They should really get Jim Florentine working on one of these AIs:
Either him or the Jerky Boys.
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This will always be the gold standard…
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Here’s what Snopes has to say about this. Basically it seems like an unrealistic way of scamming people because a company would have to be simultaneously stupid enough to let you buy something just by saying the word “yes”, and smart enough to run that word “yes” through a voiceprint database to make sure it’s your voice.
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My new hobby is playing Never Gonna Give You up to telemarketers and seeing how long they stay on the line.
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I haven’t had a telemarketer call in years, that don’t call me register is working well I suppose. And not a scammer ever, I believe. Maybe my paranoid obsession with not giving out my number unless absolutely necessary is working? Or is phone scamming easier in America?
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I think the voice of this character should greet telemarketers:
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Lenny would love to provide the information, when he gets around to it, after the ducks…
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That’s kind of what I figured. If they already have the info needed to rip you off, they’ll just go ahead and do it and save themselves a phone call.
We received the “Can you hear me?” phone calls, and several similar. This sort of thing was mentioned in my sales training–if you can get them to say yes to something innocuous, they’re much more likely to continue saying yes after that. Panhandlers and con artists also use this technique.
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I get telemarketers 3 times a day, occasionally a scammer but I stopped answering unknown numbers so I don’t know what is calling anymore. The gentleman at the head of the FCC has asked telcos to stop the problem, sending idle threats to the companies he used to lobby for.
I’m on the no call list. I’m careful with my number. I feel like my number is “refreshed” on the telemarketing lists when Im seeking health insurance, apply for financing, or when I signed up with godaddy.
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This is ultimately useless.
telemarketers really don’t care about ‘time’ for their employees.
If you engage them even by answering their call. You’ve automatically comodified your number as a ‘hot number’.
Once you answer and engage…you’ve giving the telemarketers money.
They put your number on the list of ‘people that answer calls and engage’…
doesn’t matter if you take up their time.
They sell that list for bucks and now “lenny” just made your number more valuable to the telemarketers as a number that can be spoken too…doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad…because it’s the selling the list to another telemarketer that’s the thing.
It doesn’t matter if you annoyed a call center person for whatever they where selling…you just gave the ‘big guys’ more bucks by putting your number on the ‘hot’ list to be sold to other guys.
The lists of people/numbers that answer and engage are a commodity that’s sold and traded. Just answering and engaging gives them bucks.
Edit: also…people that work in call centers aren’t the evil ones. They hate their job and often have this job as a last resort. Going HAHAHA…that you took up their time etc is kinda heartless. Yeah, they get frustrated. But their bosses don’t skip any meals with this stuff.
Ultimately…you’re just farking with a low level employee and screwing with time/paycheck. Which is kinda being a dick.
The boss already got his buck when the robot answered the phone and boss can sell the list to another boss as a ‘hot number’.
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The ones who are running obvious scams are. They know they’re lying to you. Fuck those guys.
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A Pullet Surprise, even.
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Really? That’s quite difficult in practice. That said, I haven’t had nary a one of these calls in years. Gawd only nose what horrible filth I must have spewed to have arrived at this happy place. Also, I worked for a telemarketing firm for about 3 months (only job I could get at the time). It was horrifyingly depressing. I quit. I wanted my soul back. There is nothing quite as soul destroying as trying to sell 5 year subs to whatever to old farm women who want nothing more than to talk to someone.
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Yup. I absolutely agree. When I get calls from the obvious scammers I respond in one of two ways:
- If I have time, I talk slow, listen to what they say, sound interested, and then when they press I start to cry to them about all sorts of problems and how my life is so bad because of [whatever I think will make them feel like scum for trying to scam me].
- If I’ve got no time to talk, I inform them that if they killed themselves it’d make the world a better place, and how happy it would make me to hear that gunshot on the phone. Cruel? Yes. But scammers? Fuck those guys.
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Nah, just different phone habits. Back then, we had people call all the time (friends, family, work), so we just answered whenever it rang. We still have a land line, but hardly anyone ever calls (my friends text, my work uses e-mail, my mother-in-law calls once a week). So our answering machine screens everything. In the rare case that I answer the phone and it’s a telemarketer, I let them give their pitch, say, “No, thank you,” or “No, I’m not interested,” and hang up.
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Our solution is not to answer any number that we don’t recognize on our Caller ID. If they’re legit, they will leave a message or call the number for DH’s shop; if not, they usually hang up after getting the answering machine. DH enjoys occasionally messing with ‘Microsoft Security Callers’, being in IT.
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If I don’t recognise the number, I just pick up my phone and listen. Mostly they just hang up.
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For unknowable reasons, UK landline companies bill extra each month for call ID. So nobody has a phone that displays call ID, so if you wanted it you’d have to buy a compatible phone, then pay extra line rental.
I’d love to reject unrecognised numbers on my mobile, which thankfully does call ID by default, but I get too many calls from various medical people who insist on calling as anonymous. I insist on disabling voice mail since people keep trying to give me info that I’d much rather have by sms/email instead.
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Finland has a number you call. Doing it blocks all telemarketing for three years. You guys need something similar there.
"people that work in call centers aren’t the evil ones. " Try to imagine how sorry I feel for them. When I was up against it and had to take any job I could find - which happened more than once - I went to work as an unskilled laborer at minimum wage. I didn’t even think of taking a job that consisted of deviling people with pernicious garbage and preying on the weak and gullible. Anyone who works for a telemarketing firm has chosen to serve evil and they deserve what evildoers get.
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