Counter-telemarketing Scheme

The link below will send you to a very neat idea: Counter-telemarketing.

You know you hate telemarketing calls just as much as I do. I bet telemarketing professionals hate the calls (to them, not from them) more than we do. While some (okay, most) consider these mid-dinner calls (how do they know?) an invasion of privacy, I consider them rude, inappropriate, ineffective wastes of my time. I will not consider or even listen to telemarketers.

However, on occasion, I have found that messing with them gives me a sense of satisfaction that I made their lives a little more hellish than they made mine. My favorite is to put them on hold and then come back in 10 minutes. But this script goes much farther. It asks for their name, their income, where they live, etc., but in the telemarketer's own style.

It's beautifully done and also comes in pdf format that you can print and hang next to your phone. It's basically a flowchart that leads the conversation away from what the telemarketer wants to talk about and down the path where you have more information about him than he does about you.

Great idea and very well done. I would suggest that you refrain from sending the output of your call to the address and/or fax number at the bottom of the sheet; doesn't sound like that's a very good idea. After all, the telemarketer himself is just doing his job. It's really the telemarketing company that you want to impact financially, and the best way to do that is to take up their valuable call time and not offer any of the information they seek. You're not only doing all the rest of us an indirect favor, you just may prevent that telemarketer from making his next call...to me!