(no subject)

[plonq]

I find it hard to sympathize with a telemarketer when he/she is having a bad day at work.

http://www.livejournal.com/community/customers_suck/12270368.html
http://www.livejournal.com/community/customers_suck/12269206.html

I was going to do up a poll, but I'll just leave it to open discussion. 

- I don't mind the occasional phone survey or poll, but there's no way to differentiate those from the other calls until you pick up the phone.

- I dislike telemarketers who won't take "no" as an answer.  When I have told you that I don't want your product, your insistence only ensures that I will never buy your client's product.  (Not that the person at the other end of the phone cares one way or the other.)

- I actually dislike charities who call even more than I do carpet cleaners or credit card up-sellers.  The charities are usually much more aggressive, and will often play the morality card if I decline. 

    "This is a really good cause, that helps a lot of children.  Do you want the poor headless orphans to starve?"
    "I'm already spending my money helping a hapless pr0n actress to survive.  Which reminds me, you're interrupting my streaming video goodness.  Goodbye."

- If I only got one call every day or two, it wouldn't bother me quite so much.  Before we put up our trick answering machine we were getting upwards of 4 calls a night, though.  I am seldom as polite and cheerful with the 5th caller as I am with the first.

How do you all out in cyberland feel about telemarketers?  Poor folk just doing their job, or pond scum who are one step above (or below) kiddy pr0n dealers?

Comments

[farlo.livejournal.com]

I have a cellphone and never get telemarketers. Apparently, everyone who has gotten my number to date has not shared it with any of those rat bastards ... or soemthing.

The phone has a message service, automated, but I do not get messages ... and even if I did, they would be super super esy to delete.

It's rather cool - much different than my last phone line (well, the one that went to a telephone ...)

I soemtimes get phone calls to my data line, but the modem does not answer them ... ;)

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I try to be courteous, but I spend no more than a couple of seconds with them. Somebody else's need for a job should not violate the peace of my household all hours of the day and night.

And while I sympathize with the people having to doing the jobs to eat, the job itself is only a notch or two above crack dealer in my book.

[anthony-lion.livejournal.com]

I managed to get put on the Telemarketeer's own 'do not call list'...

You see, I noly have a cell-phone, and here in Europe, it's the CALLER who pays for the air-time...
I could frequently keep a TM occupied on the phone for half an hour, talking about his product, then ask, 'do you work for a commission,' and hanging up on him.

Not only did I cost him half an hour of work-time, there was the phone-bill, and as an added bonus, that TM couldn't bother anyone else for that time... (See, I CAN be nice to my fellow humans :-)

Do that often enough, and they stop calling...

Anyway, I understand that people can get into desperate situations, but...
if I ever get that desperate, please SHOOT ME!

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Poor folk just doing their job, but having done a few (very brief) stints as a telemarketer - honestly, working at McDonald's has much more prestige.

I'm relatively polite, but firm: as soon as I can tell that it's some kind of spiel (marketing or charitable), I say "No, thank you" and hang up. I don't wait for them to reply, because they'll just reply with more "But you really should..."

I will take phone polls, because I did that job for a while (and actually enjoyed it somewhat), and because I like answering polls about stuff. Anything else - goodbye. These days, we get a lot of "This is a very important recorded message for *insert name here*..." As soon as I can tell that a call is a recorded message, I hang up. If it's not important enough to get a real person to call, it's not important enough for me to waste my time with.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

But you really should...

As they're required to do. May can't give up until you've said "no" at least three times. There must have been some marketing research done once that showed that .3% of the time, hounding somebody will cause them to change their answer to "yes" on the third try.

What really irks me about telemarketers - and it's not as much the fault of the person reading the script as it is the script writers themselves - is that they are often dishonest, or at least misrepresentative.

MBNA is a good example. They used to call me all the time, trying to get me to sign up for their platinum Mastercard. One day I finally agreed to let them send me the card after the girl at the other end assured me that the interest was so low they'd practically be paying me to use the card, and that I was pre-approved and guaranteed to get the card, and there were no service fees ever, and the president of the company would personally come over and give me a pedicure, and... and...

Three weeks later I got a letter from them. I opened it up expecting to find my card. What I got was a letter demanding copies of pay stubs, credit card bills, phone bills -- you know, the usual things a company asks for when they think you're a bad credit risk. I was left wondering how this fell into the "pre-approved and guaranteed" part.

On the plus side, I guess I must have been marked as a final sale, because I didn't hear back from them for almost a year after that.

Never did get my platinum card, though.

[fuzzytoedcollie.livejournal.com]

If they ask for someone, I say "Just a minute...let me go see", lay the phone down and go back to what I was doing. I hang up the phone when I hear the "off-hook" alarm.

But I haven't had to do that in a long time--the Do Not Call list seems to work miracles :)

Oh. Someone asked for the lady of the house a few days ago. I offered her Daisy, my dog. Wasn't interested... *LOL*

[vichan.livejournal.com]

Your own sister has worked in telemarketing. I am not pond scum. :p

If you're not aggresive, you get fired - simple as that. You take the first 'no'' for an answer, you're gone.

My solution? Get a different job... but even that's kinda hard these days.

BUT (the advantage to working in telemarketing) I can tell when they're breaking certain laws, because I know them all. MWAHA. I dunno if the laws are different in Canada, though.

[vichan.livejournal.com]

Make that sister-in-LAW. Yeah, you're not atara... for some reason, I associate people with their icons (not screen names), and I get you two mixed up sometimes. And I'm tired, and need to see dentist and can't afford it, so... I'm distracted. -_-

And just to add... here's a rant.

The people who work in telemarketing? Generally good people. (There are exceptions, but that's the case with just about every job.) It's easy to work there because either the schedule fits in with other jobs (the one I worked at let you pick your own days), or it's the perfect job to work at when you're pregnant (not from personal experience, but from people I worked with) - no strain on the feet, no strain on the baby.

So... yeah. That's more than a couple steps above crack dealers. -_-

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I've got a dirty little secret to share: the first job I ever applied for was as a telemarketer. I was right out of high school and looking for a summer job to earn some extra cash. Mind you, this was back before it had turned into the full-blown industry that it is today.

I didn't get hired because I was lacking SIN (that is, Social Insurance Number). Looking back I think this was very fortunate because in retrospect, the place had all the earmarks of a sweatshop.

[leopanthera.livejournal.com]

Here in the UK something quite sinister, or maybe just bizarre, is happening with cold-calls.

The phone rings, you pick it up, and a recorded voice says: "Hello, this is . We want to speak to you, but all our operators are busy. Please hold. "

WTF?

How many people do they actually expect will wait? I've never hung up so fast.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

What you also get is dead air when you first answer while their computer decides if you're a real person or an answering machine.

If somebody doesn't respond on my second "Hello" I hang up quickly because it's almost invariably a telemarketer. Well, that used to be the case in our pre-call display days. Now we just ignore calls from 8** and 416 area codes.

[elfasi.livejournal.com]

They deserve no sympathy in my opinion. They have to be evil or they get fired? Then they're either evil and deserve whatever they get, or they should get a less morally bankrupt job. I'd be flipping burgers at McDonalds for a lifetime rather than work any time as a telemarketer, there's always a job for the taking if you look hard enough. Hell I'd get a job as a toilet cleaner.

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

Don't hate da playa, hate da game.

I don't hate the person at the other end of the line. They're just trying to make a living. But I do hate the companies the use such tactics. They are pure evil assholes.

I'm glad I very rarely get bugged by them. Maybe once a month at the most (at home; never on my cell). Funniest one I remember went something like this:
Me: Hello
Other Voice: Hello, is Mr. Richards home?
Me (thinking it's one of Jordan's polite friends): No, I'm sorry. He's working.
Other Voice: May I speak to Mrs. Richards?
Me (in a commanding voice): No. But you can take me off your list.
Other Voice: Uhhh...
Me: (click)

The telemarketer sounded confused as hell. Here's the thing: There is no Mrs. Richards. And I just remembered after that Jordan's name is in the phone book, and that's how they must have gotten our number.


Anywho, I've always liked Seinfeld's reply to telemarketers...

[tzisorey.livejournal.com]

Lets see...

recorded phone messages from politicians calling you up at 5am on a sunday, then forgetting they've called you, and calling back at 5:30am the same day.

Telemarketing FAX messages sent to my VOICE line at home at 1:00am, 1:05am, and 1:10am.

Charity solicitors who try to guilt-trip you into donating (Or worse, call you "Unchristian" - just because I'm a pagan).

Indian telemarketers who don't have to abide by the DNC lists, or approved-hour limits.

I'm gonna say they're about on par with kiddy pr0n dealers.