A handy how-to guide of sorts

[go_team]

(summarized in a comment to boojum's journal, expanded here because I'm snarky like that)

Really, phone solicitors start out with a strike against them when they have the misfortune to call a phone I'm answering. But there are a few sure-fire ways to make that bad situation even worse, for instance:

1. Waking me up.
2. Calling me by Peter's last name. Today's second caller went for "Ms." instead of "Mrs.", but that's not much of an improvement. I know his is the only name listed for our number in the phone book, but in these modern times it's really not that unusual to have people with different last names sharing an address, so what the hell? Maybe they were trying for a personalized approach, hoping I'd respond positively if they correctly guessed my name? I wonder what the expected value is on that kind of thing: me, I grew up learning to spot telemarketers and their ilk by their manglings of names, and as mentioned above tend to default-hostile towards telemarketers anyway, with an extra dose of snark if they get my name wrong. Ramble ramble ramble... Any which way, it was 9 AM and I was trying to sleep in for just a little longer, despite the cat's best efforts. Sigh.

I really don't want to be a bitch to phone solicitors, really. I wish I could be just be civil. Rationally, I know they've got a really sucky job, and the sooner I can squeeze "put me on your 'don't call' list" into the conversation, the sooner I can get on with my life and they can stop wasting their time with me. But ugh. Two calls in one day that rubbed me so very the wrong way is a lot.

Comments

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Those nothing phone calls are telemarketing companies. Previously, they would have each telemarketer dial each number. Now the system is to take the average call length, divide by the number of people working, and dial one call every interval, and hope that the telemarketer will be available. When that system breaks down due to too many wordy people and calls taking too long, you get the empty phone phenomenon.

[boojum.livejournal.com]

I had heard that before, but this seems like an astonishing proportion of empty calls to non- (somewhere between 1:3 and 1:1, I'd guess). I suppose it doesn't cost them anything to send empty calls. Ick.

[bagoffarts.livejournal.com]

There is also a system that will dial a chunk of numbers and whichever the first one to pick up gets the telemarketer. No brains behind it at all. If you are lucky enough not to be number one, you get the call same time next day. For some reason I was getting calls at 3am every day for about 2 months while at mudd, I never really could explain that.

[kuddliphish.livejournal.com]

I had heard that these nothing calls were a type of survey where a machine calls a bunch of numbers and records which ones get an answer. The company doing this then sells this list to telemarketing companies so that they can have a real person call back at the same time another day and have a better chance of catching you at home. This could just be baloney, though.