To Whom It May Concern

Hello, Can I Interest You In Some Siding?

Telemarketers have to be some of the most annoying bastards on the face of the planet. Calling at all hours of the day to offer you crap you don't want and only taking no for an answer if you say NO like 5 times (they would call at night too but for the federal communications act that does not allow calls after 9 p.m. local time).

Now, I don't have too bad a problem with the people who call and ask for "Mr. (last name withheld for security purposes)" and mispronounce my last name atrociously *almost no one gets it right the first time*. That way I know immediately to tell them that no, he is not around. What gets me is when they ask for me by my first name, and I think it's actually someone I might give two shits about, and say, 'yah, it's me' and end up dealing with a stupid sales pitch that would get more of my foot in thier ass than thier hands in my wallet.

Now if you think the 'cold sales' type of calls are bad (calls where they are trying to sell you something), the collection type of calls are 10 times worse. To them, there is no such word as 'ethical' and anything they can do, legal or illegal, to try and get to the person they are owed money by, is deemed appropriate and justified, to them of course. If you tell them that the person they are looking for isn't around, they ask when they can talk to them, if you say you don't know, they call back like every 15 freaking minutes looking, until you either blow up at them, which you find doesn't stop them from calling, or you unplug your phone.

Now, i have found a few sure fired ways to end calls like this...

1) Ask them for thier home phone number so you can call them back later on at your 'own convenience'. This will illicite strange replies, especially from the cold callers, usually starting with confused silence... then, when they tell you that it wouldn't be appropriate for you to call them at home, tell them 'NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL' and hang up abruptly. I actually got this one from Seinfeld, but it's quite useful really.

2) Answer the phone, and when they ask for the person, tell them just a moment, set the phone down, and walk away. By rule, in most telemarketing places, they are unable to hang up on someone until a prescribed amount of time has gone by, and in most cases, the person working has never had this happen before so they aren't sure about when they can hang up. It's really quite funny, I've gone back 20 minutes later to find the person still waiting on the line, and I'll say "hi, you still there?" to which they will reply with some sort of common courtesy thinly veiling thier annoyance, then tell them to wait again and repeat. I've never had anyone actually wait another 20 minutes though. If that happens I'm probably going to laugh hysterically at them. It's hard enough not to laugh the first time.

3) Strike up a conversation with the person that has nothing to do whatsoever with thier call. They want to sell you accidental life insurance. Ask them where they last went on vacation, take the phone call into really strange and suspect topic areas. "Have you ever dreamed of living under the ocean?" and so on. If this doesn't seem to work, start getting into risky topics. "I sometimes have sex for money" seems to get people off the phone pretty quick. If it doesn't, then you should probably hang up immediately and NOT answer if they call back.

4) Be totally thrilled about what they are selling, get them totally excited, you are going to buy everything and then some!!! But wait, now start asking really idiotic questions about features that the product in question would never have. I had a guy trying to sell me electric drills one time. I got really excited, he told me all the features and what not, then I started asking about features I wanted. I felt that the drills should have a digital clock and timer, so I could tell what time it is and how quick my holes are being drilled. He would tell me how "that would be an excellent feature, but I'd like to point out that our drills are the most powerful on the market". So I asked if they were available in 'hot pink' color. Of course they were not. After asking about half a dozen or so features that are completely insane and of course not available, I finally tell them I'm not interested and hang up, satisfied in my ability to have broken them down.

5) When you realize it's a telemarketer that has called you, respond with "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr so and so is not in the office today". They should respond with "oh, is this a place of business?" and you answer yes, because telemarketers (well, those who are at least trying to resemble with some itsy bitsy bit of ethics) will respond with "I'm sorry, we didn't realize this was a place of business, we won't be calling back".

6) The ultimate response, to be saved for real emergency situations, is to tell them that 'oh, i'm sorry, mr so and so died', to which you will get a stuttering apology and that they will remove you from all lists they have. Now, a little problem with this one I found out about, if your credit card, telephone carrier, etc, think that you are dead, it is likely you are going to have service/cards/connections cancelled in short order, so you must be most careful with this one.

Hopefully though, with the right combination of the above strategies, you will be able to conquer at least to some extent the vermin that rings thru your phone attempting to get you into the book of the month club. Best of luck!!!