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Do You Enjoy Messing With Telemarketers?


Captain Karnage
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Just wondering, I have a particular disliking of them and how they scam helpless people who don't know any better

so I end up wasting their time by giving them useless information and get them stuck in loops by me asking asking questions that would expose the scam that they're doing

today I kept one on the line for 15 minutes asking questions about every little detail about this "great resort offer", what was fun about this encounter was how confused the guy on the line was when I told him I don't fall for these scams and thanking him for letting me kill about 15 minutes while I was waiting for an office to open. The guy was so confused because I was just playing along with him giving all false information and didn't seem to get that I was just wasting his time.

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Telemarketers are just people doing jobs... rather unpleasant jobs at that, since they have to deal with people being super-rude to them. It's fine to have an issue with telemarketing as a concept, but how does being rude or wasting the time of individual workers help matters? Dangling a carrot in front of them (many are paid a commission) knowing you plan to pull it away in the future makes you a bit of a jerk. This generalises well to retail workers/salespeople in general: never forget the fact that you're dealing with a human and try to treat them as you would want to be treated if that were your job.

Hanging up quickly is of course fine and generally what you should do if you're not interested in what they're calling about; you waste less of both your time and theirs that way.

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I don't mess with them at all, but once the same group of telemarketers wouldn't stop calling me, and it was really annoying, so I'd just hang up the phone whenever realizing it was them. I'm generaly a polite person, but I won't waste my time with annoying people who won't stop pestering me trying to scam me.

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Just now, Dark Holy Elf said:

Telemarketers are just people doing jobs... rather unpleasant jobs at that, since they have to deal with people being super-rude to them. It's fine to have an issue with telemarketing as a concept, but how does being rude or wasting the time of individual workers help matters? Dangling a carrot in front of them (many are paid a commission) knowing you plan to pull it away in the future makes you a bit of a jerk. This generalises well to retail workers/salespeople in general: never forget the fact that you're dealing with a human and try to treat them as you would want to be treated if that were your job.

Hanging up quickly is of course fine and generally what you should do if you're not interested in what they're calling about; you waste less of both your time and theirs that way.

I've seen and heard alot of the eldelry people in my community fall for theses scams only to loose hundreds or thousands of dollars, I think it's wrong to take advantage of people who are too old or too dumb to know that they're being scammed.

especially when they scare people into giving up personal information by telling them the FBI or IRS is coming for them.

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I don't, but my dad likes playing with the scammers.

For instance, they've told him to "open up your Windows" and he'd be like "I just did. There's a nice breeze," or they say to open the computer and he'll say something like "There's just a bunch of wires and stuff in here."

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I usually just lie and say I'm a high schooler, because you can't sell stuff to a high schooler, because odds are, they don't own a home. Solar panel people are what I get most often.

But the most annoying is the Red Cross. I donated blood once, but now they call me everyday.

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I'd love to mess with them, but all I get is robocalls. I keep getting this "hello my name is Elizabeth and I'm from the resort awards program" blah blah blah, and the worst part is that it hides behind a local looking number...

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18 hours ago, Captain Karnage said:

I've seen and heard alot of the eldelry people in my community fall for theses scams only to loose hundreds or thousands of dollars, I think it's wrong to take advantage of people who are too old or too dumb to know that they're being scammed.

especially when they scare people into giving up personal information by telling them the FBI or IRS is coming for them.

Not all telemarketers are scammers. Even if they are, blame the game not the player.

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My friend acted like she was an old lady who was hard of hearing until the telemarketer hung up. She went "What was that? No the other thing before that, no the other thing!"

Another common thing is to go "no speaky English" and spew gibberish.

I saw a thing where a guy pretended to be a detective and claimed the telemarketer was calling a crime scene and saying they were now a suspect in a murder. He talked about blood on the floor and a dead body and stuff.

But yeah, the scammers suck. Some of the funniest shit I've seen was people trolling the scammers. Maybe not all of them are scammers, but seriously, with the age of the internet, wouldn't legit companies have other ways of advertising?

Edited by Dragoncat
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I disabled voice mail and never pick up for unknown numbers. I look up numbers from missed calls; if they clearly have no legitimate reason to have called then I block them. I don't advise this; there are obvious flaws to this approach. But it's how I've handled the torrent of spam calls I receive after my ISP leaked my number.

I have a friend who (if at home) plays gunshot noises (from his computer) and yells "I've been shot!" before hanging up. No idea how effective it's been though. Maybe we should compare notes.

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My home phone does not have caller id so what my family does is we let the answering machine pick up all calls and only pick up when it is someone we want to talk to.  Everyone who we want to talk to knows we do this so it works pretty well.  As to my cell I only pick up if it is a number I know, if I don't know the number I don't answer.

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  • 2 weeks later...

No. I either don't answer or politely tell the people on the other end that I'm not interested. The people on the other end of the phone are people at the end of the day, and a lot of them are just there to work, not because they want to push some agenda. All they're doing is their job - it's the old saying don't shoot the messenger. One of my friends worked at a call center for a while and the stories she would tell about some of the incredibly rude people she dealt with were wild.

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  • 2 years later...
  • 3 months later...

Wait, are we talking about telemarketers or scammers? I suppose the two intersect but in general I don't talk to scammers because it'll encourage them. As for telemarketers, I haven't been contacted by any yet. I wouldn't be mean to them unless they angered me because I know they probably hate it more than anyone else. Also I'm not good at being mean to people anyway, although I fantasize about it sometimes. Now if someone is telemarketing but what they're doing is scammy / unethical but not illegal, then I don't know. I haven't had that situation. I recently had a call that said if I didn't call back then I was in serious legal trouble. Stuff like that makes me angry, but I didn't call back because, like I said, I don't want to encourage them. 

Edited by tacticsfan999
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  • 1 month later...

Usually I ignore the call but this year I started answering, then staying completely silent until they hang up sometimes. If it takes more than 30 seconds I hang up myself.

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If it is a blocked number, or an unknown one, I just simply don't answer usually. If it's a legitimate call, then they'll usually text me or leave me a message. Admittedly, this doesn't always work - as I nearly missed a phone call from my driving instructor who has his phone number blocked - presumably to keep other students from pestering him directly with schedule changes. (Any of said changes needs to be lodged to the head office of the driving school I was in.)

There was one time Unicef called me, which I have been a regular donor. And a couple of times the Sydney Symphony Orchestra called as well for advertising concerts and fundraising. Those ones I'll either listen to the end, or quickly apologise and explain that I'm in the middle of work, as they tend to call during office hours.

Edited by henrymidfields
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