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.
9 replies on “Wasting time”
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.
I think you’d be fine Roger. The only thing you’d be losing is your time.
Lordy, you can really hear the sweatshop in one of them, can’t you?
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]
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?”.
Konrad that’s good but it sounds terribly Jerry Seinfeld to me
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was a scene in Seinfeld.
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
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