this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
30 points (94.1% liked)
Ask UK
1223 readers
1 users here now
Community for asking and answering any question related to the life, the people or anything related to the UK.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Cold calling telemarketing ("Do you have time to answer some questions about x?"). Felt grotty with every call (got yelled at a lot too, be nice to people who call they likely don't want to call you any more than you want to receive the call), lasted 2-weeks.
Swapped out to data entry of paper responses into a spreadsheet, was so much better but only lasted 2 days before I went back to the phones. Am verg grateful I don't have to do that any more.
In respect to 1) you're absolutely correct, that should be two sentences and not the horrible run-on that I created.
In response to 2), yes I can understand being wary of spam callers, there weren't nearly as many 15 years ago when I was doing the job. It was targeted research, so people who'd opted in to being contacted for marketing purposes ("how is your new toaster working out for you") or local authority requests for comment ("are you happy with the new park that opened").
I've had some real howlers the other way though (with actual scammers) so I understand the frustration, one woman who was obviously a spam PPE caller yelled at me "don't you like money!" after I had politely declined,and there's no dealing with that. In the end the easiest thing to do and a definite improvement on being nasty, is just hang up, in my opinion.
Lord, I remember back when the worst thing calling was either a telemarketer, or a collection agency.
Some of them were unpleasant, but not nearly as unpleasant as the people who are trying to straight up steal your shit these days.
Barring a known number, that phone can keep on ringing.
I have a contact in my phone called Spam (with a picture of Spam), and I add any number that doesn't pass the sniff test within 30s (particularly Robo-spammers, urgh!), it can very helpful to get a repeat call and the picture of a can of spam tells me not to bother picking up.
If I can, I keep them on the phone until they hung up on me frustrated. More often than not I can, I used to wfh and be able, in between meetings, to keep them going for a while, while doing my actual work. "Can you spell that url again? No it says page not found" or "of course I want a refund for that iPhone, what do I need to do". All while typing my work emails, chatting with colleagues or working on a slide deck. Nowadays I'm looking after young babies full time. So even easier to apologise for the background noise and ask them to repeat their whole spiel for a fourth time.
That's fair. It seems there's a good scene in recording Scam Baiting antics and putting it on You Tube too.