im trying to be nicer on the phone and a guy called about outsourcing all kinds of business services and referring to his boss a lot.......instead of immediately hanging up on him i ended up with ok your boss can drop something off at the counter tomorrow but i might not be there...he did get out of me how many employees and years........minutes later antother call came about setting the time for the appointment..no appointment, i said he could drop something off....i hung up in about 10 seconds.....then another call came and i refused and dh answered......it turned into a heated thing, dh saying what are you selling, not selling anything, called dh a sissy for taking my call, dh kept asking what he wanted, the guy blows up saying he made 300,000 a year did you want to drool over his check, dh saying yea lets see it..come show me, .. the cold caller used the f word, not selling anything..... dh yelling and irate....it was kind of scary..... we were totally pawns in his game....he was a young macho big loser in a boileroom, imho...
...thats why i always hang up on cold callers..... and we are in indiana and dont get that many....


the ones i do get usually start with how are you? im trying not to say something rude..but nobody with real business with me who i didnt know, would say that....somehow thats a real tip off and i try and give a second to make sure, usually by saying who is this, and then just say im on a no call list and hang up....

Wow, that was quite a call... I am sure that he sells a great deal for his "business." LOL

I generally ignore the cold calls as well, as if they really cared about my business, they would take some time to try to find out something about it.

It reminds me of the guy who called (I actually took the call) and asked if I would like to try his restroom cleaning service. I told him that I did not need it. He said (rather smugly) "Oh, you don't have restrooms?" I informed him that in the mobile tool business, we generally don't equip the tooltrucks with restrooms.

I always love it when people brag about what they make... generally, they aren't even close...

it's a skill to get out of those calls. I had a boss once who used to just say to the caller 'can you hold please' and then put them on hold without ever picking up again.

Before adding my home number to the do not call list I used to just try to respond to the callers with an answer I knew wasn't likely to be on their script. When the local paper called to sell me a subscription I told them I didn't know how to read. I then started using the biggest words I could to reiterate that I couldn't read. The woamn calling had no idea what to say.

They generally have a script in front of them and have been trained to have a response to just about anything you might say, but if you give them something completely absurd you can take control of the converstion away from them since they get completely thrown off the script.

I figured if they were going to call all the time I might as well have some fun with it. One thing I always wanted to try, but never got the opportunity was to try selling them something when the tried to sell me something. I thought maybe I could start asking them questions about how much insurance they had and see if I could try to sell them some. the do not call list came around before I had a chance to try though.

I had one call me once - wanting to know if I needed my carpets cleaned.

Short version: I asked them how did they know? And then I asked when they could be here. They told me in about two weeks. I told them that would probably be a bit too late, the blood would have dried by then. I then asked them if they knew how much blood was in a body since it just kept coming out.

They actually hung up on me.

LOL! I love it. I'm using it the next carpet company that calls!

LOL. I'm with vangogh, give them something not on the script and they don't know how to deal with it. I do miss the old days when there was actually a person on the phone when you pick up the call though. Now you have to wait if you want to have any fun. Who has time for that? I'm too busy reading this forum.