Telemarketer-Be-Gone

For the past three days I had been getting phone calls from the same telemarketer at the EXACT same time everyday. Therefore, at 8:38 I did not look forward to my phone ringing.

If you know me, you know that I am the type of person that is too nice to say "no" to people. For example, out of those annoying sales kiosks at that try to get you to stop, I am the one that gets roped into stopping. I never buy anything, but I always feel the need to humor them into thinking that I might be interested. Although wasting everyone's time might be worse than just telling them that I'm not interested, I just can't bring myself to do it.

photo by  Mike Licht

Telemarketer's so persistent and, like walking away from those sales people in the mall, I just can't bring myself to just hang up on them. I thought I tried everything. I have said that I am not interested, or that I already had what they were trying to sell me, but for telemarketers we all know that is no excuse. In the back of my mind I know I should just hang up, but then I also know I will just have to deal with them the next day.

Finally, I was down to my last straw and remembered a tip from a friend that I thought I would try. This tip was to tell them that I am on my cell phone. So 8:38 I anxiously anticipated my phone ringing, which it did. I answered to a telemarketer from a bank trying to get me to buy life insurance. Obviously, life insurance is not the number one thing on my list of things to buy. So, I gathered up my courage and told him that I was on my cell phone. And to my disbelief it worked! He said, "Oh sorry, I'll note that this is a cell phone." and hung up!

I've seen a few other things that are a little bit more fun to get rid of telemarketers like handing the phone to a small child and telling them it is Santa, say you are getting the person they want to talk to and then leave the phone up against the radio, or if they pronounce your name wrong, which they normally do, simply say they don't live here because technically they don't!

This Youtube video uploaded unosieta17 is pretty funny, not to give anything away but it is a man pretending to be a homicide investigator while on the phone with a telemarketer.