Now I feel EVIL!

[ffutures]

I've signed up with the telephone preference service and am not supposed to receive sales calls, but that doesn't stop an occasional company with an overseas call centre from ringing me. So I just had a phone call from someone trying to sell me "financial services," e.g. a way to get in debt if I'm not already. Since I don't actually WANT any debts my usual instinct is to slam down the phone. But tonight I thought I'd try something different.

A while ago someone posted a link to a script for derailing a sales pitch. I thought I'd give it a try, but had to improvise since I couldn't find the script. The conversation went something like this:

Caller (With an Indian accent, after a couple of seconds pause that made me realise what was coming): Hello, I'm Nick, I'm calling from (unintelligible) Financial Services. Can I speak to Mister or Mrs. Rowland

Me: I'm sorry, could you say that again, I didn't quite catch that.

Caller: Hello, I'm calling from (still unintelligible) Financial Services. Can I speak to Mister or Mrs. Rowland.

Me: Speaking.

Caller: I am calling about home owner financial plans

Me: That's interesting. Is it a good company to work for?

Caller: I'm sorry, would you say that again please?

Me: (Slowly and VERY loudly) ARE THEY GOOD PEOPLE TO WORK FOR?

Caller: Oh, they are very good. We are offering financial packages for home owners.

Me: How do you get into that line of work?

Caller: [something unintelligible]

Me: Is the pay good?

Caller: [Something unintelligible. Line goes dead then busy office noise, repeated a couple of times.]

Me: Hello? Hello?

Caller: No response.

I hang up...

Sooner or later I really must get a small electronics module to play hold music for these bozos...

Later: I've FOUND THE SCRIPT
http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html

Comments

[elfbiter.livejournal.com]

loud applause

[fluffcthulhu.livejournal.com]

Evil is new angelic. Trust Me on this.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Well, you should know...

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

I got one once when I was listening to music, They asked to speak to Mister Field, and I said 'Please hold', and put the phone down next to the speaker.

Came back half an hour later and they'd hung up, sadly I don't know after how long.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I don't get these calls at home, but at work my conversation usually goes something like this:

Me: Are you calling from America?
Them (Always): Yes sir!
Me: Who won the World Series in 2004?

This is a great variation on the WWII classic, and it gets them every time.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Unless you want to make a call, or expect one, the idea of the game is to keep them on line as long as possible so that it costs them money. What's really needed is a good Eliza program and speech recognition / synthesis software and hardware.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Or drive the person at the other end insane, of course.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Costs who money?

I enjoyed the counterscript! It seems to point to getting them to find another line of business. But ultimately is is a human being on the other end of the line.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

They're paying for the call, not me.

[timill]

Who would know that?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

At a wild guess... Americans?

[timill]

Fuller sized version of that icon:

[booster17.livejournal.com]

*makes notes of his very own*

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

There is a script and flow chart for this - I wish I could remember where I saw it. VERY silly...

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

And now you know the awesome power of the Dark Side...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'll be sending sharks with fricking lasers to the call centre next time...

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link.

Now if one of those Mumbai gentlemen whould just like to call me ... or, more exactly, my deceased father-in-law ....