Marketing (so to speak)

Marketing (so to speak) was Originally Posted on May 14, 2010 by lavarock

I received a phone call earlier today. It was a robo call, one of those recordings that wait for you to answwer, play a recording and giving you a number and website to call for further info.

I pressed “0” to no avail, but then looked up in Google and found that others tried to break through to a real person, to no avail. Anyway, the company tries to put you up high in search engines. By the way, usually these companies are scams. That is not to say that people cannot get you up higher, but often times these companies do it by spamming people and popups on websites and so on. Think about it, an unrequested call from someone with no easy way to speak with a human… Why would I do business with them?

Other people have called the company and when the telemarker is told (and investigates) they find tha tthe person they harassed is already high in the listings. “nevermind, sorry to bother you”. Thus, they are cold calling businesses and have not investigated or culled out websites already. That would be too time consuming. Instead have a robo dialer call every business (and perhaps residence) and IF someone with a business, who wants this service calls back, THEN investigate.

Because I have a business, they can probably call me even though I am on the Do Not Call List, because this list is primarily for personal telephones and not business lines. Still, I am a one person home-business and thus do not want their calls.

Regular readers here will know that I now can add one entry to my PBX and instantly never hear from this telephone number again. I would not have changed from my local phone company if they had offered this service, if only for 30 numbers.

So what happens if a caller on my blacklist tries to call me again? They get the following:

SIT tomes are played. These are the 3 tones normally heard when a telephone number is out of service or disconncted. Some telemarketer dialers listen for these and remove the number from their list.

The phone answers with “Hello” in a professional voice and waits for the caller to say something”

Then they hear “The person you have called was brutally murdered and mutilated by the Teletubbies, and is currently unavailable.”

“Please hold while we try to connect you.”

There is then a pause and the system says “The following tones are for the deaf…”

Then there is an old style dial tone and rotary dial noises. At the end of the dialing is a click-click, some routing tones used in old telephone long distance trunks, and then a ring. After a couple rings, it sounds as though the phone is picked up and then there are some clicks and so on”. Then the call hangs up.

Yes, of course it is silly, but like I care what telemarketers think?

I also have other options which include:

1) Sending the caller to a constant ring signal that will continue until they hang up or my house loses electrical power

2) Constant busy

3) Just SIT tones and a hangup

4) A message asking them to hang on a second while I finish up another call, then on-hold music for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and then some
5) I could forward their call to a site that explains why telemarketers are slime

6) I could forward this telemarketer (and their caller ID) to the telephone number of the previous telemarketer.

7) I could answer and have the operator voice ask them to deposit $3.00 for the first 3 minutes

And so on; the possibilities are endless!