<p>Nonprofits and political organizations are exempt from the Do Not Call list. But if you ask them to take you off their call lists, they must oblige. I enjoy speaking to the callers from my DD’s college, however, and not only do I oblige with a donation, I always thank them for this very important work. The simple fact is the private colleges, even the very well endowed ones, cannot survive without donations from alumni and parents. (There are other threads about this, and I don’t mean to derail this one.)</p>
<p>I tell them I don’t donate over the phone but they are free to send me something in the mail and I will look it over at the end of the year when I do my charitable donations.</p>
<p>If I’m a previous supporter, I ask “when was the last time I donated?” If it’s been a year, we renew our support. Our kid’s schools, and d’s professional school, call twice a year but that’s okay with us and we donate each time. We would not donate a third time in a year, though.</p>
<p>I say “sorry, not interested” or sometimes just “we’re not interested” (because why apologize for not being interested?) to any others and hang up immediately after saying it.</p>
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<p>I sometimes wonder given the way some private colleges are building and expanding.</p>
<p>I think that public universities do more for more students of less means than privates.</p>
<p>“Thank you for calling. Please remove me from your telemarketing list.”</p>
<p>I answer the same as I do to the survey’s or any other of these types of calls - I interrupt them immediately and say “Take my name off your calling list” then hang up.</p>
<p>Edit - cross-posted with Thumper but obviously we’re both great minds thinking alike.</p>
<p>We have caller ID so usually just ignore. but if I do answer I tell them that to send literature in the mail including their organizations pie chart of income distribution and financial documents that I can review at my leisure along with the NYS Attorney General. Prior to retiring my dh was a senior federal gov’t employee and we had a secure phone/fax line in our house that never rang except for random telemarketers and wrong numbers. I would scare those people all the time by asking if they knew what location they had reached as I could identify where the call was originating from and that they might be interfering with important government national security operations by continuing to speak.</p>
<p>The classic Seinfeld approach:</p>
<p>Telemarketer: Hi. Would you be interested in switching over to TMI Long Distance service?</p>
<p>Jerry: This isn’t a good time. </p>
<p>Telemarketer: When would be a good time to call back, sir? </p>
<p>Jerry: I have an idea, why don’t you give me your home number and I’ll call you back later? </p>
<p>Telemarketer: Umm, we’re not allowed to do that. </p>
<p>Jerry: Oh, I guess because you don’t want strangers calling you at home. </p>
<p>Telemarketer: Umm, no. </p>
<p>Jerry: Well, now you know how I feel. </p>
<p>[hangs up phone] </p>
<p>Or:</p>
<p>Telemarketer: Are you interested in a subscription to the New York Times?</p>
<p>Jerry: Yes. [hangs up phone]</p>
<p>I have a friend who says–“Grandpa is in the bathtub and I’m helping him, but tell me again who you are and what you want?” Then the friend says–“Grandpa–wait, wait, don’t go under water like that.” Then, friend says “OK–what did you want.” By the time my friend is finished with his little comedy routine, the caller is telling him to go and take care of grandpa and he’ll call back another time.</p>
<p>Unless you are an natural at this, it won’t work. The best thing you can do is to ask the people to take your name off of their call list. They have to respond. My D did calls like this for her college and said that they can remove someone immediately and that they’re supposed to do so when someone asks. I find that the groups that call me the most asking for contributions are veterans and police/fire groups. Also around election time I get lots of political groups.</p>
<p>Here is my best response ever to a telemarketer. We were cleaning out my mom’s department after she died.</p>
<p>Telemarketer: May I speak to Mrs. So and So.</p>
<p>Me: She’s dead.</p>
<p>They usually hung up BEFORE I did. My husband couldn’t believe I was saying that…but it was true.</p>
<p>I love caller ID. Some years ago, the local cemetery plot sales people used to call. The LAST time they called, I said, “I have told my husband that I want one of those grave markers with an enormous angel on top, and I know that your cemetery does not allow those.”. After she stopped laughing, she said that she would take my name off of her list. ;)</p>
<p>^^I love this response! After my MIL died, no matter how many times I told her public radio station that she had died and that we lived in a different state, I could not get her removed from their database. It took 18 months and was incredibly frustrating.</p>
<p>I stated the truth when they call that I don’t have any money right now because I’m paying for one kid in an expensive college. In the past when I did donate and I was on the other charities calling list. No more charity telemarketers for me.</p>
<p>I simply say - thanks for calling but we do not accept solicitation phone calls, take us off your list.</p>
<p>Maybe because they realized they could actually get into trouble with you asking a lot of questions. Hahaha! If I am a scammer and I ask money from you and you ask a lot of questions, I’ll be thinking you might just be the type of person who records calls and reports scammers to authorities. You might just post my number at consumer complaint sites such as Callercenter.com, too. So, instead of talking to you, I’ll just hang up and find somebody else to scam.</p>
<p>My experience with ignoring the calls is that it doesn’t work – they just keep trying, night after night. The federal Do No Call registry doesn’t apply to charitable organizations (or political ones). </p>
<p>I either say “No thanks” or “Sorry, our charity budget is already spoken for.” Either way, the key is not to wait for a response but to hang up immediately.</p>
<p>Another thing that works on all kinds of telemarketers is to say, “We don’t make purchases/donations from unsolicited calls. If you want to send some literature, we’ll look at it.” I have yet to have a telemarketer take me up on that.</p>
<p>I don’t say anything. If we happen to answer the phone, which is rare now that we have our cell phones for most personal calls, if there’s a pause after I say hello, a click after I say hello, lots of background noise, or someone who can’t pronounce my unusual name, I hang up. No comments, no questions, no explanations. No waste of my time, or theirs.</p>
<p>It used to be that telemarketers didn’t leave answering machine messages. Now some of them do.</p>
<p>Silence-click.</p>
<p>I also just hang up if there is a pause. The side effect of that is that I have hung up on people who are just a bit slow in responding! We are also ready to get rid of our land line, it just feels like wasted money at this point.</p>
<p>Caller ID, perfect, we dont answer if we dont recognize. Plus our cell phones are our major use phones now for those we want to be able to get in touch with us. Life’s so much simpler.</p>