How to Stop Telephone Solicitors-
Telemarketers can be stopped once and for all, but it will take a concerted effort by all good citizens.
First, if you think Telephone sales people are
legitimate citizens trying to make an honest living, GET OVER IT! They are anything but, since with every
call they interrupt us to listen to their sales pitch. Just as email Spam is
theft, when Telemarketers call, they are stealing something that does not belong
to them. If they are making a living, it is at our expense. Many of them actually let a machine call 4
numbers at once so they don't have to wait so long for an answer. They pick up whoever answers first, and the machine hangs up on any hapless person who
happens to pick up their ringing phone after that. If you've ever wondered why sometimes there is no one there when you answer the phone so often, this
is what probably happened.
Second, conquering this problem requires taking a good honest dollars and cents look at what they are doing. The key to stopping them is to make sure
that it is not profitable for them to continue calling. The WRONG thing to do would be to hang up on them.
The worst possible advice, often perpetuated by the Telemarketers themselves, would be to hang up on them. If they can't make a sale, this is exactly what they want, to be hung up on immediately so they can go to their next victim that much sooner. DON'T HANG UP! KEEP THEM ON THE LINE AS LONG AS POSSIBLE!
It doesn't matter what you tell them when they call. The RIGHT THING to do is to take up as much of their time as possible
so they can't go on to the next person. If you are busy, at least get them talking and then set the phone down somewhere. Some of them will talk to
themselves for quite a while without suspecting a thing. If they want to send a person out to sell you something- windows, siding, a home security
system, LET THEM! I have had three guys from Sears stop by already. They never even asked if I was interested, just if they could come by and give me
an estimate.
Remember, they called you. If the sales person wastes their time as a result of the unwanted phone call, do you think they will continue to do business
that way? How could they afford to? If everyone took up 4 times as much of the caller's time as they do now, then the caller is making less than 1/4 as
much for their work. They might be forced to move on to some sort of legitimate work instead, and you will have done your duty as a citizen in
making the world a better place.
-an idea emailed to us by Robert Williams