Tips for Handling Telemarketers

[Adatise]

Tips for Handling Telemarketers

Three Little Words That Work !!

(1)The three little words are: 'Hold On, Please...'
Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear the phone company's 'beep-beep-beep' tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.

These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.


(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?
This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.


This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a 'real' sales person to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer !!!

(3) Junk Mail Help
When you get 'ads' enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these 'ads' with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.

When you get those 'pre-approved' letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.

Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 41 cents postage 'IF' and when they receive them back.

It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.

One of Andy Rooney's (60 minutes) ideas.
Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back!
If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you send them.

You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them 41 cents.

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they're paying for it...Twice!

Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they need to increase postage costs again You get the idea !

[David G]

Cool stuff to battle these low-lifes who harass us with their sales pitch crap all day. It seems to be much worse lately vs past years. Do you think I could put this on my blog with credit to you?

[south]

I actually do most of those things

I have sent many credit card offers to the competing offerer and put hundreds of telemaketers on hold indefinitely. Amazing how long some of them will wait!

[fab]

But why the large font. My vision is fine with my glasses on.

[Adatise]

1. Please don't give me credit for it Trader. I received it via email from a friend.

2. Fab, I just cut and pasted it. I didn't want to rewrite it. That's why the big font. Apologies.
Edited: Thanks to the mod that fixed the large font.

[tas38]

How about how to stop bill collectors from calling, now many of us could really use a answer to that one for sure.

[BELLC1]

Amazing how long some of them will wait!

Well, that explains why you won't answer my calls.

When a telemarketer calls me, I always respond with, "Lady, you really need a career you and your family can be proud of."

Hits them personally. Now maybe they'll quit.

[mvl]

The so called "counterscript" is by far the funniest approach I know. Print out this pdf and make sure to have a copy ready for use next to your phone.

Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.

Have fun !


counterscript website

[Adatise]

How about how to stop bill collectors from calling, now many of us could really use a answer to that one for sure.

I have one way. A recording was calling me every morning and asking me to call about a debt (that I didn't think I owed). I called them alright. I was so upset about them bothering me virtually everyday for 6 months (even when I called them back and explained many times), I called them about 100 times in one day. I would talk about anything they would talk about. If they wanted a fight, I gave them a great fight to include name calling as they did. I ruined everybody's day at the company I am sure.

I explained my case every time. After about 100 calls and them calling the local police on me, who said I am 100% legal calling them and fighting with them as many times as I want if they kept calling, they took me out of the auto caller and I never heard from them again. You have to be pretty dang upset to call a collector 100 times in one day. I promised them I would call everyday 100 times when their auto dialer called me again. It worked well. I never heard from them again.
You can also change to an unlisted new phone #.

[JuniperPark]

Bad news -- the US taxpayers are now FUNDING these operations, so the return-envelope thing isn't costing the bank anything, it's just added to the taxpayer bailout... which is why the bailout should NEVER have been allowed.

[David G]

I have been saying please hold on lately and find it surprising how long they wait before they finally hang up.

[Adatise]

JuniperPark thanks for the input. Is this a fact? So they got us by the balls (if you will). I agree with you fully. No bailouts to big business or us little guys feel the repercussions.

[tas38]

>>> No bailouts to big business or us little guys feel the repercussions. <<<

But with out the bail outs the little guys, would feel the repercussions way worst then bailing them out. Because then it would come right out of the little guys pockets, and prices would sky rocket making thing way worst around the world. It's not like we are talking about a small corner store, besides the bail outs give the gov't some control then over them.

We need to stop blaming here and work this all out, people need to stop making this worst then it is and start spending. That means spending money they don't have, or else things will not get all that good. The news is being left run people lifes, people need to wake up and start buying stuff they don't need.

Every crying about the auto makers, but everyone before cry how much the love their gas hog SUV's and a like. Well go buy a high mileage SUV's now, that will get the auot makers back into the game. And not needing anymore bail outs, and even let them pay back gov't loan everyone is calling a bail out.

You want to blame some one, blame your self for buying into the self for filling bad market, and that people was buying homes they could not aford to buy. Of course they could not aford them, that why they get loans to buy homes. If no one got loans banks would go under, the market went south because of oil prices sky rocketing.

[JuniperPark]

>>> No bailouts to big business or us little guys feel the repercussions. <<<

But with out the bail outs the little guys, would feel the repercussions way worst then bailing them out. Because then it would come right out of the little guys pockets, and prices would sky rocket making thing way worst around the world. It's not like we are talking about a small corner store, besides the bail outs give the gov't some control then over them.

We need to stop blaming here and work this all out, people need to stop making this worst then it is and start spending. That means spending money they don't have, or else things will not get all that good. The news is being left run people lifes, people need to wake up and start buying stuff they don't need.

Every crying about the auto makers, but everyone before cry how much the love their gas hog SUV's and a like. Well go buy a high mileage SUV's now, that will get the auot makers back into the game. And not needing anymore bail outs, and even let them pay back gov't loan everyone is calling a bail out.

You want to blame some one, blame your self for buying into the self for filling bad market, and that people was buying homes they could not aford to buy. Of course they could not aford them, that why they get loans to buy homes. If no one got loans banks would go under, the market went south because of oil prices sky rocketing.

You don't fix a leak without determining the source of the leak and how it happened. Even if you stop the leak for now, it WILL happen again, possibly much worse.

The criminals behind this don't want an investigation so they call this "finding BLAME". Wouldn't every criminal like to be let out of prison because every court case is "finding blame". Let every single criminal out of prison right now and stop enforcing laws if you have a problem with finding blame. Better yet, move to Somalia if you want to taste of a society without blame.

The only people saying "everything will fail if we fail" are those who stand to make a LOT of money from the bailouts. If they fail someone else will pick up the pieces and carry on, just as with any other business.

Let's say Adam had a gambling problem and could not longer pay the Hosting bill for DNF. Would the domain industry just END? Of course not. Someone would buy the domain, some else might buy the membership list, and people would just go to the new owner's system or migrate to other forums... just as with any other business. But if we follow the Bush/Obama thinking, every domainer would be TAXED for the full bill of Adam's gambling debt just to make sure business as usual continues, WITHOUT making Adam stop gambling, so a month later DNF is shut down again, and everyone's domain tax goes up again... and again... and again.

The "too big to fail" line is just stupidity talking. If it were actually true, the first order of business would be to break up that organization into components that were NOT too big to fail.... but that's not happening, is it?

Why? Because the original premise of "too big to fail" was a lie to begin with.

[tas38]

You are right on about breaking them up, they are talking doing that right now and they need to over time. What made this big leak was sky rocketing oil/energy prices, the big banks have always being to greedy and always will. The only way to stop them, is put them in jail and put some real controls on them, the clinton and bush admin left them get away with anything almost.

They need to forget about this tax and cap crap, and put price limits on oil/energy. Then go all out to stop all import oil, and you do that by taxing the crap out of all import oil. You then take that tax money from import oil, and use it to get new green energy moving as fast as you can. And stop the traders from playing games with oil prices, by taxing anything over a reseaonable cap of profit from it.

This is nothing new the 70's oil prices done the same thing, we did not fix the problem then. And the bush admin left this all happen, they done nothing until it was to late. So do we fix the real problem now or not, the choice is clear we do need to fix the problem. There are so many reasons to do it now, beside the more people fight it the more people will pay for it. Yes it will hurt short term but long term, the world need to get it done now or pay a super heavy price later.

[David G]

Saying "please hold on" whenever they call.

Some of the idiots stay on hold for as long as 20-minutes or so. Feels good doing it.

[Adatise]

That was great MVL. Thanks. I use the national do not call registry but some ignore it and will risk the fine. I believe it is a $1600 fine per call to call you while on this list.

National Do Not Call Registry
https://www.donotcall.gov/

[Justin Hulsey]

Thanks for the link Adatise. I signed myself up.

[DNP]

Just ask a telemarketer for her home phone # and promise to phone her back

[Adatise]

DNP has an idea here! Lol, I like it. I might add.. or say it to him as opposed to her with a heavy lisp. I'm Just being facetious.

Flirtatious behavior to scare off telemarketers is an innovative idea DNP.

Thanks

Namaste