How Do You Have Fun With Telemarketers?

Here's what I do. I was watching the Roger Moore James Bond film "The Man With The Golden Gun" and during the big boat chase scene when the telemarketer called I told her to hold and pressed the speaker phone button and placed it next to the tv. I left it there for five minutes and when i checked back after that, the telemarketer had hung up. Another time I got a telemarketer, I answered in a calm feminine voice when answering and since I was in the kitchen I got an idea. After answering two questions, I started shrieking like a white trailer trash mom with banging on the oven door screaming "Leroy! Get your dirty *** out here! Your dog **** all over the couch!" My brother was in the living room on the couch and started shouting in a shrill child like voice "No Mommy! He won't **** on the couch anymore, honest! I's trains him real good, I szwears it!" The telemarketer hung up and probably tried to call child services. Another time, my brother answered it and put it on speaker phone and when the telemarketer lady said "Hello sir, how are you doing?" and he went "Ma'am I'm not doing so well, feel very down." and the lady was like "I'm sorry sir. I was calling yo..." at which point he interrupted and was said in a deep southern hick accent "Ya sees here, ma' daughter has been cheatin' on me with her broather an' I startin's to think her baby ain't mine! An' to top tha' off yar table top, the goarvearment's trien' to kick me off my lan'. Them polecats been mixin' up with tha' mongeeses." We heard a loud click after that.

It's their job, I would hate it if I had to call people and listen to their junk.

Just hang up.

I hang up on them in mid-sentence. BUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!nobodylive

if they call when i have friends around we'll pass the phone around every minute or so to see if the caller notices its a different person they are talking to. Its also a good chance to practice my bad accents. otherwise i just tell them i'm busy and hang up.

I don't. I hang up on them.

You should feel bad.

Hang up

I don't. I tell them, politely, that I'm not interested and hang up.

I speak Welsh down the phone.

I speak Welsh down the phone.

CwlHeddwyn

If its a number I don't recognize/says unavailable, etc or if I'm not expecting a call from my house phone, I simply don't answer. Caller ID is a beautiful thing.

Prank calls and making other peoples' jobs harder than it has to isn't really my thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl5uhjJFTiE

i mostly hang up. i=but if i am bored i listen to them carefully ask few questions give them hope and shatter their dreams saying i am only 13 sorry cant get your credit card/insurance/bank account

I just tell them my wife has died...they soon hang up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl5uhjJFTiE

cheese654

this is fun to do

How to respond to a telemarketer - The Seinfeld Way

This is the best way to deal with a telemarketer. http://howtoprankatelemarketer.ytmnd.com/

Unlike most people, I'm mature enough to understand that it's their job to do what they do and most actually hate their job. If I'm not interested I politely tell them I'm not interested and then hang up. Why am I going to waste their time making fun of them and bringing their hopes up when the five or ten minutes I wasted on them could have been used to just call another person who might actually be interested? Chances are this may be the job they are using to support their family, after all the economy sucks right now and I don't blame them for putting food on their tables.

I usually just hang up on them.

Occasionally if I'm in a good mood I'll toy around with them a bit. I enjoy just repeating "Hello?" over and over again as if I can't hear them, and they either keep repeating it back to me, try to reason with me, or simply hang up on their end. I also like answering the phone, starting to talk to them, and then recycling all of my responses or going back and repeating the last thing I said. Throws them for a loop. Or simple little responses like "Call me back later, I'm masturbating right now," or talking excitedly about the TV show I'm watching and completely ignoring their spiel.

Sometimes I feel guilty because they are just doing their job, but hey, they sign up for that thing knowing exactly what people think of telemarketers.

edit - I will answer surveys, however. They're my lone exception because I work a lot with stats and market analysis and most of it is used to help focus federal government initatives, so having a say (however small) is nice.

I just say no thank you, or that I don't have time right now and to have a nice day. They're people too, no point in being rude :P

Unlike most people, I'm mature enough to understand that it's their job to do what they do and most actually hate their job. If I'm not interested I politely tell them I'm not interested and then hang up. Why am I going to waste their time making fun of them and bringing their hopes up when the five or ten minutes I wasted on them could have been used to just call another person who might actually be interested? Chances are this may be the job they are using to support their family, after all the economy sucks right now and I don't blame them for putting food on their tables.

ad1x2

At the risk of sounding like a killjoy, this. Its like making fun of cold callers or people collecting for charity.

This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQjp_c6ynU0

i usually get them going. then put the phone down and see how long they talk without me responding before they finally go away.

ironically thats probably why i broke up with my last gf.

this is fun to do

How to respond to a telemarketer - The Seinfeld Way

whet40

Beat me to it. :P

"Well, now you know how I feel".

My friend has a good one. Since they can't hang up before you do, ask them random questions

I worked as a telemarketer once. That was fun times. When people were rude to me I used to just add them back to the list so they got the call again a couple of days later.Big_Bad_Sad

I love Jerry Seinfeld's solution....ask them for their number and you'll call them back :lol:

I don't get them on my house phone....though I just wouldn't pick up. As for work...tell them no and hang up. Easy....no sense in being discourteous.....at least they have a job and aren't costing me tax dollars. So all in all I'm glad they are working.LJS9502_basic

This.

Most I'll ever do is just plain hang up on them rudely. I mean...I supposedly don't want to talk to them, and they probably don't like having to call me. It's inboth of our best interests if I just end the damn conversation.

Screwing with them at their expense is another matter entirely. That'd be me saying, "yes, I want to talk to this guy, but only if I get to make him feel like ****. So I'm going to deliberately go out of my way to make this guy feel bad because...**** that guy."

Suddenly, the telemarketer somehow ceases to be the bigger jerk in that situation. The telemarketer is annoying people because he wants to feed his damn family and keep a roof over their heads. Meanwhile, the people annoying him for ****s and giggles are doing so because they think it's ****ing fun to make another person feel like ****. Yeah...that's an impressive accomplishment. It's like, congratulations on being able to make a freaking TELEMARKETER look like the good guy.

I try to sell them my old couch.

[QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"]I don't get them on my house phone....though I just wouldn't pick up. As for work...tell them no and hang up. Easy....no sense in being discourteous.....at least they have a job and aren't costing me tax dollars. So all in all I'm glad they are working.MrGeezer

This.

Most I'll ever do is just plain hang up on them rudely. I mean...I supposedly don't want to talk to them, and they probably don't like having to call me. It's inboth of our best interests if I just end the damn conversation.

Screwing with them at their expense is another matter entirely. That'd be me saying, "yes, I want to talk to this guy, but only if I get to make him feel like ****. So I'm going to deliberately go out of my way to make this guy feel bad because...**** that guy."

Suddenly, the telemarketer somehow ceases to be the bigger jerk in that situation. The telemarketer is annoying people because he wants to feed his damn family and keep a roof over their heads. Meanwhile, the people annoying him for ****s and giggles are doing so because they think it's ****ing fun to make another person feel like ****. Yeah...that's an impressive accomplishment. It's like, congratulations on being able to make a freaking TELEMARKETER look like the good guy.

Telemarketers actively do a job they know annoys people purely for self gain and the sake of profit for private companies. The telephone was never intended to be a means for private companies to further their advertising campaigns but like all good inventions it all comes down to how much profit people can make out of it. Capitalism at its finest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl5uhjJFTiE

cheese654

[QUOTE="MrGeezer"]

[QUOTE="LJS9502_basic"]I don't get them on my house phone....though I just wouldn't pick up. As for work...tell them no and hang up. Easy....no sense in being discourteous.....at least they have a job and aren't costing me tax dollars. So all in all I'm glad they are working.mattisgod01

This.

Most I'll ever do is just plain hang up on them rudely. I mean...I supposedly don't want to talk to them, and they probably don't like having to call me. It's inboth of our best interests if I just end the damn conversation.

Screwing with them at their expense is another matter entirely. That'd be me saying, "yes, I want to talk to this guy, but only if I get to make him feel like ****. So I'm going to deliberately go out of my way to make this guy feel bad because...**** that guy."

Suddenly, the telemarketer somehow ceases to be the bigger jerk in that situation. The telemarketer is annoying people because he wants to feed his damn family and keep a roof over their heads. Meanwhile, the people annoying him for ****s and giggles are doing so because they think it's ****ing fun to make another person feel like ****. Yeah...that's an impressive accomplishment. It's like, congratulations on being able to make a freaking TELEMARKETER look like the good guy.

Telemarketers actively do a job they know annoys people purely for self gain and the sake of profit for private companies. The telephone was never intended to be a means for private companies to further their advertising campaigns but like all good inventions it all comes down to how much profit people can make out of it. Capitalism at its finest.

Government-intervention yay :)

The telephone was never intended to be a means for private companies to further their advertising campaigns but like all good inventions it all comes down to how much profit people can make out of it.

mattisgod01

And by extension, I'd wager that the telephone wasn't intended to be a means to allow people to verbally bully total strangers for the purpose of self-gratification.

The **** does it matter what X or Y was INTENDED to do? What matters is what people are DOING with it. The intentions behind the invention of the telephone have pretty much NOTHING to do with someone in 2011 treaing telemarketers like **** because he/.she gets a high off of being an ***.

[QUOTE="mattisgod01"]The telephone was never intended to be a means for private companies to further their advertising campaigns but like all good inventions it all comes down to how much profit people can make out of it.

MrGeezer

And by extension, I'd wager that the telephone wasn't intended to be a means to allow people to verbally bully total strangers for the purpose of self-gratification.

The **** does it matter what X or Y was INTENDED to do? What matters is what people are DOING with it. The intentions behind the invention of the telephone have pretty much NOTHING to do with someone in 2011 treaing telemarketers like **** because he/.she gets a high off of being an ***.

They irritate people for a living and i'm not condoning insulting or verbally bullying but i'm all for wasting their time. What right do they have to call people up during dinner to sell them something they never asked for? When did that practice ever become exceptible. I have no sympathy for telemarketers, they should get a real job. If they don't like having their time wasted then they should just hang up, they called me after all.

They irritate people for a living and i'm not condoning insulting or verbally bullying but i'm all for wasting their time. What right do they have to call people up during dinner to sell them something they never asked for? When did that practice ever become exceptible. I have no sympathy for telemarketers, they should get a real job. If they don't like having their time wasted then they should just hang up, they called me after all.

mattisgod01

Here's the thing though...the most common complaints about telemarketers are that they are annoyances and that they are wasting peoples' time.

So...to go out of one's way just to annoy telemarketers and waste their time either reeks of hypocrisy, or indicates that the telemarketer really ISN'T wasting the customers' time. To actively spend MORE time trying to make a telemarketter feel bad is saying, "this person ISN'T wasting my time, since I have enough time to spend on insulting this telemarketter. However, I'm gonna waste his trime anyway, because **** that guy."

Again...they irritate people FOR A LIVING. As in, that's their JOB. That's what they do to feed their goddamn children and keep a roof over their heads. Meanwhile, customers irritate telemarketters FOR FUN. And yes...the second that you annoy the **** out of a person for ****s and giggles is the second that you start to look like a hypocrite when you justify your behavbiour by claiming that their behaviour is wrong.

They generally AREN'T annoying you for fun, it's out of necesssity. Instead, while you could easily just hang up the phone, you choose to annoy them just to make them feel bad. In both cases, we're dealing with annoyance. But one of the MOTIVES for annoyance is a hell of a lot more respectable than the other.

By not answering when I see an unfamiliar number on the caller id.