Telemarketing

Personally, I'm not fond of being disturbed at dinner time. However, one of my favorite things to do is keep them busy. When the telemarketer says, "How are you today?", I reply with, " I'm so glad you asked, well the dog got sick on the rug and I had to clean up barf chunks and gravey, then the faucet started leaking in the spare bathroom...." You get the idea.

Ching-chong-spekity-spong buy my stoof plox!!! Thats All I hear when A telemarketer calls the house. Dont frikkin call at 2 in the morning!!! Nobody wants to buy your smelly ass cream.

i hate when they call and the can't even pronounce ur last name rite. and most times they call is during dinner of sumone's over. so all dat we did is get put on dat DO NOT CALL list. and hell they never called bak. i mean we still get them but not dat much.

Another way to annoy people, these Idiots even call on Sundays, a bad invention! They waste their time calling Train...

As far as telemarketing goes, it does no good to put your name on the "National Do Not Call" list, because they always find their way around it.

Telemarketers only serve to disturb our peaceful evening dinners. Enough, already!!

Telemarketing companies drive me CRAZY! Between the phone calls and the e-mail scams these people need to get a life and realize people strongly dislike their tactics.

In theory there's nothing much wrong with it, its just another form of marketing. In practice however, it tends to be intensely irritating and has led, according to a significant amount of market research, to the massive growth in private call monitoring, and voice mail. That being said, there is a reason it still exists. And that's because it works. Few of us have ever heard anyone extol the virtues of telemarketing, and fewer still admit to buying anything from a telemarketer, but it generates billions of dollars in sales and fund-raising donations annually.

What I want to know is who actually buys what they're selling. Obviously there are people who buy stuff from telemarketers, or companies wouldn't waste the time and money on it. And some of these things are pretty large purchases. One of my favorites is the aluminum siding salesmen. For starters, who actually decides to re-side their house when some salesman calls, and then buys the siding without even seeing what they are buying? And the second thing about these guys, is that they have absolutely no common sense. You can tell them that you live in a brick house, and they still try to sell you the damn siding!

Not for the telemarketing businesses themselves, unfortunately.

The intrusion into my privacy, and the governments stone cold refusal to do anything about it are why I feel it is my duty to waste telemarketers time whenever possible.

I I could only reach through the phone lines and THROTTLE the (expletive of choice)!!!

Very annoying to get one of those calls always trying to pitch something I do not want. thank goodness for caller ID since i can filter them out and not pick up. Every once in awhile number will show up i pick up and it is a telemarketer. I try to be decent since they are stuck with a yucky job but i do not buy. what a rotten way to do business bugging us at home.

I used to do work for an outlet that did almost all their sales through telemarketing. These sales guys were the most dishonest pieces of trash to ever sell satellite. I always had to re-close their sales and disclose the right info before moving forward with the job.

Some ideas: When you are called, say, 'I am very interested but I am also very busy right now. Tell you what, let me get your number and I'll call you back shortly.' The typical response, 'Sir, I can't be contacted, I can only call out'. My response, 'Oh, I see, well I've very interested, so, just give me your home number and I'll contact there so I can take advantage of this wonderful offer'. Uh, well, sir, I can't give you my home number. 'I see, that's probably because you don't like to be bothered at home, right??' - - or - - simply say, 'Sounds great, hang on a minute, I'll get my 'spouse', I'll be right back'. Then set the phone down for as long as you like. This method also spares others because the person on the other end will usually wait a few minutes, thus, not calling as many other folks that evening.

I feel a little sorry for telemarketers, because I know they have a job to do, but God, they are so annoying. When I was unemployed they used to call during my naptime, and that really pissed me off. Partly because I can't stand telemarketers, and partly because I hate the telephone, I am very hard to get ahold of. I am on the Do Not Call List and I also have privacy director.

Telemarketing is rude, invasive, and generally obnoxious. Until a few years ago when we moved, we were plagued by telemarketers - everything from credit card offers to new windows to charities. Usually I'd just say No thanks and hang up, but I did hit upon a couple of novel ways of discouraging them. The first was to just speak in Italian to them (which got them nowhere quickly). The one that I really liked, however,(after we got a Caller ID feaure)was to let my under two-year old grandson (who couldn't do much other than just babble incoherently) answer the phone. It was hilarious, especially when I could listen in to the other side of the (non) conversation. My grandson had a great time jabbering away in kidspeak, and I thought it was what the telemarketers deserved.

Not such a bad idea. I did this for a newspaper when I was 18 and you could really sucker a lot of people into buying just so they could get off the phone. People at home should just hang up if they aren't interested - if you actually listen to everything the telemarketer says then you're wasting your time and theirs. These people make hundreds of calls a week - you hanging up on them will not offend them in the least.

it's almost like these vultures have hidden cameras and microphones in your house so they can call you at the worst possible time.

I have no moral qualms about making their job as difficult as can be. I like wasting their time, hanging up arbitrarily, pretending I'm doing something distracting like having sex or watching a football game whose outcome I have money on, etc... I know that they are just doing their job, but no one is forcing them to do that specific job. They are also paid pretty well for the level of skill involved, so I don't feel bad about abusing them. Not that I look forward to having them call, not at all, I wish they would all be punished by having their phones randomly ringing at 100 decibels, with long silences in between rings, or designed to ring at the exact moment that they finally fall asleep. Otherwise, there ought to be laws against mass telephone campaigns where numbers are selected at random.

There are no two ways about it - the concept of telemarketing stinks on ice. I did not install telephones in my home in order to give would-be door to door sales people a means to intrude on the few hours I have off per day. If I want to buy something I'm a savvy enough modern day hunter gatherer to be able to find it for myself. I have never once purchased a thing from one of these people and I never will. When the option to sign up for the do not call lists were announced I couldn't get to the computer fast enough. Furthermore, if these laws are ever over-turned then I will purchase a nice high pitched, ear piercing whistle and blow it in the ear of every telemarketer who has the bad fortune to dial my number.

It ceases to be free speech when it violates the sanctity of your home. Is it free speech to blast your rap music at 120 decibels when your neighbor is trying to sleep? Is it free speech to make random obscene telephone calls? We have laws to cover situations like these. Telemarketing is a nuisance that violates your private space, and as such should not be protected as free speech.

Again, I have to agree 100% with Kamylienne. There's a big difference in freedom of speech between marching next to a court house with a sign and calling someone at home when they are in the middle of dinner or trying to get their babies to sleep! Freedom of speech my foot. Don't I have the right to live in my own home without some company harrassing me with time shares in Branson or another credit card offer?

(4 meaning bad); Perhaps a little less annoying than door-to-door sales, yet this is probably the worst form of marketing ever conceived. I have nothing against the telemarkers themselves--they're just doing their job. It's their companies who annoy me. The National Do Not Call list is being attacked as a violation of the first amendment. As far as I know, freedom of speech is about speaking one's mind on controversial topics without being silenced or punished, not about getting a deal on a long-distance plan or advertising chimney cleaning services. If anything, the Do Not Call list should make their jobs a little easier, cutting down on phone numbers to call who are definately not interested in ANY offers, thus not wasting their time trying to sell something to someone who doesn't want anything.