FortKnox's Journal: Fun with Telemarketers

Here's some great fun you can have turning the tables when you get telephone spam.

I can't use it, because I'm good about saying "Take me off your list", but I hope to get more now that I'm in the new apartment, so I can give this trick a try.

If you try this, reply to this JE. I wanna know how successful you are.

Right On!

[Liora]

ROTFL! I printed myself a copy and will be using it all the time! Maybe these people will finally leave me alone!

Re:Right On!

[subgeek]

if you aren't going to mail them to the dutch address, you could laminate one and keep it by the phone. then use a dry-erase marker and you won't have to remember names/answers and won't use too many trees.

or maybe that's a dumb idea. i'm tired.

Re:Right On!

[Liora]

Oh, I thought of something better than that... I figured I'd just pretend to be filling the sheet out, asking them to spell their names, etc, I wasn't actually going to write anything down... That way I use only one piece of paper, and no ink.

Another option

[biohazard99]

You could have moved across the river to a more civilized land, Kentucky, who has a no-call list with teeth, something like $5000/incident of a phone spammer calling someone on the list. You should talk to your congress critters about getting one for Ohio.

I'm going to try that and something else.

[eugene ts wong]

That definitely is a good laugh.

I had a telemarketer call me 3 times, and with the last 2 times, she said, "Oh, have I called here already?". I'm sure that it was an honest mistake because I asked to be removed. However, it was annoying to have to call the front desk myself and asked to be removed.

I kind of wish that I hadn't done that, because I want to try to pretend that we are actually friends. After all, I've heard from her enough times to know who she is.

Them: "Hi, may I speak to Eugene please?"
Me: "Speaking."
Them: "Hi, I'm Natalie, from [blah blah blah]. How are you doing today?"
Me: "Oh, hi Natalie, pretty good. Long time no chat. How are you?"
Them: "Oh...fine. Have we chatted before?"
Me: "Oh, yeah! What's new? Give me an update & don't hide a thing. It's so good to hear from you again."
Them: "Uh, nothing much."
Me: "Well, how is work?"
.
.
.
etc. At the end of the conversation, I'll encourage her to call me again, and suggest that we go out and have some coffee.

If that doesn't scare her into removing me from the list, I don't know what will.

Excellent

[Pinball Wizard]

If you've got some time to kill. But for a short version, it would be hard to top Seinfeld's effective bit:

"Oh hi, I'm really busy right now. Why don't you give me your home number and I'll call you back.

Oh, you can't give your number out? I guess you don't like strangers calling you at home. Well now you know how I feel."