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10 fun comebacks for your telemarketer
Compiled by Bankrate.com
We've hit a nerve. When we asked our readers to send
in clever responses to telemarketing calls, we were immediately
slammed with thousands of e-mails. Some were from angry telemarketers,
but most were from readers fed up with intrusive calls and pessimistic
about the effectiveness of the Do Not Call Registry.
Several responses were popular among readers. We received
a lot of these suggestions: "Ask them to hold and then set
down the phone and walk away," or "Say you don't have
a phone," and "Pretend you can't hear them." Another
popular response was to fake gastro-intestinal problems in the bathroom.
To those who sent in the Seinfeld approach -- "Give
me your home number and I'll call you back there" -- no fair
cheating. Make up your own and send them in to telemarketers@bankrate.com.
Here are 10 of the most creative responses we've received
so far.
I'll be watching you
"I can't believe you got this number so quickly. I got out
of prison yesterday. You know what I was in for? Selling telemarketers'
personal information to people who do bad things to them. Can I
get you to stay on the line for just about 35 more seconds
while this thing downloads your cubicle location and headset I.D.?"
or "This call will be recorded for quality assurance."
You've reached Santaland
If you have caller ID, when you pick up the phone say, "Hello
this is Buddy the elf." Then talk really fast so they can't
understand you when you say, "Loser says what?"
Guess where you've called ...
If you have caller ID, say, "Trixie's Call Girl Service. Press
'one' for an appointment. Press 'two' if you are seeking employment.
Press 'three' if you are a law enforcement officer."
Sure, come on over
A reader from Sydney, Australia wrote about his revenge on a telemarketer
selling aluminum siding.
"We were forever getting calls to clad (add siding
to) our home. In the end, I was really cheesed off so under duress
I made an appointment for a rep to come and give me a quote. When
he arrived and found my home was of brick construction he virtually
went through the roof, but on settling down he asked why I had accepted
the offer of a quote. I said, being sick of calls from his company,
I decided to accept their offer. That was the last call we had for
aluminum cladding."
Another reader's father had a similar solution.
"My dad once invited a guy out to the house to
give an estimate on waterproofing the basement that my dad couldn't
convince him we didn't have. When he asked my dad to show him the
stairs to the basement, my dad took him outside to a hole in the
backyard leading to the crawlspace and offered him a flashlight.
The guy looked at my dad and said, 'But you don't have a basement,'
to which my dad replied, 'That's what I've been trying to tell you!'"
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