Revenge On The Telemarketer

[topCatDC]

REVENGE ON THE TELEMARKETER

Three Little Words That Work!!

(1) The three little words: "Hold On, Please..." Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off

(instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear BT's "beep-beep-beep" tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset .... you have efficiently completed your task.

These three little words could help eliminate telephone soliciting.

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?

This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

This technique is then used to determine the best time of day for a "real" salesperson to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering: If you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialled the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!

3: When you get those "pre-approved" letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk,do not throw away the return envelope.

Most of these come with postage-prepaid return envelopes, right?

It costs them more than the regular postage "IF" and when they are returned. It costs them nothing if you throw them away! In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-prepaid return envelopes.

Send an advert for your local chimney sweeper to American Express ... they might need one! Send a pizza coupon to HSBC ... in case their canteen packs up. You get the idea.

If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them back their blank application form ... after all, it is their form!

If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you return.

You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them, and it is their envelope after all ... you are just returning it!!!!

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the post, but folks ..... we need to OVERWHELM them, in order to stop them.

Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they're paying for it ... Twice!

Let's help keep Royal Mail busy. Since the Royal Mail are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, let's help them so they will not need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!

If enough people follow these tips, it will work ---- maybe you'll get very little junk mail anymore.

THIS JUST MIGHT BE ONE THAT YOU WILL WANT TO FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS!!!!!!!

TC

[fbnts]

Haha! I do both of these!

 

I prefer to tear up the application form but conveniently leave my address intact so that they then remove me from their database! (From what I hear the big companies use automatic letter openers and scanners. Tearing up into tiny pieces jams their machines up! HaHa!)

[alibobsy]

I've posted envelopes back with recycling leaflets in em before now lol. Like that one with the silent calls tho

ali x

[tiaposy]

Fantastic idea - made me laugh.

Will be sending all my post back now!!

[patdavies]

REVENGE ON THE TELEMARKETER

Three Little Words That Work!!

(1) The three little words: "Hold On, Please..." Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off

(instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear BT's "beep-beep-beep" tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset .... you have efficiently completed your task.

 

These three little words could help eliminate telephone soliciting.

 

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?

 

This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

 

This technique is then used to determine the best time of day for a "real" salesperson to call back and get someone at home.

 

What you can do after answering: If you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialled the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!

 

 

 

(1) is good because call centres can have deals with BT etc. where the first 90 seconds of a call is free. If you leave them hanging on, you are starting to cost them money and possibly tieing up an operator

 

(2) will not work, because this is not how diallers work. The number called is stored in a database -you can't change it from your end, whatever you do. All that you will do is confuse the system as to how to classify the call. In most cases if answered with voice it will be passed to an agent. If it decides that it has 'tones', then it will assume answer machine and place the number in a re-cycle queue.

 

Last, it is not a tele-marketing technique and it would be illegal for any UK company to use a method like this. The reason that you sometimes get silence is that the call is initiated by dialler software. If answered, it then gets passed to a free agent. If no agent is free, then the line goes dead and this is known as an abandoned call. Regulations on call centres place an absolute limit of 3% on abandoned calls. The dialler software monitors the abandoned call rate and if it starts to creep above a preset level (usually 2%) it will start slowing down the dialling rate.

[powelll]

How about wrapping up a housebrick or similar heavy object, and sticking their prepaid envelope on the front?? Would this cost them an absolute fortune? I suppose as long as it isn't anything which could cause injury ie sharp & it would fit into letterbox they can't really do anything...

[harrythehawk]

Pizza menus, Help The Aged Collection Bags, Labour Party flyers, old newspapers .... anything I have lying about goes back with mine. I think with one lot I may have entered a game as I usually write on the front of the envelope next to the window bit where there is a space, this time there was a large handstamped red "logo" covering this area ..... just used large black felt tip instead .... idiots !!

[diskmandave]

Every time I renew our telephone preferences service, my Mum goes spare when I say i'll stop all your junk mail too. She loves it! She's been the confirmed winner of £11,500.00 for over 3 years now!

[topCatDC]

Hi Diskmandave

you mean to say I'm not the winner of £11,500 .

does this mean some one is telling lies

TC

[silverfoxtrot]

Whoopee!! I'm gonna have some fun as we get LOADs of junk mail. Look out Royal Mail, I'll be keeping you in work for months!!

LOVED the tele sales tip. Will def. do that one. What makes me so angry is when they call on a SUNDAY!!

[monopoly23]

I sent a very snotty e-mail the other day to some company that dials on behalf of o2.

 

Someone mentioned a 3% limit on abandoned calls? Well so far their calls to me were 100% abandoned.

 

So I googled the number, found the company and told them that if they ever called me again I would do them for harassment. Sure enough I got a reply the next day saying that my number had been placed on their 'do not call' list.

Made me laugh

[nearlyoldwoman]

ahhh thankyou, you've solved a major problem for me! every time i go to post a letter my two little girls fight over who is going to put it in the postbox! problem now solved as we'll be standing at the postbox for ages posting all thos pre paid envelopes back (with torn little pieces in of course:D ) oh what fun we'r gonna have this school holidays:D and as for the silent calls gggrrrrrrr nothing more infuriating, if i do get someone on the phone they always start with, "can you confirm your name/age/address?" etc to which i always reply "ooh i don't think so, you could be anyone, i don't feel safe divulging ino like that on the phone in this day and age":D

[Spiceskull]

Good tips, definitely worth a chuckle, and then definitely time to follow your lead...

[dom2599]

I've been having some 'sport' with these junk mail companies for a few months now, sending bits and pieces of my own junk back to them.

Over the past few weeks they've changed tack tho, sending junk letters with no pre payed envolope! i now send their junk back 'cash on delivery' i hardly get any mail now.......spoil sports!

[IdaInFife]

If I get any telephone calls and say wait a momnet and put my three year old daughter online. She can talk for Scotland and believe it or not , not many have hung the phone up on her usually the other way around when she gets bored!

[pink princess]

Great advice - really made me laugh... Best one I had on Friday a guy called at my house and said he was here to see me about the upgrades to my bt landline cables ... quite believable as I am with bt but then he asked me how much I paid each month? I said you should know that if you work for BT... silence from him... I then said 'do you work for BT?' no he replied - Talk Talk - 'Cheeky B*****' I said as I shut the door in his face!

[Darrenwooly]

I have to be honest on here

 

I love the idea regards to the post and stuff, brilliant, but i have never had junk mail, i just avoid all marketing surveys and can honestly hold my hands up and say i have never had a peice of junk mail

 

On the back of the call centres its all a bit cruel, and by letting them hold on your making the agent look better than he/she is

 

Ive been working in call centres for over 8 years, started as a telemarketer and now im a regional training manager for the likes of Sky, O2, Vodafone, Banks etc...

 

By leaving the phone haning on is a great way for an agent to hit his target.

 

At the above companies the staff arent just targeted on sales, they are targeted on:

 

1. Dials

2. Talk time

3. Sales

 

For example, the more you dial the greater the chance of a sale (regardless of a dialler software or using good old fashion lists)

 

However if every customer left an agent on hold, he will GLADLY sit there and wait, due to the fact that the system will report him having a good conversation, whilst in reality he his just surfing the web!! the system doesnt record calls, so an agent could look like he had a call with you for 12 minutes, AMAZING TALK TIME!

 

some professional sales companies now target on talk time and the salarys these boys and girls earn is phenomonal. (basics of £25k with £60k in commision per year)

 

At they end of the day its no longer a chicken farm, its a career for some and a great money earner

 

some of the UKS greatest sales directors came from this, Half of the board for yellow Pages came from the phones up.

 

my advice, GO TPS or just hang up.

 

GOOD TIP for business's though, if you where called and the person said they found you in the Yellow pages, contact Yellow pages explain who called you and Yellow pages will call that company within 72 hours with a warning of illegal use of a Yellow Pages book.

 

Yellow Pages of a very large legal team who ACTIVELY pursue companies who use a yellow pages for database reasons.

[harrythehawk]

This makes sense, I had someone ring the other night telling me I had won £1,000 voucher towards a new kitchen, in the hope I could waste their time and money I spent 5 minutes arguing could I just take the cash instead, then asked if I had a fitted kitchen I said no I have a 200 ft long room with a large wood fire in the middle with a spit and cooking pot hanging from it .... amazingly the conversation continued ...... now I know why nonsense and sarcasm doesn't get rid of them !!!

[mree]

I totally understand how annoying telemarketing calls are, which is why I am registered with the TPS and don't get any sales calls. Just a note though - please remember that people working in telesales are human! I ended up in a telemarketing job for about 2 months once after being made redundant from the company I worked for at the time. I was desperate, the rent had to be paid and my partner was out of work through ill health. I took the job because I would rather do ANY job than claim dole (although I don't have a problem with people claiming dole, I just think it should be an absolute LAST resort), and if someone told me they weren't interested, I ended the conversation. I also ended the conversation when I was screamed at, sworn at, accused of being various things I won't repeat on here, etc., etc. You see where I'm going with this? The conversation ended either way. No-one needed to be horrible or rude or downright foul. Not suggesting anyone on here would go so far as some of the people I spoke to, but please, in coming up with your put-downs, remember there is a real person with a real set of cirumstances on the other end of that phone. It wasn't a career choice for me, it was a way of keeping a roof over my head without taking money out of your taxes unneccessarily. I certainly wasn't making the kind of money mentioned above, although I'm sure some people do.

 

Thank you. Rant over. Normal Service may now resume.

[patdavies]

I

By leaving the phone haning on is a great way for an agent to hit his target.

 

At the above companies the staff arent just targeted on sales, they are targeted on:

 

1. Dials

2. Talk time

3. Sales

 

For example, the more you dial the greater the chance of a sale (regardless of a dialler software or using good old fashion lists)

 

However if every customer left an agent on hold, he will GLADLY sit there and wait, due to the fact that the system will report him having a good conversation, whilst in reality he his just surfing the web!! the system doesnt record calls, so an agent could look like he had a call with you for 12 minutes, AMAZING TALK TIME!

 

some professional sales companies now target on talk time and the salarys these boys and girls earn is phenomonal. (basics of £25k with £60k in commision per year)

 

 

The call centres that I know use Voice Recording to verify calls and for call quality purposes.

 

Anybody sitting on a silent line for any length of time would soon show up as the recorder will stop recording if there is no sound on the line.

 

The recordings are also used for word spotting; verification of sales; call flow analysis. (This is where the call is analysed to see how much the client talked; how much the agent talked and whether they talked across each other and who caused the talk across)

[Spiceskull]

The call centres that I know use Voice Recording to verify calls and for call quality purposes.

 

Anybody sitting on a silent line for any length of time would soon show up as the recorder will stop recording if there is no sound on the line.

 

The recordings are also used for word spotting; verification of sales; call flow analysis. (This is where the call is analysed to see how much the client talked; how much the agent talked and whether they talked across each other and who caused the talk across)

All very true, as I know from my own experience in this field. Additionally, on the training side the Quality Assurance team are always on the lookout to check that the conversation includes key words/phrases, as are the clints, and EVERY single financial product call has to be recorded by law...each "sale" is scrupulously checked over, and if the caller is found to have "mis-sold" then the customer is called back and the sale verified for a second time...

 

The DMA covers all this and more on their website...

[Darrenwooly]

I appreciate that

 

But with word verification and call recording it is great, but with that you need a quality assurance team, and they are targeted on listening to x amounts of calls. Just more expense to the blue chips and the call centers that isnt needed,

 

I know many many companies that will take on a training and quality team, JUST to help them win new clients, hence why a lot of training jobs are on a contract basis and they pay so much.

 

Infact a certain Call centre Group with over 2,500 sales people on the phones have a team of 12 Quality assurance staff who sit there and listen heres the deal though

 

1 telesales member makes average 100 dials a day thats 250,000 calls a day

 

12 members listening to calls thats 1200 a day, even with voice recognition software its still hard to track and monitor.

 

AMCAT the big dialling software company only have this installed into 2 of its key clients, and the recording hard drives are difficult enough to maintain.

 

what they say and do are different from what they actually do, do you honestly think that they give true figures to there business clients about how productive the sales teams are??

 

All big companys outsource a majority of there sales work at £15-25 an hour per telesales operator to call centre companys.

 

some of the mobile phone giants call centre bills can be as much as £2 million a month with just one company!

 

and you think they will tell the truth, one of things that you used to make me laugh and disgust me was the fact that they would ask for random calls upto 250, we used to sit together and listen to calls just to get a CD together, rename the files and make them look random!

 

I've been offered £220 a day to help setup and implement training & development strategy in certain companies, again just to help them get the new clients in once in, training out.

 

there was an article in the Express about 6months ago where one of the columnists was getting thousands of sales calls, she got so sick of it she decided to go and join them

 

she realised just how difficult they have it and praised them, so much she came OFF TPS just to help!!

 

BUT none of this is relevant to the subject, all I'm saying is that you either say no not interested, hang up or take an interest in what they say

 

its peoples jobs, careers and lifes, would we be that cruel to them if we met them in a shop and they tried to sell to them

 

If you don't like the calls go TPS. there are only a few companies who have exception from TPS, IE they can contact you if you are TPS registered.

[harrythehawk]

Well er no !! So I never enter draws and competitions but I win them, I don't ask to be called or mailed, sure there is somebody on the other end of the phone as it is them who rang me without my authority, cold calling deserves all it gets and folk who take these jobs should know awkwardness and potentially abuse goes with the territory. Same goes for people I do meet in the street who are met with a "no thankyou", ie big issue, can you spare two minutes please, can you spare some change etc etc and my personal favourite (for my own reasons) "have you had an accident" to which I tell them to get a proper f**king job, if I go into a shop it is usually to buy something I actually may want so no problems there ...... otherwise no I don't want a kitchen, if I did I would go to a kitchen retailer and get one, not sit by my phone until someone tried to sell me one with a voucher I had won in a competition I never entered at 7.00pm on the phone .... or maybe that is just me mmm

[Darrenwooly]

So Harry

 

thats your choice Harry, all Im saying is go TPS if you dont want the calls, or asked to be removed form the database.

 

and yes abuse does come with the terrority, but for the amount these guys earn its worth someone getting high rate on the other end.

 

sometimes you get a kick out of how mad they actually go

[mree]

my personal favourite (for my own reasons) "have you had an accident" to which I tell them to get a proper f**king job

 

There is never any excuse for speaking to someone like that when they're just trying to do their job, no matter how much you can't be bothered with them. Ever.