Thursday, April 13, 2006

Pest Calls

This morning I got two of those calls we all just love to get: those people who call you up and either ask you for money or are from a company you are affiliated with in some way and are trying to sell you something. I call them "pest calls", and they really irk me, especially when they call you at busy times, and especially at dinner time. I have caller ID, and the ones that come up as "UNAVAILABLE", I always ignore. (Besides they NEVER leaving answering machine messages so the call can't be important anyway.) There are also those times when I tell them to call back in a month or so, and yet they will call again the next day.

I figured out a while ago that these calls are placed by a computer, and there is a one-to-two second gap before the person gets on to give you their story. When I hear that gap, I immediately hang up the phone. They never call back, at least on that day. I got an email a while back that the way to get back at these people is to tell them to hang on, and leave them on the line for 15 minutes or more. Not a bad idea, but I don't want to tie up my phone that long.

I thought a lot of these calls would cease when I went on the National No Call List. Silly me. I'm sure some of these people found a loophole around it.

4 comments:

Michael Leggett said...

The No Call List needed to raise cash so they sold your #.

Then again, maybe Ivan Lafayette saw your blog.

WelshSoxFan said...

next time you get one, quote the Jerry Seinfeld epsiode when he deals with a sales call. It goes something like this:
Jerry "Hello? Oh hi, I'm actually kind of busy right now. Why don't you give me your home number and I'll call yo uback later? Oh, you can't really give out your home phone number. I guess you don't want people bothering you at home, right? Well now you know how I feel" hangs up phone.

Sheer genius

BklynSoxFan said...

That's a great idea.
Seinfeld, what a genius.

Michael Leggett said...

Play a tape of a Hawk Harrelson Play-By-Play & that'll end the calls.