That's when you fake a bad connection, as in,

"Hello, ma'm, are you the head of your household?"

"what, sorry?"

"ma'm? are you there? can I ask you to take a short survey?"

"hello? Is anyone there?"

"ma'm, we seem to have a bad connection, we'll try back later."
<connection is suddenly clear>
"ok, then, you do that, bye"

It's much more fun than reaming people out.



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You kids with your long hair and Baroque music...

I'm not sure how I feel about the genuine survey companies. In particular, they are only getting answers from people who have nothing better to do than talk to them on the phone and this must skew the representative nature of the survey group and, hence, the resulting statistics. The theme song for these companies should be "Only the Lonely".

But I suppose the same is true when they try to stop people in the street.

I'm also annoyed by the fake friendly ice-breaker, "How are you today Sir?" (and you get a big smile with this if it's some bod in a booth at the mall) As if they want to know how I am! What are they going to do, send a get well card? I should answer "Terrible! I'm constantly annoyed by businesses ringing me with unsolicited offers in my own home. What can I do for you?"

Or just register your telephone number with the Telephone Preference Service - it stops the majority and those that do still call, I get them to repeat their company name clearly and then inform them that they are now liable for a rather large fine for breaking the law. Gets rid of them pretty quickly.

That's just my point though! Why should I have to register my own home phone so that it's not treated like a shop. The whole system is skewed the wrong way if I have to tell some company in India not to call me on behalf of Telstra Australia who've farmed their telemarketing offshore.

If I tell Telstra Aust. that they're breaking the law, they say, "It's not us! It's Ramaputra Inc. in Dehli."

Which leads me to another point. These guys ring me (it's always with a contract from Telstra or Optus, the two big Aust. phone companies) and say "Hi! How are you today Mr. Walker? <Terrible. Hungover. How are you?> Fine! I'm Kevin! Do you have 2 minutes so you can make the savings of a lifetime on your phone bill? <Your name's not Kevin> Pardon? <I said 'Your name's not Kevin.> How do you know? <Kevin's not really a very Hindii name. What is it really?> We are not supposed to tell you that.... etc."

Dead set. That was a real dialogue about two months ago. Another guy told me that I'd "been selected" to get some deal or other and I spent the next three minutes nagging him about who was on the selection panel so I could get in touch with them to thank them personally. He finally hung up.

Don't really get that sort of stuff.

I anyway only have a cellphone. That's even more fun. I can lose it.



__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

About surveys: A former colleague who previously had worked for such a company once told me about it. Apparently it was common practice to just fake interview sheets. The proportion between real telephone interviews and additional forged results was a question of the price the customer wanted to pay...

oh, and I am proud to report that while writing this post I got a call from a Lotto marketer. As they started with a recorded message, I simply hung up without answering.

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Just a couple of points, although I'm not sure why I'm bothering-

Telstra doesnt have o/s call centres. How do I know? I used to work for them, until very recently, in the national activations centre for mobiles. There are however, a lot of immigrants and travellers who work for telstra, or companies who telstra outsources to because;
a) Telstra outsourced call centres hire people mainly on a casual basis- with a very high turnover, so people who are desperate for work tend to be employed in the white-collar sweatshops.
b) The company can afford to do that because the pay is practically nothing.
c) Telstra prefers to hire people who speak two or three (or in the case of a dear mate, Gunnar) six languages- which not all that many aussies who have been through our education system all their lives can.
If you have doubts about a person claiming to be calling from Telstra, ask for their Charlie or Delta number (Or Echo number) for your records. It's the telstra id number and they are obliged to give it. If they can't or refuse, they aint from telstra.

And telemarketers?
They don't really want to annoy people, as it happens. It's soul destroying work that trust me, is utterly thankless. In my case, which isn't even selling things, or even asking for donations to the charity I'm slogging it out for, I can at least tell myself that I'm working to make the world a better place- so it might be worth the grief I'm copping for my pains.

I don't mind if people say "sorry, I'm not interested, thanks anyway"
I do mind if people scream abuse at me through the phone, or telling me that it's god's will that babies die of SIDS.

good on you PrinzH! Those lottery marketers are becoming a real pest - they always ring when I'm trying to relax with a good book or listen to an interesting radio programme. Pity you can't find out their number and bombard them with irritating calls.

We get pre-recorded ones for lotteries we've "already won!!!" as if they were a reader's digest competition for a broken pencil and a snotty hanky- I have absolutely NO problem with people hanging up on those!
Computers haven't got feelings to hurt. Yet.

Kitten - Telstra does, in fact, use OS call centres. How do I know? I asked one of their callers (Ron, I think he claimed to be) where he was and he said New Dehli. We had quite a nice chat.

How do you feel about instant hang-ups, Kitten? That's what I do most of the time when the caller ID says "number unavailable" or some 1-800 (toll free) number. Click phone on, click phone off. Easy.



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You kids with your long hair and Baroque music...

If I get a tele-marketer or someone selling stuff door to door, I always give them a polite, "No, thank you, I'm ot interested." If they keep going then it can be one of several options. If I'm in a really cranky mood then they'll get the phone slammed down hard (or door slammed hard), but my favourite is to say, very clearly and properly, "I'm terribly sorry, but I don't speak English." In the 3 seconds that they are staring like a gold-fish in freeze-frame I THEN hang up/close door.

I like that one! I'll have to use it for door-to-door people rather than telemarketers, though--I'd want to see their faces!

I use the line:

Madam not home? Can I give her a massage?

Wonderful....



__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Oh robert, in your first post you said to beat that pencilnecks?

I'm 6' 2" and 84kgs.

Sorry.



__________________________________
'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Now Martin has contributed about 7 thoughts to this thread, which is more than 10% of its length and it finally dawns on him that I called everyone "pencil necks" and that this categorisation might not apply to him - two weeks later. More importantly, every other contributor to the thread has failed to object to the description - indeed, they have risen to it as if personally named.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

I'll tell you about my 2000AD collection somewhere else but here's one for the arithmaticians:
Martin has given his height and weight (above)
I have given my height and weight (above)
Given that we are both pencilnecks, who is the 'biggest' pencilneck?

(The neatest correct entry will receive a small prize [I've now got millions of these karmic thrummers, courtesy of kitten, building up in my letterbox as we speak and I'm thinking about moving house] but you must be sure that you define the word 'biggest' as part of the answer.)

And they say size isn't important. It seems it is to some.

Not arithmetial. You don't count. Nyajya...

is that japanese?

As this thread is about Fforum members, and I haven't yet introduced myself, I find this the best opportunity to do so.

I'm Zuki-pah (yet another Aussie) and my claim to fame is that in WOLP my name is on p85 !!!

Oh, and I have four giant brothers, which is why I found this to be the best time to pop in and say my two bits... Boys, boys, your petty argument means nothing to me because on a size scale you are both smaller than the smallest of my four brothers - of whom the shortest is currently 6' 3" and still growing. And he's a big-boned carpenter/builder - so he's built like a tank, and it's all muscle. So nya! <pokes out tongue> I win! (by association)

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'Who looks after the animals?'