Help I'm Fed-Up With Cold-Calling!

[jackie]

Aaaaargh! Am being driven mad by cold-calling phone-calls - frozen food, insurance, Canal + etc etc. Sometimes they don't even give you the chance to pick up the phone or if you do there is just a continous tone, as I guess they call more than 1 person at a time & they speak to whoever answers first.

In the UK you could subscribe to a telephone & mail preference service which would stop anything like this. Does a similar thing exist here??

[BartyB]

Assuming that you are on Orange you can subscribe to Liste Orange which pretty much seems to do the trick

[stavros]

It's amazing how many understand English!
(or at least, two words, second word "off" )

[blu]

I "know" of an artist who trys to sell his paintings to anyone who trys to sell stuff to him over the phone.

My tactic is to say that I am not at home and pretend to be the unpaid cleaning lady...oh that is me anyway.

[Madame Moorhen]

The List Orange or whatever it is called doesn't work. We signed up for that years ago.

What does work now is just to leave the phone on answering machine, pay FT a few bob a month to have a service where we get people's phone numbers come up on a screen (or name if they are in the phone memory) and if it comes up with 'number withheld' we know not to answer it! Works a treat.

And we have about 5 of these calls a day, sometimes the b*stards phone on Sundays and during the evening too.

[jackie]

Thanks all! Looks like we're going to sign-up for the caller display service & start screening our calls...

[BartyB]

Oct 18, 2010 14:46:01 GMT 1 @stavros said:

It's amazing how many understand English!
(or at least, two words, second word "off" )

Hmm and you think that will help..... it'll get you added to the "a**eholes we'll call back whenever we're bored list".
Please don't be rude to cold callers however tiresome they may be. If you think it's a pain being called by them it's as nothing compared to the crap job that they are having to do.
Nobody (OK almost nobody) would be a cold caller if they had an alternative way of making a living. They're almost certainly being paid a tiny basic and a measly commission and probably trying tp pay their way through college or similar.
Finaly, remember it's probably someone very like your (grand)son/daughter that you're talking to.

[stavros]

When I have repeated, several times over, that I am more than satisfied with my current phone service, or insurance cover, or double glazing, or frozen food supplier, and someone still insists on wasting my time after interrupting me while I'm trying to do other things, and they still keep banging on, trying to get an appointment, or get me to change suppliers of whatever, after I have clearly and explicitly reiterated my total lack of interest, ad nauseam, then I'm sorry, Bart (or in fact, I'm not really sorry) I don't care if it's your mother-in-law, I still hang up.

[salamander]

Or if you speak the language well enough tell them that there is someone at the door and that you will be straight back-then go away leaving the phone off the hook..............

[tobyjug]

As soon as I realise it's a cold call, say " je suis anglais , je ne compend pas ,desole, and they usually hang up