Foiling Phone Solicitors
- Thread starter jmellc
- Start date
- Status
GUNNING
Senior Member
- Location
- Gainesville, Florida
Charitable and senseless acts of kindness make me feel good.
Charitable and senseless acts of kindness make me feel good.
If they are persistent and dishonest I list them on my phone as "DO NOT ANSWER". (AT&T long distance/cell phone, that supply house in AZ with the guy that starts off with a joke and calling you by your first name, the hard sell tacticians) I feel I have an obligation to answer every call. It is a business line. Sometimes I get cold calls that really help me. I'm short on help and somebody is looking for a job. Equipment rental companies, and I will need to rent a back hoe the next week for a day. Those karma balancing kinda calls.
Google front page exposure; :slaphead: that one makes my head explode. I ask them if they ARE google and since they are not how can they guarantee front page placement. Don't lie up front it makes you look untrustworthy.
Credit card processing offers, I ask if they would give me there credit card number. They don't, then I ask why would I give them my account information to a cold call artist and I don't make this type of decision with a cold call.
Yellow page adds. I'm going to be changing the way I'm going to approach that next year and need them to call back in September. I have them contacting me instead of looking them up. Hmmm... they have already started as I recall. I get to pick there brains too. One guy offered me the bottom half of the front inside cover of their phone book for $219 a month. I wish he would call me back.
Now for the best part. When the caller keeps me on the line for a couple of seconds they get credit for the call and gets paid for the contact. If the guy with the back hoe is cold calling because he has a list of bidders on a project then maybe he might think kindly on me and pass my name onto someone that needs a really good polite electrician. 15 seconds and I have an opportunity to impress someone new. My advertising I'm paying for is working.
Sometimes I hang up if its a recording. Sometimes I answer with "What ya selling?" Talk about a pregnant pause.
I always try to answer the phone, its my job.
Charitable and senseless acts of kindness make me feel good.
If they are persistent and dishonest I list them on my phone as "DO NOT ANSWER". (AT&T long distance/cell phone, that supply house in AZ with the guy that starts off with a joke and calling you by your first name, the hard sell tacticians) I feel I have an obligation to answer every call. It is a business line. Sometimes I get cold calls that really help me. I'm short on help and somebody is looking for a job. Equipment rental companies, and I will need to rent a back hoe the next week for a day. Those karma balancing kinda calls.
Google front page exposure; :slaphead: that one makes my head explode. I ask them if they ARE google and since they are not how can they guarantee front page placement. Don't lie up front it makes you look untrustworthy.
Credit card processing offers, I ask if they would give me there credit card number. They don't, then I ask why would I give them my account information to a cold call artist and I don't make this type of decision with a cold call.
Yellow page adds. I'm going to be changing the way I'm going to approach that next year and need them to call back in September. I have them contacting me instead of looking them up. Hmmm... they have already started as I recall. I get to pick there brains too. One guy offered me the bottom half of the front inside cover of their phone book for $219 a month. I wish he would call me back.
Now for the best part. When the caller keeps me on the line for a couple of seconds they get credit for the call and gets paid for the contact. If the guy with the back hoe is cold calling because he has a list of bidders on a project then maybe he might think kindly on me and pass my name onto someone that needs a really good polite electrician. 15 seconds and I have an opportunity to impress someone new. My advertising I'm paying for is working.
Sometimes I hang up if its a recording. Sometimes I answer with "What ya selling?" Talk about a pregnant pause.
I always try to answer the phone, its my job.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
The phone line is covered in art 800
Do not call registry may help but does not stop all calls. If you want to go through the process of filing a complaint they still wasted some of your time.
Where do you find 10 phone booths close enough to each other to do this, it is hard to find just one phone booth anymore? Besides do you really think they will just sit there with a tied up line if there appears to be no one there, their job is to make contact with people, if no one is there they will just move on to another number.
No place for superman to change either.
My phone does one better.
I can program numbers to go straight to voicemail. I think my list of WW has about 200 numbers now. And none of them ever ring, or even peep.
I can program numbers to go straight to voicemail. I think my list of WW has about 200 numbers now. And none of them ever ring, or even peep.
I should have thought of this before. A week or 2 ago, I was getting pestered with solicitors day & night, some several times over & some I had told not to call me again. I started saving their #'s on my phone, listing as Pest 1, Pest 2, etc. I set the ringtone choice to NO RING. So now when they call, I hear no ring & don't interrupt my work for foolishness. If their calls beep in on me, I see they are no one to bother with.
Eventually, we will be allowed to go headhunting for telemarketers & put their shrunken heads on poles. Until then, this is another way I can frustrate them with no effort on my part.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
My business number is on the do not call registry. Don't know if it is supposed to be. What are they going to do if it is not? I don't know how much it helps, seems like there have been a lot of calls lately, I usually just hang up. Sometimes I have to stay on the line for a little bit to find out if it is a sales person or a potential customer. Some are pretty good at keeping you on the line for a while without you knowing what their intentions are.
Twoskinsoneman
Senior Member
- Location
- West Virginia, USA NEC: 2020
- Occupation
- Facility Senior Electrician
The crook here is the gov agency that sold your personal information.
............No place for superman to change either.
He uses an App for that now.
jmellc
Senior Member
- Location
- Durham, NC
- Occupation
- Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
Good idea, but phone booths around here are now few & far between. The idea will also work from an office with multi line service, if they can spare a few lines for an hour or so.
- Status