National Do Not Call Registry
Telemarketers. We all hate them. I could rant and rave about being bothered during dinner or while watching TV, all for the sake of being sold some whatchamacallit. Undoubtedly so could you. There are devices for blocking and zapping unwanted phone calls, most everyone has some form of caller id, and still the calls seem to get through. You can tell them to remove you from their list. There are even laws with stiff penalties for those who continue to call, if you’ve got the time and patience to log who’s been calling and follow it up with a lawsuit.
Recently I instituted a sure fire way to get back at the solicitors. It won’t stop them from calling but it will surely make them think twice about calling back. This evening for instance: at around 5:40 the first call came in from a company wanting to know about my insurance situation. Snapping up my clipboard from beside the phone I set to work making the solicitor work for his no. I took the lead in the conversation by asking questions.
Who am I speaking to?
What company do you represent?
Where is the company headquarters located?
Where is your call center located?
What is the phone number from where you are calling?
All questions solicitors are required to answer by law.
When he asked why I was curious I explained I was taking a survey, and since he called to ask me some questions I’m sure he’d be willing to answer some in turn. He tried to push past by questions and work in his product, but I shut him down.
“How long have you worked for ---?” He wasn’t sure why I needed to know that. “Well, if your trying to sell me something I’d like to have an idea of how long you’ve worked for the company.” And so on, and so forth. This went on, for about five or six minutes before he said goodnight after I asked him to remove me from his list. The next call didn’t even make it past the required questions before hanging up.
This may seem like a lot of work and effort on my part. Only took a few minutes to write up the list of questions and put them on a clipboard. Yes, it does take a little while to talk to these people but I have to do that anyways when I answer the phone. I might as well have a little bit of fun while I’m at it.
And at the end of the day I’ll have documentation I could use in court if I ever feel the need. It feels good to have a little power over my phone again and now I’m not dreading answering the phone at 6:20pm. It might just be another respondent for my questionnaire.
