If you think it's bad to get these calls at home, try running a business. If you establish phone service, expect hundreds (and I mean this literally - hundreds) of merchant-account providers to hammer your new phone number to try to be the first to score your credit card services. To give an idea how bad it gets, I helped my brother move his auto repair shop to another city when he lost his lease, and the new phone numbers both rang nonstop for four days. Caller ID on the voice-only line filled up its 50 slots in three hours, and not a single one of them wasn't toll-free. We figure he received somewhere on the order of 700 calls between the two lines in the first week of their operation.
An exchange from yesterday at work...
Phone rings. Caller ID shows "PRIVATE CALLER." Usually I let those go to voice mail, as if you won't ID yourself I don't need to talk to you. This time, for shiggles mainly, I hit the line button.
I answered with my usual spiel, which is the company name only - I don't give out names over the phone on initial contact. I was dry and terse and low-pitched and scowly-sounding, expecting a telemarketer.
They: "Can I speak with the owner please?"
Me: "Sorry, we don't accept cold calls asking for the owner, thanks." :click!: (And we don't. Ask for the owner, get dropped.)
I wait, phone in hand, counting off the seconds.
Yep, about five. Ring. "PRIVATE CALLER." Bet it's the same one.
I cough, clear my throat, and answer again, more energetically this time.
They (and it's the same voice as before): "Can I speak to Mike?"
Me: "Who?"
They (obviously trying names at random): "Mike. John. Phillipe. Raul."
Me: "Nobody here by any of those names."
They: "I'm just messing with ya. I'm calling from _company_that_prints_pens_and_junk_to_give_away_. Wanna see if you need any printing."
Me: "Oh, we handle that stuff in-house."
They (actually surprised by that answer): "Really? You have a print shop?"
Me: "Actually, yes, we do." (And we do, too. We do most of our printing in-house after discovering a decade ago that it was often cheaper to buy the equipment and DIY our signage and small-scale printing needs than hire it out. I wasn't joking about that.)
They (clearly not buying this): "What kind of equipment do you have?"
Me: "Couple Rolands, screenprint press stations, some other stuff, and a huge LaserJet printer on order." (These are real print-industry equipment providers - Roland makes printers and plotters for the signage industry, and HP makes LaserJet printers for the print biz that can print on multiple-yards-wide material such as white vinyl for wrapping vehicles. We actually do have a vinyl sign cutter, wide-format printer, and sign-making materials. I was lying about what we had, but not whether we had.)
They (clearly surprised, again): "But those don't print pens."
Me, in a matter-of-fact tone: "Don't need pens."
At this point the guy realizes this will get him nowhere so he thanks me for my time and drops the call.
I don't fault telemarketers for doing their job. However, hard sells and any sort of douchiness are all an automatic "no." Be polite and courteous, and accept a polite but firm "not interested" to mean what it implies, and we're good. Push it and I'll not only hang up but I'll also never do business with your company.
.
