Stalking Telemarketers
We all hate them! They ring at the most inconvenient times to sell us junk we neither want nor need and all done in an indecipherable accent. I recently had a telemarketer stalker. Bizarre, but true. Once a week, every week for the past five years I would receive a call. That’s right, FIVE years!
“Can I speak with Mesta Den Is Aye to?” the voice, presumably Philippine, would ask.
“No-one here by that name, sorry.” I would firmly reply. (The gentleman in question had been the previous owner of the business I had purchased.)
There was never a hint of acceptance or glimmer of understanding of this simple, unassailable fact. They would persist and I, stupidly, would continue to deny, apparently unable to get them to deviate from the script, until I would hang up in frustration! They drove me nuts!
I tried everything; surfed the net for hints, took advice from family and friends. How was I to get rid of them? My response escalated over the following weeks and months from firm denial, to explanation, to rudeness, to demanding to speak to supervisors, to, I’m sad to say, screeching obscenities. Every week I would think I’d beaten them and then the next week, like an incurable rash, they’d be back to get under my skin.
I finally hit upon the perfect response. I simply agreed.
“Sure, I’ll just get him” I said in my sweetest voice. I put the phone down and walked away. Gave it a couple of minutes and came back.
“Are you still there? Great! He said he won’t be a moment. Can you hold?”
This gorgeous, wonderful game lasted for about 15 minutes until my last attempt to confirm that they were still ‘On Hold’ and sadly they’d hung up.
They NEVER called me again. After five years. Obviously in the world of telemarketing it’s ok to waste my time and money, but not their own. The weird thing is I think I miss them.
