Telemarketers: how do you get them to stop?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>As part of my job (RA), we have to have land line phones installed so that our residents can get in touch with us. Usually the only people who call these numbers are our residents or our supervisors. </p>

<p>I was just sitting in my room when the phone rang, so I picked up. This is roughly the conversation I had:</p>

<p>“Hello?”</p>

<p>“Hi, this is X from the <em>local newspaper</em>…we’re having our best deal on a 4-day-per-week subscription right now. Blahblahblah you should buy it!”</p>

<p>“Oh, I really don’t think I’m interested.”</p>

<p>“Well these are events you should know…blahblahblah are you in <em>nearest big city</em>?”</p>

<p>“No, I live in the dorms at Sonoma State.”</p>

<p>“Oh! So how do you get most of your news?”</p>

<p>“We have a campus paper…”</p>

<p>“Yes, but for statewide issues you’re going to want <em>local paper</em>. 4 days a week might be a bit much for you…how about I put you down for Saturday and Sunday? If you don’t mind me asking, what are you studying?”</p>

<p>“Psychology.”</p>

<p>“Oh, so education reform might not be your cup of tea so much?”</p>

<p><em>Starting to get irritated</em> “Not really.” (which isn’t true, I just wanted to get him off my phone.)</p>

<p>“Well what about current events, like…um…” Long pause. “<em>insert random current event I haven’t heard about</em> these are things you need to know! So what’s your address there on campus?”</p>

<p>“Look, I’m a college student and I just really don’t have extra money to spend right now.”</p>

<p>“But it’s only $11.99 per month…that’s $3 per week! You can find $3 per week, can’t you?”</p>

<p>Click.</p>

<p>I feel like it’s really rude to hang up on people–especially because I know he’s just doing his job. But really, shouldn’t they stop after the “I’m not interested”?</p>

<p>Is there some magic phrase I don’t know? This guy was just way too pushy, which is a problem that I’ve never had with telemarketers that called my home phone in SoCal…(or maybe I’m just not remembering right)</p>

2

<p>I tell all telemarketers that the residents of the house are on vacation</p>

3

<p>It’s not rude to hang up on telemarketers - many of whom will just hang up on you anyway once they figure out they’re not going to make the sale. They’re also rude when they persist after you tell them you’re not interested.</p>

<p>I never let a telemarketer string me along as in your example. As soon as I know they’re a telemarketer, which is usually before they speak since I can hear the rest of the telemarketers in the room, I either hang up immediately or I tell them to take my name off of their calling list and to not call me back. What I don’t do is talk about their product, talk about anything in my personal life (like in your example where they now know that the person at this phone number is a female college student living at Sonoma state studying Psych), or let them engage in actual coversation with me. Keep in mind that from their perspective the longer they can keep you on the line in any way the more likely they’re going to be able to sell you the item they’re hawking.</p>

<p>If they followed the law, which many of them don’t, when you tell them to take your name off of your calling list they’re obliged to do so. Some telemarketers do it and some don’t.</p>

<p>You can also place your number on ‘do not call list’.
<a href=“https://www.donotcall.gov/[/url]”>https://www.donotcall.gov/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Immediately after -
“Hi, this is X from the <em>local newspaper</em>…we’re having our best deal on a 4-day-per-week subscription right now. Blahblahblah you should buy it!”</p>

<p>Say -
“Take my name off of your calling list and don’t call me anymore.”</p>

<p>Half the time they’ll just hang up on you, other times they’ll say okay, other times they’ll persist in talking to you. If they persist just hang up the phone - don’t say “Bye”, “Thanks”, or anything else - just hang up the phone.</p>

4

<p>I’ve handled telemarketers a several different ways, all dependent upon my mood at the time. One way is to interrupt them right from the beginning and say, “Thank you, but I’m not interested and I’d like you to remove my number from your list” and then hang up. Another way, when I simply cannot get a word in edgewise, is to put the phone down on the counter and walk away for a couple of minutes. The two or three times I’ve used this technique, they were gone when I came back to the phone. I’ve also just hung up on them. On occasion, I let them give me their sales pitch. I know those folks are just trying to make a pay check, but I can’t stand those calls. I have caller ID so I frequently will not answer an unknown number, but if DH or DD are traveling, I’ll answer all calls.</p>

5

<p>The quickest way to get a telemarketer to stop is to ask them for their phone number so you can report them to the FCC since you are on the Do Not Call List.</p>

<p>The most fun way, is to say, “Oh can you hold on a sec” and then stick the phone next to the radio.</p>

6

<p>ucla_dad is right - don’t even feel that you have to talk to them. We have caller ID, so we can screen some of them out by their numbers. If someone calls who cannot pronounce our name (not that hard) I tell them that person doesn’t live here. If they do get started I just say “I’m sorry, I’m not really interested right now.” and hang up. That’s about as polite as I figure I need to be. Those people can get very overbearing, as you have found out.</p>

7

<p>“Hello?”</p>

<p>“Hi, are you satisfied with your _________ service?”</p>

<p>“… One moment, please. <em>background yelling</em> JOHNNY!! You told me this was a secure line! How the ---- are we supposed to run this ----ing investigation if every ----ing list has this goddam number?! <em>pause</em> What? … You sure? … Okay people, looks like we’ve got our rapist on the line. <em>back to phone</em> Excuse me, what were you saying?”</p>

8

<p>Don’t be afraid to tell them to remove you from their calling list or to tell them you are not interested and to have a nice day and hang up. If someone tells us at work not to call them we take them off our calling list for all future phone calls (unless you specifically call and ask for someone to call you back). That being said, we’re not telemarketers so chances are if we have to call you for something it’s not to sell you something. Oh well. </p>

<p>When I call people from work my phone number comes up as unidentified on some peoples phones and with the name of our company on other peoples phones. I don’t quite know why. It might have something to do with the way their local phone company unscrambles the caller id, who knows. </p>

<p>That being said, I’ve had plenty of people screaming at me over the past 5 years at my job as if I’m a telemarketer and I’m not. I’ve had people threaten to report me to the FCC for calling them when they are on the “do not call list.” If they would just listen for 5 seconds they’d realize I’m not calling to try and sell them something. How am I supposed to know you are on the do not call list? You gave us your number to call you.</p>

<p>One thing I’ve had to say to a few people who yell at me for calling them is “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were on the do not call list. I’ll remove you from receiving future phone calls from us and send you a letter pertaining to my call instead. You’ll get it in 7-10 days. If you have any questions in the mean time you can call us back at blah blah.” 9/10 times that person calls back 5 minutes later to find out what we wanted. I guess they just don’t think it was a legitimate phone call or something. (Example being - person a is applying for insurance and mails in their application without checking off what plan they want. Or they might leave their birthday blank or something like that. I (or someone else in the office) try to call them so we can fill it in for them. If they chose not to talk to us, then we have to return the entire application for them to correct and send back to us. Or another example would be person A just applied for insurance and was accepted. We personally make an attempt to call every person about two weeks later to make sure that they received their ID cards and to see if they have any additional questions.)</p>

9

<p>BillyMc-I laughed until I cried :D</p>

10

<p>The magic words in the US are:</p>

<p>“Please put me on the do not call list.”</p>

<p>(not “Take me off your list.”)</p>

<p>Also, put your number on <a href=“http://www.donotcall.gov%5B/url%5D”>http://www.donotcall.gov</a> , although many telemarketers illegally ignore it.</p>

<p>Look up the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. If you are bored, you can try suing them for $500 or $1,500 per violation.</p>

11

<p>Lately there’s been a new twist on these calls. I pick up the phone and get a recorded spiel about refinancing my mortgage or whatever, with no indication of the name of the business that’s calling, but an instruction to “press 1” for more information. So in order to speak to a real human and explain that I’m on the do-not-call list, I press “1”–and get put on hold! Last time I was helpfully told that my call was fifth in line. It’s pretty fiendish of the telemarketers–the saps who are willing to listen to the sales pitch will wait out the hold, while those of us aren’t interested and just want to get off the list won’t wait it out. So the telemarketers lines aren’t tied up with people who only want to get off the call list, and no one gets the info needed to report the callers to the FTC. I don’t understand how anyone can take this kind of job–my kids would have to be literally starving before I’d make a living bothering people in their homes.</p>

12

<p>

I get those on my cell phone. <em>Hang up</em> <em>Block caller</em></p>

13

<p>How do you block the caller?</p>

14

<p>i’m not sure if you can do it from your phone or not but I block callers from verizons website all the time. I’ve been getting 3 or 4 random calls every day on my cell phone from numbers that I don’t recognize. I don’t answer them and they don’t leave a message, but I’m soon going to add them to my blocked list. It’s annoying.</p>

15

<p>Because our phone is listed under Happydad’s Spanish surname, we get a fair number of callers who ask in English “Do you speak Spanish?”, and then refuse to communicate any further in English. I don’t know if that is the only sentence they know, or not. So I just shout “Don’t call back.” into the phone, and then hang up. Other callers get the “Take us off your calling list” treatment.</p>

16

<p>We don’t get telemarketers often, but they often ask to talk to my mommy or daddy. I’m only 21, so I could understand sounding like a teenager, but mommy or daddy implies they think I’m genuinely a young kid. I think it’s fairly amusing. That also happened when a Parent from the preschool that is also part of am elementary schoolcalled to see if I ha any questions. He knew my daughter was somewhere in the preschool to sixth grade range, and when I answered, he asked, “Are you PhysicsDaughter?” He seemed pretty embarrassed when I said, No, I’m her mom.</p>

17

<p>MommaJ – Please be careful. Don’t push anything on a recorded message call. You might be consenting (which you don’t find out until you’ve been through the whole thing) and you can be charged for a product or a service you do not want. If you get a recorded message, just hang up at once. </p>

<p>At least those danged ‘your auto insurance is about to expire’ calls stopped when the government got after them. Though there may be a new version of this scam starting. So be wary. </p>

<p>As long as you are doing the do-no-call list, you might get on this list too. It’s to stop junk mail. It doesn’t prevent <em>everything</em> because your name is getting on new lists all the time but it does lessen the flow from mailbox to recycle bin.</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/regist.action[/url]”>https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/regist.action&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

18

<p>Even if you are on the do not call list, you will get calls. Some of them will be from charities of all kinds, who are exempt from the list.</p>

<p>I have done various things, but lately my approach has been to immediately say, “Sorry, I can’t talk right now.” and simply hang up without letting them say another word. Generally, they don’t call back.</p>

<p>I don’t mind junk mail, especially since we started using our fireplace more.</p>

19

<p>Remember, folks, to say ‘no call list’, not ‘no fly list’.</p>

20

<p>Lately, my son has been racing to the phone to talk to the telemarketers–in French. They invariably hang up immediately without another word. Effective.</p>

<p>I recently had a telemarketing call on my cell phone to which I started to say, “Please put me on your…” and the caller interrupted, “Hello? Hello? I can’t hear you…” I knew he was still on the line so I told him so. I called the number back by hitting redial to make sure they put me on the “do not call” list, but I got the message that the number had been disconnected. Odd.</p>

<p>Then yesterday when I asked a telemarketer to put me on her “do not call” list, she said, “Okay. Have a nice day.” Surprising.</p>