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| Hello. Boy Three meets my new fish-eye lens |
“Hello”
“Miss Arnison, Miss Ellen Arnison.”
“Yes?”
“Ellen. That’s my mother’s name too. Ha ha ha.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. I’m garble garble splurt from hurfle mumble UK.”
“Who?”
Louder “Garble garble splurt from hurfle mumble UK. I’m doing a short household survey.”
Well, you can guess the rest. Survey, not selling. But a survey that starts off by wanting to know who you are, where you live and if it’s your own house. It might include questions like: “If you could save money by buying a product that didn’t even know you needed, would you?”
I get around three of these calls a day and they are extraordinarily annoying. They waste my time and stretch my good manners and credibility. I didn’t know that Ellen was a particularly common name anywhere.
I just hate it when someone who clearly couldn’t give a hoot, starts by asking how I/the weather/my day or anything else is going. I suppose they’re just doing their jobs and some people must find their service worthwhile, but I’m not among them. It just drives me nuts and I want them to stop.
I’ve tried explaining patiently that I’m not interested and would they remove me from the list, but it doesn’t seem to have any impact on the number of calls.
What is the best response?
Go along with it. Might be line of least resistance but I can’t help thinking that the end result will be an even more tedious phone call.
Hang up. Just immediately as soon as it’s clear this isn’t a call I’m interested in. It still seems a bit brutal and, in fact, one rang straight back saying “it appears our call was disconnected”.
Refuse to answer. My preferred option. I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business whether or not I own the house, so I won’t tell them. Often the caller hangs up on me at that point.
Get awkward. I’ve tried insisting on getting the detail of the company that’s calling, their offices, the name of the person on the phone. Occasionally they get fed up and hang up. Sometimes the deceit is so outrageous things can’t continue. During one call the speaker ended up claiming their ‘survey’ company belonged to the UK government.
How do you handle the cold-call menace?