Aaargh!

[daibhidc]

You know, I'm a fairly easy-going person. If someone phones and tells me they aren't selling anything, I believe them. If they ask if I can answer a few questions I usually say yes.

But is there any point in asking questions if you aren't going to listen to the answers? I couldn't even get him to accept my name; he had me down as P. Kennedy, therefore I couldn't be saying "David", I must be saying "Peter", even when I spelt it out for him. When he kept asking me to confirm I had £5,000 debt, while I was practically shouting down the phone "No! I have no debts!" I just had to hang up.

Edit: Come to think of it, I'm sure Mum's signed us up for something which means we're not supposed to get calls like that.

Comments

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Generally I figure that if someone's phoning me, they had better have an acceptable reason for taking up my time and concentration.

I'm not too harsh - "acceptable" can be anything from "I know this person" to "friend of a friend / friend of the family" to "calling about a specific job opportunity".

I can't think of any call whatsoever that could start with "I'm not selling anything" and lead to an acceptable use of my time, so such calls end up speaking to a dial tone or dead air, depending on whether I'm already waiting for a call or not.

Ditto for anyone calling me who doesn't actually know my name.

Anyone calling me who knows my name, but doesn't give theirs and their reason for calling, and who starts asking me questions, gets none of their questions answered until they tell me what I want to know - and even then, it's a matter of whether I think they're worth talking to afterwards.

Of course, if they're going to play silly buggers, I'm more than happy to provide non-sequiturs to their scripted questions until they give up in disgust or confusion.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the way I figure it, my time isn't particularly valuable just at the moment, and since my standard reaction to reading a survey in the papers is "Well, I don't remember anyone asking me", I might as well go along with it if they actually do.

To be honest, though, I usually just don't answer the phone during the day, because it's either a survey or a charity (and I'm a member of enough charities, thanks), and I'm bad at getting out of these things. I only answered this one because I was expecting a call from my sister.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Hanging up was your only move in this situation. It sounds like a skip tracer - someone who is trying to find someone who has a debt with a third party - they get paid for successfully finding that debtor. It sounds like this person was durned well going to get a bounty no matter what. Argh and similar words.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Don't think so; he said he was doing some sort of survey about how people were coping with the recession. He said who he was with, but due to his accent and an apalling line I didn't catch it. (So maybe I shouldn't blame him for not understanding me...)

He called again and my Mum answered (actually, he called again several times while she was at work and I didn't answer, but I forgot to warn her about it). This time he skipped that question, presumably because of my reaction to it. She says the rest of it was the usual stuff about do you have Sky, and what leccy company are you with (and the dreaded question "Would you like to recieve information about..." to which the answer is always "No.")

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

And it turns out that wasn't him; it was someone else.

Because the guy I spoke to phoned again yesterday morning, when I was expecting a call from my sister. This time the line was a bit clearer and I managed to get him to understand I didn't have any debts (and my partner didn't have any debts either because I didn't have a partner) and he went away.

And then he phoned again five minutes later with almost exactly the same speil, except this time he went into further detail about what a debt was, just in case I was misunderstanding him ("credit cards, loans, mortgages, anything like that"), and after asking about my partner again, also asked about family and friends (to which I replied more-or-less honestly "I don't know").

I suspect that, if the answer had been yes, this "survey" would have turned out to be on behalf of one of those "consolidate all your existing debts into one great big dept" companies.

[john_amend_all]

I'm sure Mum's signed us up for something which means we're not supposed to get calls like that.

The Telephone Preference Service.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

That's it, yes.

I think it's the "for the purposes of genuine market research" loophole that's the problem...

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I should really get around to building that Block Only Annoying Callers phone device, shouldn't I?

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

I'd buy one.

Mum's looking into getting caller id. The problem with that is that her work number is automatically withheld, so I wouldn't be able to assume a withheld number is one I don't want to talk to...

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Does the Scottish phone system allow for overriding of Caller ID blocks by using a prefix when dialling, or for services like the American TrapCall?