Do you hate getting phone calls from telemarketers as much as I do? Well, here are some waysto get your revenge!
1. If MCI calls trying to get you to sign up for the Family and Friends Plan, reply, in as SINISTER of a voice as you can, "But I don't have any friends Would you be my friend?
2. After the telemarketer finishes speaking, ask him/her to marry you.
3. Tell the telemarketer you are busy at the moment, and ask him/her if he/she will give you his/her home phone number so you can call him/her back.
4. Ask them to repeat everything they say, several times.
5. Tell them it is dinner time, BUT ask if they would please hold. Put them on your speaker phone while you continue to eat at your leisure. Smack your food loudly and continue with your dinner conversation.
6. Tell them that all business goes through your agent, and hand the phone to your five year old child.
7. Tell them you are hard of hearing and that they need to speak up louder
8. Tell them to speak very slowly because you want to write every word down.
9. If they start out with, How are you today?, say I amm so glad you asked, because no one these days seems to care, and I have all these problems
10. Catch them off guard by saying in a husky voice, What are you wearing?
11. Cry out in surprise, Helen, is that you? I've been hoping youd call! How is the family? When they insist they are not Helen, tell them to stop joking. This works especially well if the telemarketer is really male. |
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Ask the caller to hold while you answer the door. Put the call on hold, or lay the receiver down beside the phone. Then forget about it.
In the USA, sometimes pressing the #8 key on the phone during conversation will forward your call to the telemarketers "do not call" center. If not, then the caller usually quickly hangs up anyway. A long, persistent #8 in the ear is pretty convincing!
If the caller is of opposite sex, tell them that your spouse is a very jealous person, and that it would be very bad for both of you if caught talking on the phone. I usually ask (in a worried tone), "How did you get my phone number? Does any one know you're calling me?" If the caller is female, I give the phone to my husband. He tells her (in a whisper), "You've got to quit calling here. My wife is insanely jealous and doesn't believe that story about (selling satellite dishes, insurance, etc).
I was once troubled greatly by the local cemetery calling to sell burial plots. The calls came regularly, every couple of days for weeks on end. Finally, I told the caller that if I received just one more call I would come to the cemetery, dig up my dead relatives, and have autopsies done. "It is clear," I said, "that you are in a real hurry to get me signed up. I'm worried you've rushed my poor relations to their graves as well."
Peace,
Granny