Friday, July 06, 2007

Be innovative

This might be useful. 10 ways to stop those telemarketing calls,

1) After the telemarketer finishes speaking, ask him/her to marry you.

2) Tell the telemarketer you are busy at the moment, and ask him/her if he/she will give you his/her home phone number so you can call him/her back.

3) Ask them to repeat everything they say, several times.

4) Tell them it is dinner time, BUT ask if they would please hold. Put them on your speaker phone while you continue to eat at your leisure. Smack your food loudly and continue with your dinner conversation.

5) Tell them that all business goes through your agent, and hand thephone to your five year old child.

6) Tell them you are hard of hearing and that they need to speak up..... louder..... louder..... louder!

7) Tell them to speak very slowly because you want to write every word down.

8) If they start out with, "How are you today?", say "I'm so glad you asked, because no one these days seems to care, and I have all these problems.........."

9) Cry out in surprise, "Helen, is that you? I've been hoping you'd call! How is the family?" When they insist they are not Helen, tell them to stop joking. This works especially well if the telemarketer is really MALE.

10) Tell the HSBC call center guy to call on your office number. And give him the ICICI call center number.

I am not sure if you can stop those calls with these, but you will at least enjoy them.

:-)

7 comments:

Alex Schroeder said...

My solution was to remove myself from the phone book.

Moonjungle said...

10, 7 & 5 worth trying out.

V said...

Alex, we do have do-not-call list, but it never works.

Unknown said...

I have found a new way as well, thanks to Mind Your Language :). I keep on saying "Por Favor" or "Buchchanan" until they disconnect :-D

Kousik said...

Even if you leave the fun part out of it, I have found a pretty effective way. My phone (RIZR) has a nice feature called "Delayed Answer". When a call comes, and if I suspect it is from a spammer, I press "Delay". The call is accepted and an automated voice announces Your call will be answered shortly, followed by silence. This confuses the telemarketer and generally he disconnects in 5 seconds. If, after 5 seconds, I still find the call to be alive, I press "Talk" and generally find someone with whom I really want to talk to.

Mridul said...

Too good :-)
Vipin mentioned about this 'list' over the weekend, and I am glad I did !

Anonymous said...

Will probably try the first tip this week.