Posted Tuesday 14 October 2003

Telemarketers

You know there's a new "Do Not Call" list being promoted, but from what I hear, it doesn't make much difference. I've not added our phone numbers, because I enjoy most telemarketer calls.

I figure that, since they've called me on their agenda, surely as a human I have a perfect right to reply on my own agenda. My agenda is usually the amusement of The Bloggard, and I've noticed that if you just continually misunderstand a telemarketer, he or she will usually entertain you mightily.

For example, this morning at home, I got a call from a young lady wanting me to subscribe to a newspaper. Holding my tongue in the roof of my mouth while speaking, which made me both hard to understand and very dumb-sounding, I asked her what was a Record-Courier anyway.

When she explained that it was a newspaper, I asked her did you need to be able to read.

She pointed out that I could tear out the coupons, which had pictures. I told her that I'd not been trained in pictures, and then asked her why she was calling me.

She told me she had a great deal and quoted some numbers. I fed back the numbers incorrectly to her for a while, and then started all over at the beginning asking what was a Record Courier anyway. But finally my breakfast was burning so I had to end the call.

But in the office today, I encountered an all-time low: two telemarketers at the same time.

While I was on the line with an AT&T telemarketer attempting to change my phone service so as to save a lot of money, I had to put her on hold to take another call, which was the Better Business Bureau wanting me to sign up so as to give my business more respectability.

Since I was kind of busy, I connected the two of them together, introduced them, and explained that the lady had a way to save a lot on long distance, and that the guy had a way to make the lady's business have more respectability.

They didn't seem to get on very well, however.

I regret to say that they both hung up on each other.

Which shows us, I suppose, that the Better Business Bureau doesn't care about saving money on long-distance. Which makes me seriously question joining an organization which wastes the good money I'm paying on needless high-priced phone bills.

Further, it would seem that AT&T doesn't care much about appearing respectable. Maybe they figure what's the use? Probably they figure people would see through the ruse, anyway.

Probably they're right.