Cold calls

[Enzo]

Geez I hate cold calls. I pick up the phone, and instead of a customer, it is some asshole trying to sell me something. But it is a fact of life in business. I have to deal with it.

Hello, can I speak to the office manager please?
Hello, I need to talk to the person in charge of your energy accounts.
Hello, our records show it is time for you to restock on copier toner, can you verify the make and model of your copier?
Hello, I need to talk to the person who buys flourescent bulbs.
Hello, I am with credit card services. We can save you a lot of mioney on your credit card processing.

Hello, our records show we can save you 30% on your long disctance calling plan. Really? How odd. Do your records also show that this phone line does not have a long distance connection and we make zero long distance calls on it? How much savings can I expect over zero cost?

And so on.

I consider them fair game. Depending on my time and energy, I might hang up, yell at them, lie to them, put them on hold forever, or generally screw with them. Once I sat the phone down in frot of a TV amd let them listen to Oprah until they gave up. But mainly I just don;t want to talk to them. They are an unwanted interruption to my day.

Good morning, who is your primary insurance carrier? And why would I discuss that with YOU, a stranger on the phone? How is our business practice anything I'd discuss with you?

lately, when they ask if they can speak to (whomever), I just say, "No." After a moment of silence, they might just hang up, or maybe even say have a nice day, but they are gone.


One common one is the "yellow pages listing" people. Lord there must be a thousand yellow pages out there, if the number of calls I get is any indictation. Usually someone from India calls, and wants to "update our records" for their yellow pages. I jknow from experience, they will try by the end of the call to sell me some listing upgrade or extra service or something. SO if I even bother to answer anything I always say I have no intention of buying any serives they offer. Sometimes they quit right there. And it isn;t the local yellow pages anyway. They want to verify the address and phone, then the email - no way - then they want the name and title of the owner, ofice manager, etc. No, we do not give out that data. No customer needs to know the office manager to call. Only reason they gather that is to sell it to the cold call assholes.

Then there is Dun and Bradstreet. yeah, the credit rating folks. They will call wanting to update the files. I know it isn;t about my company rating, it is a marketing databass harvest. So I lie. How many employees? Oh we are down to about 946. OK, and gross revenues? $2.6 million last year, it was a weak year for us... How many locations? Oh we have branches in 6 states. And so on. It is amazing the sorts of stuff that starts coming in the mail. In the fall I get a stack of gift catalogs, one to the CEO, one to the HR manager, etc. All of whom are me, or course. We would apparently be looking to buy gifts for the employees. The Butterball folks send me information on theri turkey gift certificates. I get industrial catalogs for those giant cement ashtrays like in front of buildings, and forklifts for the "warehouse." And the cold calls wanting to speak to the benfits coordinator, the HR manager, the employee insurance manager.

[jrfrond]

It makes me VERY happy that we have an automated phone system with voice mail and two people answering/screening. At home, it's a bit different, but I do check the caller ID, which also comes up on my TV because I have cable VoIP service. Sometimes you just gotta love the modern conveniences.

On the other hand, I don't hold anything against most of these callers. They're just rats in a maze trying to find the cheese like the rest of us.

[guitician]

Hello. OR Hello?

I have a system that I use for unsolicited callers. I listen after I say "hello"; and depending on the time it takes for them to say "hello" back, and how they say "hello"; I'll hang up, or listen further. There's a particular way someone says hello, as if they are answering the phone, or returning the greeting. They will say it as if it was a question, or as an established link between two people. When they are calling me, and after I say "hello", they come back like they are asking me Hello?....click, I hang up....

[km6xz]

Cold calls are not a problem now where I live but back when in the US, I never answered the phone. The girls were better at that, I end up talking for an hour. I was probably the last person I knew to get a cell phone but here is it needed since landlines quite often can't call cell phones unless they have a more expensive service....cell phones have an area code based on carrier not location so to a land-line call to a cell phone is dialed as a LD number.
Unless I know the person or expect the call I do not want it at all. Since I stopped dating so actively, I really have no use for a cell phone either. My GF knows where I am. When out walking around, there really are few situations I need to know about. Refusing to be available to anyone who thinks they are owed a conversation is one of my many concessions to have a simpler, more direct life. Overhearing conversations in the elevator or on a bus leads me to suspect that typical calls are of no import and wastes everyone's time and irritates those of us who have to listen. I prefer my conversations in person which is a great reason to have neighborhood English or Irish pubs.

[jrfrond]

Cold calls are not a problem now where I live but back when in the US, I never answered the phone. The girls were better at that, I end up talking for an hour. I was probably the last person I knew to get a cell phone but here is it needed since landlines quite often can't call cell phones unless they have a more expensive service....cell phones have an area code based on carrier not location so to a land-line call to a cell phone is dialed as a LD number.
Unless I know the person or expect the call I do not want it at all. Since I stopped dating so actively, I really have no use for a cell phone either. My GF knows where I am. When out walking around, there really are few situations I need to know about. Refusing to be available to anyone who thinks they are owed a conversation is one of my many concessions to have a simpler, more direct life. Overhearing conversations in the elevator or on a bus leads me to suspect that typical calls are of no import and wastes everyone's time and irritates those of us who have to listen. I prefer my conversations in person which is a great reason to have neighborhood English or Irish pubs.

I totally agree with this. I make thorough use of my voice mail and will call later if needed. Just because someone rings me up doesn't mean I have to answer. I also tend to keep my ringer on silent. My wife will sometimes ask me suspiciously why I don't answer my cell phone. It's simple: it's my prerogative. If it's from her or another family member, I will answer immediately, just in case it's important or an emergency (usually it's not). Otherwise, it goes to voice mail. Here in NYC, people are inextricably tied to and zombified (I just made that up) by their cell phones, and it pisses me off and disgusts me. It's just plain rude and I won't buy into it. I don't have a smartphone either. The last thing I need to do is to be tied to the internet and busy myself with other time-wasting apps when I'm on the go. And ditto for hearing other conversations. I've gotten into arguments with people who I've told to shut the f**k up, in those EXACT words, mind you. Hey, this IS NYC!

I can also vouch for Stan (km6xz) staying on the phone for an hour (or more). I'm no better, believe me!

[oc disorder]

In Australia the previous Liberal Govt under then P.M. John Howard introduced a "Do Not Call" register which a phone owner can register his/her phone number to prevent marketing calls.
I had a few from offshore call centers which I suspect are part automated.
When you tell them you are on the Do not call register they apologize profusely and hang up pronto!!
We still get charities and research calls but this legislation has certainly thinned them out.
Of course political parties are exempt !!!

"The Do Not Call Register Act generally prohibits the calling of registered numbers for marketing purposes. Since the Do Not Call Register commenced in May 2007, the ACMA’s investigations have resulted in payment of nine infringement notices to the value of $438,300. In addition, 18 undertakings, enforceable in the Federal Court, have been accepted, and the ACMA has issued 10 formal warnings."

https://www.donotcall.gov.au/

[Enzo]

We have a "do not call" registry here too. But it only pertains to residential phones. There is no such law for business phones. So I don;t get sales calls on my personal residential phone anymore. However, excluded from that registry requirement are any politcal calls and charitable organizations and some other things. SO I still get calls from people claiming to represent the police league or some charity or other or the alumni association of the college.


Yes, cold callers are "just doing their job." SO are pickpockets. So are con men.

[Ronsonic]

Yes, cold callers are "just doing their job." So are con men.

And so often they are doing the same job.

I remember once being hired to replace an incompetent property manager and laughing my ass off when I saw the crates of unused copier toner in the storage room. Sure enough, a few months later I got a call informing me that it was time for us to purchase more. I told the caller that we had enough to last decades and she helpfully informed me that I could, instead buy paper or other supplies. I said I wasn't interested in those either. She then stated, get this, that our company was contractually obliged to buy something from them under the terms that we had previously bought supplies. My entire answer was a derisive "hah" and I hung up the phone. Never heard from them again.

[Enzo]

Most of them sense you are not going to play ball, and they move on. They don't get paid for chatting with me. But now and then we get the type whose pecker length is measured by "winning" the phone call. They want to argue, call me names, and disrespect my mother.

One guy called, asked something, and I said I was sick of these cold calls. Taking instant offense, he starts ranting on the phone about how stupid I was, then he accused me, "I bet you're not a veteran!" No, I am not. "You're a homo, aren't you." Yes, probably I am a homo, a stupid, non-veteran homo. So what can you expect. "You'll burn in hell." Of course, I'm a homo, after all. And on and on, it was actually kinda amusing. I just kept agreeing that I was stupid and a homo, and probably not good enough to join the army anyway. After a while he gave up and went away, he was totally unable to get under my skin, and it left him powerless.

usually once it gets boring, if I ask them how much money they were going to make from this call, they go away.

[defaced]

We are getting a metric f*ck ton of these at work lately. I just let the phone ring (thank you caller ID) or do what gutician does judge the call if its bogus or not by how long it takes for a "hello" to be heard. I'm sure it annoys the people I work with, but not as much as me listening to someone who can barely spell the word "English" pronounce my boss's last name. The best is when he answers the phone. It's kinda like watching a cat toy with a mouse as it's dying.

[Bill Moore]

One of my customers is in the phone install/wiring business. A few years back I took one of his trucks to his shop, and UPS showed up while I was there with several boxes. He refused them and jumped into the truck. He saw I was puzzled, and told me the boxes were wire, and parts from a place that he had asked not to call several times. When they called again, he asked about their shipping, and return policy, and they assured him all was paid by them. He let them send him a few hundred dollars of heavy items, and refused it. He told me later that they called to find out the problem, he said that maybe now, since it cost them money, they would quit bothering him.

[Sweetfinger]

Whatever they're selling, I can't use it. Free massage? "I was born without a spine". Health insurance? "I'm fully covered by the government, so its free. If you can still save me money on free, let's talk!", Low rates on contact lenses?, "I'm blind". Dental plans- got no teeth! In fact, don't even have dentures. I just put my food in the blender and drink it.

When they ask to update our "listing", after they read my address I quickly say "Yup! Everything's current. Thanks!" and hang up.
The big one lately is "search engine optimization". They're going to charge me a fee to do what I have already done for free. They promise that I'll come up at or near the top on a Google search. I inform them that I already do. If they have a computer I tell them to search my business. They're always surprised- "Wow! That's pretty good! How did you do that?" Duh, I registered with every search engine and business review site- and the business has been operating for almost 40 years.

One thing I've noticed is that vendors and suppliers all call at the same time. You won't hear from any of them for a few weeks or months, then you'll get a call from a rep asking if we're good on everything, need to place an order, got some specials going, etc. Never fails- within a week, two or three others will cold call for a similar "checkup".

[Enzo]

Good morning, may I speak to the owner please?

Sorry, I am deceased.