Mon 16 July 2007 - Wasting time
Despite having a silent number, and fiercely protecting it, I do get the odd telemarketing call. They are almost all from offshore call centres, and almost all during business hours, when I’m not generally home.
Call centre dialling systems are meant to detect when an answering machine picks up. But evidently their systems think my recorded greeting is a human, and connect the call through to an operator.
So every so often I’ll get home and find messages like these on my answering machine.
phone_messages.mp3 (MP3, 186Kb)
It makes me happy that my answering machine keeps the telemarketers busy for a few seconds on each call. Hopefully lots of others’ machines are doing the same thing, thus preventing them from bothering more people who have the misfortune to be at home when they call.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:55am
yeah, we get automated calls. For example, someone with an American accent says: “Congratulations, you have won [some prize]. Please press 1 to continue”. I always hang up, fearing that I will be charged $$$ if I press 1. Do you know if I could be charged if I press 1, or am I needlessly paranoid?
Rog.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:02pm
I think you’d be fine Roger. The only thing you’d be losing is your time.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:52pm
Lordy, you can really hear the sweatshop in one of them, can’t you?
July 17th, 2007 at 2:20am
Telemarketer: I’m calling about your one in a life…
Annoyed: Great, but I can’t talk right now. Can you give me your home number and I’ll call you back tonight?
Telemarketer: I’m afraid that we’re not allowed to give out our homenumbers.
Annoyed: You mean that you wouldn’t want a stranger calling you at home to talk about whatever it is you’re selling?
Telemarketer: Well, yes.
Annoyed: So you know how I feel. [puts down the phone]
July 17th, 2007 at 6:32am
Here in Miami, Florida about 50 to 60 percent of the population speaks Spanish as their first language with close to 100% in certian suburbs such as Hialeah.
Even though my outgoing message is clearly in English I am sometimes left a lengthy message in Spanish or someone asking “alooo,alooo?”.
July 17th, 2007 at 9:49pm
Konrad that’s good but it sounds terribly Jerry Seinfeld to me
July 17th, 2007 at 10:32pm
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was a scene in Seinfeld.
July 19th, 2007 at 3:42pm
If you’re getting calls from overseas, demand something before you’ll speak to them, such as a local recipe. eg. Aloo Gobi from India
July 22nd, 2007 at 3:47am
[...] Daniel Bowen has a post on telemarketers (despite having an unlisted number) with an mp3 of the calls his answering machine gets when he isn’t home. [...]