"This is the 5th time you've rang..."

Telemarketers, do they get the clue? One of my major pet peeves are telemarketers and people who come to our door trying to sell us something. This past week, and weekend, my partner has been hounded by this particular person. I don’t know where this guy is from (in terms of what he’s selling) but I do know, he’s utterly annoying. My partner is a shift worker, she works from 5:30pm-2:00am. She doesn’t get home till at least 2:30am or later. She then usually stays up till 4:00am just to “wind down.” She will sleep in till 12-1:00. But this past week, without fail, this particular guy would ring at 12:15pm. Every time he’s rang, my partner has said “I’m not interested.” She usually hangs up on him, because she’s sick and tired of him ringing. She kept saying “I’m not interested, please stop ringing me.” Saturday rolls around, he rings again. My partner is getting severely pissed off. She says “you’ve rang me every day this week, I’ve told you I’m not interested, so why do you keep on ringing?” The guy of course tried to use the excuse of “would you be interested in buying such and such product.” My partner says “no, I’ve told you 6 times already I’m not interested,” then she hangs up. Not even 5 minutes later, the SAME guy rings. This time my partner flew off the handle. She says “how about you give me YOUR home phone number, and I will ring you at ungodly hours and annoy the crap out of you?” The guy said “oh, I’m not authorized to give out my number.” My partner says “who authorized you to get my phone number? I haven’t authorized anyone to give them my number.” The guy started to raise his voice at my partner and my partner started swearing at the guy. I was in the living room listening to this conversation and I started to get a little scared. My partner says “you take me off your list. I’ve told you time and time again, to quit calling me. If you call here one more time, I’m going to take legal action.” Then she hung up.

I was absolutely flabbergasted at how pushy and how annoying this telemarketer has been. Sure, one or two every couple of weeks, but c’mon every single day? I often wonder if we had a private number, would they still ring and annoy us? And it’s the exact same person. You’d think, if someone tells you to f*ck off, that you wouldn’t ring back, or at least not for awhile. Nope, this guy rang not even 5 minutes later. Does he expect someone else to answer the phone? I know these telemarketers get the list of numbers from a huge database and that it’s their job. But there is a line to be drawn when you’re repeatedly told to leave someone alone.

This is a job I certainly couldn’t see myself doing. I don’t think I have the thick skin to do it . I know when I was living back in the states, I would screen my calls. It was always a given that they’d ring at least once a day. If someone didn’t t leave a message on my answer machine, I knew the person wasn’t in dire need to get a hold of me. If I was home, heard the message, I’d intercept the call. But most of the time, I’d screen my calls. I still usually do so here. Most of the time, if I don’t answer the home phone, they’ll ring my cell. But telemarketers, geez, can’t they get a clue?

I guess the moral of this post is..if you’re in telemarketing, and someone tells you they’re not interested, DON’T ring them every single day. Like they’re going to change their mind in that short period of time. HELLO!! If I wanted to buy something, I’d ring you, okay??

This is sort of off subject, but what is it, with having people ring up, who are stationed in India or somewhere foreign to us? When ever I ring up a place, to get customer service, the person is from a different country, and they’re really hard to understand. Why do companies hire people from overseas, for a job that is most of the time, vitally important to get a point across to people? Communication is so important, and if there is a language barrier, how is it for the person calling? Is it rude to say “I’m sorry, but I’m having a hard time understanding you. Is there someone there who speaks fluent English that I can speak with?” There have been times where I’ve wanted to say this because I can’t stand them at all, but I’ve been afraid they’d get offended. But I guess, if something is really important to me, and I still couldn’t undertand, I’d make sure I got a hold of someone who I was able to understand. I remember the tv doing a news broadcast about this, and so many people don’t realize that call stations for many places (mostly credit card companies) are overseas. I still am baffled as to why the companies do this. Are there not enough people in their own country that would do this job, that they have to find it elsewhere? Or it’s cheaper to find it elsewhere? I know I certainly wouldn’t do telemarketing. It’s all about how many sales one can get in a day, and if they don’t reach the quota, they don’t get paid. Maybe that’s why telemarketers are so pushy. I hate pushy people, hate it, hate it!!!

-current mood- UTTERLY ANNOYED