This is topic Better Than the Do Not Call List in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Olivetta (Member # 6456) on :
 
We're on the Do Not Call List, but we still get repeated calls from various telemarketing companies.

That is, until recently.

One night, I was so harried and ticked off that (after recognizing the caller ID as a company who keeps trying to sell us a subscription to the paper we already subscribe to) I answered just as though I didn't speak English at all.

This is harder than it sounds. The only other language I'm at all proficient in is Spanish. But you can't use Spanish this way. Everyone speaks Spanish, most everyone probably better than I do.

It's actually best not to speak an actual language at all. Just remain phonetically consistant and sound irate. Japanese phonemes arranged nonsensically seem to work best, but YMMV.

I've been put on their non-English household list. [Big Grin] Still get the occassional auto-dialer, but that's no big.

I knew all those years trapped in Christian School with speaking-in-tongues holy rollers would pay off eventually. [Evil]
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
You know, you could have gotten the same effect by asking to be put on their do not call list [Razz]

Then when they kept calling you they'd get huge fines.
 
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
 
Oh, and first thing that popped into my head when I read the thread title was "It would be cool if there was a Do Not Mess With list".
 
Posted by Olivetta (Member # 6456) on :
 
We actually did that, but if I don't have time to answer their stupid questions, do I really want to bother pursuing the fines? The point is to just leave me the heck alone, dangit!

[Wink]
 
Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
 
Yeah, but her way is more fun fugu. [Wink]
 
Posted by Dragon (Member # 3670) on :
 
this is true...


kind of makes me wish we had caller ID
 
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
 
I'm going to have to try that with politicians since they're exempt from the DNC list. (of course, it still won't help with the autocallers that play a tape of X Politician giving me a message Just For Me)

But since saying "No Engrish" has saved me time and time again in MMORPGs I don't know why I haven't thought of it for political telemarketing calls.

Pix
 


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