I just ask what the weather's like where they are, who the client is, what their name is, did they have a good day, what their address is, what their supervisor's name is, then ask how they're going to send me the money that they owe me.
There's usually a bit of stuttering then the phone goes dead.

i`m rude 8)

Just had a call from Easytel 'we're just calling to let you know your phone will be 1/3rd cheaper from next month as we've taken over the local BT exchange and your phone line'.

After I replied that I won't as I haven't changed my phone provider, they hung up, which was a real shame as I didn't get a chance to ask how they can be a 3rd cheaper for my broadband when I get it for free as an employee benefit.

Had the same from a doorstep caller a couple of years ago, reported that one to Ofcom 🙂

Can the Mods just ban Obi Twa now and save everyone a lot of time and grief 🙄

A mate of mine had been plagued by calls from a conservatory company and eventually let one caller go through the whole spiel of glass types, roofing material, insulation, flooring, finance etc. to the point where all the salesman had to do was pop round to get the paperwork signed. It was only then that he asked what new technology enabled a conservatory to be built onto a 5th floor flat. He never heard from them again 😆

Caution. Very rude words from Kevin Bl££dy Wilson's way of dealing with cold callers!

We get calls here in the office, obviously originating in India.
They come on, after a long-distance pause and tell proceed to tell me their name is Cameron or Paul or Jonathan (!) or some such. No, it's Mr Patel again with his list of lies.

Usually they also ring the 2nd line at the very same moment, so I turn one hand set into a 69 position & let them chat to each other !

Another one that is TPS registered, but to be honest I think its a bit of a waste of time cause I still get calls. I could report them but to be honest its too much hassle.

Obi Twa, are you a troll, or are you just out for a rant for no reason. As someone else said if you take a job in an outbound call centre you need to expect a bit of abuse. It's like being a bouncer and expecting to deal with drunken idiots. It's practically in the job description. Let face it they probably have you on mute calling you all the 4 letter words possible. I know from experience (someone not pressing mute right before calling me a c**k, cause I was being sarcastic)

Also your comment re overtaking someone doing 20 in a 30. Do you realise that driving too slow for the road/conditions is also dangerous, and you can not be done for overtaking someone doing 20mph in a 30mph+ zone, as long as you are doing it in an unsafe manner (near a school, crossing solid lines ect) or you break the speed limit while doing that manoeuvre.

My standard reply to any cold call is to hang up after saying "I'm sorry I don't speak english" , which coming from a yorkshireman is at least partly true.

I got three calls in the same evening from Safetyle UK one day. By the third I'd decided to have a mansion, could they come & qoute me. Managed to keep the idiot on the line for 20 minutes before he caught on, told me to **** off, and hung on me! Brilliant!!!!!!

Current cold caller fave is Sky repair services, trying to seel me a warranty for my Sky box that I don't need. They claim to be the "only official" Sky repairer, which they aren't, and are based locally to me, apparently trading standards are taking them to court, so I usually spin them along for a while, ask if they are "Domestic & General", who I understand do provide the genuine Sky warranty, before getting them to either go away, or point out that I know they're mis-selling, do they want me to ring trading standards?

Can't stand cold-calling, if I need something I'll go out and get it myself! If they continually get my surname wrong (wierdly spelt Irish orgin name), then I'll sometimes just do the "sorry, no-one of that name here, goodbye……"

cbrsyd, as I live in Switzerland I get the calls in French so I tell them I don't speak french ( I do… poorly ) and I had one rather indignant with me "what??"

piss off.. my house is sovereign territory.. english only spoken inside.

Got a call from TALK TALK last nite and my reply was not interested as your a rip off company , guy on end of phone said ,oh realy hows that sir ?
then i put the phone down . END !!!!!

Back onto topic…

I once had a guy come to my door and I said 'I'm not interested' before he even spoke.

He said 'you don't know what I am selling'

I said 'I do'

'what then' he said

'Double glazing'

'Why do you think that?' he asked

'Because you have a brochure under your arm and your bag has the company logo on it'. Then I closed the door on him.

🙂

I always close the door without even saying anything to cold callers. It's ruddy annoying when you are feeding the kids one of them is busy chucking food on the floor the other is trying to drown herself in yoghurt they are both screaming and the door bell goes. I hope to god iut my wife coming back form shopping but no its some C yoU Next Tuesday with a cliboard. BANG goes the door and I go back to the kitchen.

🙂

I am waiting for one of them to ring us when we are fighting with a screaming child as I will just put the phone to the child's wailing mouth.

Does anyone get the young offenders knocking selling things, "we're trying to go straight mr" and why are they all northern, I live in Essex.

We had Design Magic kitchens call us. We are in the process of getting a new kitchen, so my wife arranged an appointment for one of their kitchen designers to come around and give us a quote. We had no intention of buying from them, but thought a professional might come up with some ideas or changes to the layout that we'd not thought of.

The guy who came round couldn't have cared less about the kitchen and knocked up a design in no time. All he then wanted us to do was sign a finance agreement that meant he would give us £1000 off the quote.

It was actually a struggle to get a quote off him; all he was interested in was the weekly payment. He started at £10k then kept dropping the price, eventually getting as low as £4k! We kept refusing to sign anything on the night, and he couldn't explain why we couldn't pay £6k cash for it, but he could give us it for £4k on the finance deal.

He was every stereotype of a salesman going: obvious hair implants; overly groomed beard; kept telling us he didn't need our cash because he had a £10k watch, £40k car, was the regional manager, earned £60k; came up with his initial quote by tapping lots numbers onto a calculator which then amazingly landed on a round number; half tore the design up but gave us a last chance; etc. Like a bad contestant from the Apprentice. Eventually, we got him out of the house.

A week later, Design Magic phoned us again. I told them we'd had one of their salesmen around and he was a ****, so please don't phone us again.

Obi_Twa – Member

You dont unless they are crawling along. If they are doing a reasonable speed then to overtake them is wreckless and you will lose your licence if caught.

Fred, I believe you are acquainted with where the door is. Use it please….

from a while ago, email sent straight to the director of the company

Dear Sir

I have twice been contacted by you or your outsourced call centre. The first call was last week and after i expressed no interest in taking part in telephone marketing the operative was insistent that i take part. I then asked not to be contacted again. I received a second call today and when i stated that i had asked not to be called again the operative hung up with no form of apology or explanation. I consider this to be extremely unprofessional. Please pass on this information to your call centre management team. The telephone number i was contacted on was ######## and i would like this number to be permanently removed from your database.

Dear Michael,

I wanted to apologise for the calls you have received. It was a market research survery on behalf of UK charities. We do ensure that all callers are trained and monitored – I'm very sorry you fel they were pushy.

Please accept my sincerest apology and I will ensure that 1. your name is removed from the database and you will receive no further communciation 2. that the caller is dealt with accordingly and made aware of the complaint.

Kind Regards,

Lee

I am on TPS and it does make a significant difference. Any cold caller is a rude barteward by definition and deserves no respect.

I have 3 different tactics for dealing with them depending how rude I feel. Just hang up immediately without saying a word, Say " that sounds interesting – could you just hang on a mo" and put the phone down and ignore them. Occasional just a scream down the line at them

Not Fred.

M_F – you cant overtake a car thats doing a reasonable speed in a 30 safely. Therefore you would be charged with either careless or dangerous driving.

Not Fred.

Well grow up and stop acting like him then

Or if you're that other moron Smee, I believe you've also been shown where the exit is previously. Don't hold back in using it…

I am never rude to cold callers be they on the phone or the door stop.
That is simply bad manners are reflects badly upon you, the called-upon.

YOu don't have to fight fire with fire, there is never a need to be rude to people, however much you may dislike their chosen occupation, they may be doing what they're doing for a mirriad of personal reasons and to have an uneducated lout abuse them is poor form. Shame on you if you believe the way to behave is to verbally abuse another person.

Moron is someone that sits on a forum all day and spouts utter drivel – a bit like yourself and Misguided_Fannybaws.

I'm off to ride my bike in the glorious sunshine and heat round the dusty trail of Innerleithen on my singlespeed. You should try it sometime.

Arrivederci.

Does anyone get the young offenders knocking selling things, "we're trying to go straight mr" and why are they all northern, I live in Essex.

I had one of those the other day. A scouser and I'm in Hampshire. Wasn't sure if I should be impressed and I should be doing my bit by supporting him/the initiative, it's a scam or there's another nipper casing out your shed whilst you are kept occupied at the front door. As it was I genuinely didn't have a penny in the house so it wasn't an issue.

t1 – you soooooooooooooooo miss the point. cold callers are being rude to me and wasting my time. Perhaps they will stop behaving in such a reprehensible way if enough people are rude back to them and waste their time.

What gives them the right to phone me up and waste my time?

As you've posted more in your two days of rejoining us (and oh how we have enjoyed it) than I have in the past week, I guess you can draw your own conclusions on whether you fit into your re-defined definition of 'moron'

Have a nice ride, hope it sorts out your miserable life…

Whilst I'd like to think I was with ti29er on this, I think we are all agreed it is an industry that most of us want to die a death. If you are tps registered and have a sign on your door discouraging cold call salesmen you are making it pretty clear that you don't wish to have your life intruded upon, so if they still persit to a certain exent they have got it coming to them. If the job is made so unpleasant no one chooses to do it, either they would have to pay the staff more making it unprofitable or just close down.

Having said that, these companies are in business to make money and as everyone I know either just puts the phone down out mouths off a bunch of expletives, there must be some folks somewhere caught up by it or they would not persist. What do you thing the conversion rate is – 1%, less?

I never take it out on the call centre operatives unless they are rude to me, most ougtgoing call centres are pretty miserable places to work and the operatives are under immense pressure. no doubt TJ will spout some 'well they should get a different job if they don't like it' b@llocks but he's only really aware of the labour market on the planet he's from.

obi_twa = smee, Mastile baiting again!

Has Obi Twa missed a T off the end of his name? 😯

mrmichaelwright

They have wasted my time and been rude to me simply by phoning my number.

M_F – you cant overtake a car thats doing a reasonable speed in a 30 safely. Therefore you would be charged with either careless or dangerous driving.

What is careless or dangerous about overtaking a slower vehicle if it is done when the conditions dictate that it is safe to do so? For what it is worth, on the occasion you refer to, I sat behind the car for some half a mile past parked cars, an unsighted brow, a set of lights, a sharp bend and a further set of lights before coming to a long and wide straight where it was perfectly clear with no parked cars, traffic coming from the other direction or any other apparent hazards. And as I was in the car with my wife and two young children I would not have dared make a dangerous manoeuvre because my wife would quite simply have made my life hell if she thought I was putting their lives in any kind of danger. I strongly stand by my past comment that I could have (and would have) overtaken a police car driving at that speed in those conditions and would not expect any action to be taken – quite simply I did nothing careless or dangerous and the conditions and road markings allowed such a manoeuvre.

Anyway – what would you do if you came up behind a bike riding at 20mph in a 30mph zone? Sit behind it?

And Fred – you have just given yourself away with 'Misguided_Fannybaws' – it is always you playing with my name like that. 😉

EDIT: If it is trollingzoosmeefighter and not Fred, he should know perfectly well that it was an acceptable thing to do unless he has completely forgotten how to learn people to drive proper.

I once (in a fit of desperation) went for a job at 'a call centre' whilst I was in my 1st year at uni. This was about 10 years ago. The rate of pay £9/h I think made it quite appealing, as did the flexible hours. However, when I got there, it transpired pretty quickly that it wasn't going to be me sat there being rung up to be abused (I could have dealt with that), more it was me going to be abusing people I rang. I decided I wasn't that desperate, and served threw beer at rugby players in the SU instead…

Got one of them high pitched rape alarms next to the phone (the NHS gave them to my wife as she works in a dodgy area for them).

When answering the phone and identifying the cold caller, they get a blast of the alarm right down the line.

Its one thing giving verbal abuse Lowey, but doing that is OTT.

Acoustic shock is not funny, especially when wearing a headset where you can't move the phone away quickly.

I think it counts as assault doesn't it?

Perhaps I can offer a different perspective….My very first job when I was just 16 was cold calling on doorsteps / from a call centre for yes, double-glazing. It was for the princely sum of a pound an hour (before the minimum wage) and was the only job I could get. I don't condone the industry – looking back I can't believe I did it, you are so set up to be loathed – but as a naive youngster I can't believe how much abuse I had to stand and take. One old bloke got me indoors "for a quote", shut the door they proceeded to scream all his petty little pent-up hate of the world at me for an age, refusing to le tme go which was horrendous. Although I don't like being cold-called, that whole experience has meant that I always now speak to the other person with decency, unless they are rude/abusive themselves. That other person may actually be in a difficult situation and have some self-respect that they are trying to hold on to. I did actually stand it for some months, but left when they started putting off paying me (the measly few quid they owed me). A (hard) lesson in life.

Hope that gives another view.

spooky_b329 – Member

Its one thing giving verbal abuse Lowey, but doing that is OTT.

that's ok, if he consistently uses a rape alarm in an enclosed space then he'll be deaf long before the call centre workers have any problems

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/working-in-a-call-centre-is-just-awful%2c-say-experts-201005192746/

M_F – you cant overtake a car thats doing a reasonable speed in a 30 safely. Therefore you would be charged with either careless or dangerous driving.

This is boooolllocks.
I have successfully defended a charge of exactly this.

When I was 15/turning 16 I went for a job at Y*rkshire Windo*s (company named hidden so they don't sue me).
Basically, i did a four hour shift phoning people from a page in the phone book that the supervisor gave us. You'd typically get through about a full page in your shift.
For my four hours work i got about £30, which was crap, but for every single appointment I made I got a £20 bonus. So for those 4 hours work, on average i was making over £100 on average per shift, which when you're a spotty 16 year old who's never earned before is a considerable sum of money.

It was grim work though. There were about 20 of us in a windowless shed behind a chip shop phoning using basic phones.

A word of warning – one thing they used to do if they got grief was phone back repeatedly with the standard spiel.

I lasted about a month before I went and got a job at Halfords.