Telemarketers are amazing creatures. They somehow come to work, talk to people for hours at a time and manage to engage in either politeness or ignorance in response to rejection.
If some person is calling you and attempting to sell a service or product to you, they owe you plenty of courtesy. Of course, telemarketers are not typically assessed based on their manners and it falls to an Arsehole like me to remind them that they’re talking to the people who justify their employment.
With that all stated, I hereby present a series on an approach to handling telemarketers. If I ever publish this as a stand-alone text, I suspect the title may simply be “Fuck ’em”.
Hold them accountable immediately
Should you receive a call from some company you have no current relationship with, the immediate response to their overly manicured greeting should be simply, “Is this a sales call?”
This inevitably results in one of three outcomes:
- Yes, this is a sales call. Would you like to spend $2,500 on something that no one would ever want to buy so I can be paid a bonus of about Tree Fiddy and fend off the succubus that inhabits my cupboard?
- No, I just want to give you a competitive quote on your electricity/gas/life insurance/mortgage/car insurance/internet. Note: If anyone ever uses the term “your internet” or “my internet”, they need to be taken outside and forced to watch Tony Abbott wearing speedos until they decide to get smarter.
- There is no sale here. I am just conducting a free survey!
Taking these in turn:
Telemarketers who are honest in stating that they’re trying to sell you something deserve a polite “not interested” response. Should they continue to insist, they deserve to be taken outside behind the nearest barn and forced to trim a diseased Warthog’s labial growths with their teeth and you should tell them such.
Telemarketers that lie to you deserve to be completely and totally eviscerated mentally. If a specific percentage discount is mentioned, demand that they tell you exactly what you’re paying now and when they inevitably fail to do so call them out on their lies and demand to speak to their manager due to their reprehensible conduct. Should they make statements about rate reductions or excellent deals, demand that the details of said reductions or deals be stated up front and question their integrity and intelligence when they inevitably ask you for details of your current arrangements.
Free survey? From which observation point?
The last point is most interesting – the so called “free” survey. What sort of mental midget looks at a survey advertised as “free” and wants in? Urinating into one’s own mouth and/or nostril is free, however the price does not serve as a promotional point for anyone who has control of their bladder and/or higher brain functions.
Should any knobber offer you a survey over the phone, there is only one response that is appropriate: How will I be compensated for my participation?
The reply to this will inevitably involve statements that show either a complete inability to understand basic conversational English or a total disregard of the question stated. Words such as “but it is free”, “there is no charge to you” or (my personal favourite) “it will only take a few minutes” are all statements showing a complete disregard for your time.
The person calling you is most likely compensated for their time. The systems enabling their communication with you are definitely being paid for. This means that someone has decided that the information being collected has value – why should you give some rabbit smuggler something of value for free?
In summary if someone calls you in their professional capacity when you have no relationship with them or their employer, the person deciding the terms of the interaction is you. Hold them accountable and disregard their script and fuckery.