Time to fight back, the necessary war against telemarketing.
Oct 14 '00
It is no secret that in the hierarchy of evils, telemarketing nestles nicely between, televangelists and criminal defense lawyers. Yet despite the massive quantity of complaints about it, there really is not that much that one can really do about it. It's all based on the economics of it, no matter how much people hate it remains profitable. Normally one can fight back by using your purchase as a vote, however most of the time things that are being telemarketed, are part of a market where every supplier utilizes telemarketing as a sales tactic. Even if there were one company that didn't how would you ever find out. This has left us with one option, to tolerate the interruption, answer and politely say no and then hang up.
I for one am not happy tolerating the interruption, I do not like people calling at all hours trying to sell me stuff. I want to know that when my phone rings that the person on the other line is a voice that I recognize. I do not think that I am alone in this regard. So here are my instructions.
First: there is no need to be polite these people are interrupting your day, they are already being rude to you, just because they call you sir or madam on the phone does not erase the fact that they just interrupted your dinner. If you plan on hanging up, just hang up. Don't wait for a pause in their speaking to say that you are not interested. Remember these people regard you as a number, a commission, a potential sale. They ignore the fact that you may have a life, other things that demand your attention. My suggestion: be as rude as you like to them, make their days awful enough that the job is no longer worth it.
Second (this one is important)turn the economic advantage in our favor The whole concept behind telemarketing is that 50% of they call cannot say no to someone over the phone. These people keep the telemarketers in business. Most people think that altering that number is the best way to take the profit out of telemarketing. There are two problems in that logic. First it will be immensely difficult to convince those who for whatever social psychological reason cannot say no, to all the sudden overcome that socialization.
Second, even if you cut the success rate in half, you still have the time problem to deal with. It is simple; those people who say no to telemarketers can do so within the first minute of the call, so those people who say no take almost no time at all. The people who say yes spend a considerably more amount of time on the phone, being sold into all sorts of stuff; lets say an average of eight minutes. What I am saying is what is the big deal if you went from a 50% success rate to a 25% when you are making 90% of the sales you were making before.
My suggestion is that it is our civic duty to take up as much of these peoples time as we possibly can. If you can waste 5 minutes of their time they just went from making 60 calls an hour to only 12. If you could waste ten minutes even better, that’s only six calls an hour, in an eight hour day that is only 48 calls, less then what they could have done in an hour back when all we ever did was hang up.
"A waste of time" you say. In rebuttal I say two things. First off, fighting for your right to not be interrupted is an active thing; by wasting a telemarketer’s time you are liberating not only yourself, but an entire nation from a great nuisance. Think of each call, as a call to arms, your turn to fight back. Second, the big problem with telemarketers is not the fact that they take up all that much time, but that they interrupt what you were doing. In reality if you receive 10 of these calls a day, you are losing less then ten minutes of your time to the calls.
Time wasting is our biggest weapon, so here are some methods that can be employed.
1. The silence. Dont hang up, but just put the phone down and walk away, by the time they figure out that you are not there you will have wasted good amounts of their time.
2. Prolonged silence. Put the phone down and periodically, pick it back up and see if they are there, give a couple of um hmms and then put the phone back down.
3. Advanced silence. This one is a beauty. Answer the phone; let them start their pitch and then say, "one second". Go back to doing what ever it was that you were doing, preferably loudly. Pick the phone back up and say "Ok, you were saying, let them start talking again and then interrupt them again saying, some thing like "Oh wait someone is at the door". Again go back to doing whatever it was you were doing, and pick the phone back up, apologize and say "go on". Repeat as many times as you possibly can.
The great thing about this technique is that it really puts you in control of the situation. While the telemarketers bet on the fact that you can't say no on the phone, you can play on the fact that most people will stay on the line if you need to do something momentarily. On this one it can be fun to see how long you can keep them on the line.
Conversational Techniques these are higher risk techniques as they involve actually listening to what the telemarketer has to say. It is important to remind yourself that they are the enemy, decide before you begin not to say yes to anything. Remember, even if they have something that really interests you never say yes to it over the phone, you can always buy it through traditional means.
4. Play dumb, Simply act like a moron, let them speak and when they finally ask you a question, work up a good mouthful of drool and say something totally unrelated and stupid, as if you have no idea what is going on. My favorite take on this one is "No man". In mid sentence say "no" as if you were Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man". Then as soon as he starts to speak again say "no", and if he speaks again, Yell loudly "no no no", this normally freaks them out a bit, and then they will ask another question to try to get their bearings at which point you yell a good and drawn out"NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOO". Most of the time this gets them to hang up.
5. The deaf man. This is always fun. Let them give their initial pitch, and then when they ask you a question ask tell them that you can't hear very well and that they should repeat themselves. Let them go through the bit a second time, when they finish, kindly ask them a stupid question about what they just said like, "I am so sorry, I can't hear you very well, did you say you were from National Geographic" This will send them into their bit a third time at which you ask them to progressively speak louder and louder. If you can get them yelling into the phone you score double points.
7. The obvious question. Let them start and as soon as they stop, ask them something like, "do you know what time it is" after they answer, tell them, "yeah that is the same time I have, do you ever get bothered by people who call late like this?" "Yeah, so what do you do about them" I think you get the point.
6. The personal conversation. This one is neither abusive nor particularly funny but it is really really effective. Let them go into their bit, go along for a little bit, and then act as if you just met the person and start asking them personal questions, try to get to know them. Once you find out something you have in common you've got a conversation going. This is great because it wastes tons of their time, and you can really meet some interesting people. This has become a major challenge between my friends and I, the record thus far has been 24 minutes, although I think the hour record is prime to be broken this year. If you can do the hour, you are officially a grand poobah of the anti-telemarketing movement.
The whole idea is to make a sport out of this, personally I find that wasting an hour of telemarketing time is way more fulfilling than watching an hour of TV. And the good side of it is that you are doing a public service. So good luck, and join in.
Vive la Resistance!!!!
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