Monday, January 5, 2009

The joy of torturing telemarketers

Call: 13.28

Me: (pick up the phone) .......
Telemarketer: Hell-ooooowwww goood morniiiing ♫ (really)
Me:.........
Telemarketer: good mooorniiing?
Me:.........
Telemarketer: Hell-ooooowwww goood morniiiing ♫
Me:.........
Telemarketer: good mooorniiing?
Me:.........
Me:.........
Telemarketer: (hangs up)

Call: 13:32

Me: (pick up the phone) .......
Telemarketer: Hell-ooooowwww goood morniiiing ♫ (really)
Me:.........
Telemarketer: good mooorniiing?
Me:.........
Telemarketer: Hell-ooooowwww goood morniiiing ♫
Me:.........
Telemarketer: good mooorniiing?
Me:.........
Me:.........
Telemarketer: (hangs up)



Aaah... I've got a new hobby.

I must be a bad person. About a year ago, I made a huge discovery. I had been getting recurrent phonecalls from a health insurance company, which I kept politely rejecting because, well, I'm a very polite person. However, one of these calls had to be made at 9.00 AM, in July. Let me tell you something about myself. I'm Insomniac. Ca-pi-ta-lized. I have serious problems sleeping, and heck, when it is the summer time and I finally can catch up with my sleep and sleeping late, waking me up for a stupid promotion is like feeding a Gremlin after 12. A Very Bad Idea.

So when I picked up the phone and I got the usual telemarketer yapping about their usual healthcare insurance thing, I just hanged up on her. No more "sorry, not interested", no more "sorry, I have to go", no more "sorry, could you please delete me from your list", no more "sorry, I asked you FIVE TIMES to delete me from your list". I just hanged up on her. And, hey, it felt GREAT.


Enter Telefónica, the Company We Love to Hate. This company has a very peculiar notion of public relations which includes systematically pestering cellphone owners of all sorts using a very scientific method, i.e. calling, randomly, all six-digit numbers starting by 6 and checking if there is a person on the other side of the line. Then they ask you for your name, and then they spam you with whichever stupendous new offer they have concocted on their evil dome.


The weekly meeting of the marketing section.


Enter 1485. I've been getting some calls (which, given my experience, I never answer) from these guys and I decided to do a little research to find out what they've been up to lately. Turns out, there might not even be a person behind the calls, but a sort of calling machine to more effectively pester cellphone users. The fun really begins when you pick up the phone and... no one is there. They're just checking if you might be so that next time a real person all-suffering telemarketer can call.

Well. Turns out I haven't enjoyed a dumb telephone call so much since those long lost summer days of making collect calls to foreign country switchboards.

Looking forward to the next one XD.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haha, could you please also take a picture of your face when you waiting patiently and silently before he/she/it hangs up? I just feel like you will either be unbelievably calm, or giggle like kids you teach haha.

Elena said...

b) giggling like stupid XD

They've stopped calling after the second time I did it, so the fun stopped. But I'm sure they'll be back for more soon...