took it on an innocent bystander.

@iMe2: LOL my thoughts exactly. The same thing happened to me once, but it was (believe it or not) somebody from a local church. They called once to, I don't know, recruit me or something. I hung up. Not even 10 seconds later, my phone is ringing, and it's the same person acting, shall we say, very un-Christian. I hung up again. They weren't dumb enough to call back a 3rd time.

@valarmorghulis: Nope hanging up no longer becomes rude when a telemarketer calls you. You owe them nothing, hanging up is one of the nicer things you can do.

@HogwartsAlum:

But since they're wearing headsets, that would be assault.

@smokinfoo: Damnit. Now I'm LOL'ing at work and can't repeat the joke to anyone.

As a onetime telemarketer (for a nonprofit theatre), I ask you to remember that telemarketers are people. Say "No, thank you." If they insist on keeping talking, say, "Okay, I'm gonna hang up now." No need to be mean to them. Unless they're unprovokedly assholes.

@smokinfoo: Wow.

@smokinfoo: Harsh...! (But funny as hell.)

I like to drag telemarketers along (what few calls I get these days), just to dash their hopes near the end by telling them I was just messing with them

I worked as a telemarketer during college to pay the bills. Keep in mind a few telemarketers really do enjoy bothering you, but many of them are just desperate to pay the bills.
Telemarketing is mostly automated and governed by quotas. Hanging up is rude, but most telemarketers will appreciate it if you tell them politely upfront that you're not interested (instead of putting your 4 year old on) because it allows them to move on to other people.

Just to set one thing straight, I was a telemarketer in high school. Most of the people in there are in high school and don't really care about the job, just looking to get some cash to buy a car. I would actually love it if you put the phone down and waited for me to hang up, seriously, that gives me 10 minutes to hit on the hot girl sitting next to me, while the people watching the stats think I'm actually trying to sell something. We would actually tell people we were taking a noise survey and that they just needed to set the phone down and walk away. You'd be surprised how many people would do it. Some of the stuff we did to get out of working was hillarious.

@smokinfoo:

Best one I've heard all day!

I got a telemarketer to hang up on ME!!!!!

me: Hello?
her: may I speak Mr. XXXXXXXXXXXX?
me: yes......
her: Mr. XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX?
me: sigh......this is....
her: OH Mr. XXXXXXXXXXXX I'm such and such from so and so...
me: Thats good, I'm happy for you!
her: What did you say?
me: I said thats good, I'm happy for you!
her: HUH SMART A$$
me: She hung up on me!

I was once asked to fellate the devil (in less kind terms) when I asked a telemarketer to take my name off of his list.

@snowlock: I did it for four hours once because I needed the money. Worst $20 I ever earned. We were required to try to finish the script and not let the person on the other end take control. We were supposed to scratch off anyone who asked not to be called, but also penalized for scratching too many off. This was about 14 years ago, so I'm not sure if that was legal or not at the time, but that's what we did. Some people just said no, others were rude about it, and one told me the person I was calling for was dead and they wished I were, too. I didn't make a single sale. I can't imagine how telemarketing has survived, since they are almost universally loathed. They're like spammers... annoying thousands of people in the hopes of making one sale.

@WoodsWrecker: I was told we could NEVER hang up on the recipient, otherwise it can be considered harassment, and the company can be punished for it.

I was once asked out by a telemarketer because he said I sounded cute.

I have a friend who lives alone. when ever he gets a call from a telemarketer he asks them if they get paid by number of calls, products sold or minutes on phone/length of call. If they are paid by minutes on phone/length of call he then asks if they are being monitored. If they are not he starts up a normal conversation with them. He says he has made some pretty good friends this way and a lot of them are happy not to have to worry about selling anything or being hung up on for a bit.

@roguemarvel: That's certainly the most humane option! ; )

You realize telemarketers survive just like every other company out there that sells garbage products, right? Stupid people and people that don't speak very good english. You could always get an "Ok" out of someone that you could tell english wasn't their first language just by saying "Ok?". That worked 95% of the time. Also dumb people will buy anything and I mean anything. I remember people that would just buy it, wouldn't ask any questions, and were happy to buy it, I think that was called a walkthru sale, or something like that. I always remember thinking, wow you're dumb. Keep in mind I never really tried that hard because to get fired you basically had to "drive your car into the building and steal stuff" which actually happened. I didn't show up for work for two weeks, never called, came back in like nothing happened and still had a job. It's the perfect high school job really. You also make a decent amount more than working at like a McD's or other fast food place in high school.