My Name is Nigel
We're being plagued by the Men from Mumbai. At around 7.30pm every night, the phone starts to ring and on answering, I hear a very strongly accented voice going "Hello, my name is Nigel and I'm calling from [insert company name here]". At this point, I know that if I stay on the line "Nigel" is going to attempt to get me to transfer my phone service to that provided by the company he represents and so I just hang up. We had several calls last night, the last ending with Doug swearing at the person on the other end and then feeling very bad about having done so.
Now these sales calls bug the hell out of me. We get them on and off throughout the evening and as they come from outside the UK, my understanding is that we can't stop them from calling us (we're on the telephone preference list for sales companies within the UK). What really really bugs me is not that they're trying to sell me something, but that they start the conversation with a complete and utter lie.
"My name is Nigel", "My name is Catherine", "My name is Ian". No its bloody well not your name! You're called Ashok/Prianka/Ashif and you live in bloody Mumbai. Arghhhhhhhhhhh
4 Comments:
We had a similar phase where at almost exactly 8pm the phone would ring twice and then stop. Must have been the auto-diallers - as far as I know they ring more than one number and then if one is answered it hangs up the other attempted calls.
Anyway, have you tried saying:
"I'm so glad you've phoned; can I talk to you about God?"
I just put the phone down - the last time I engaged in conversation (erroneously believing they were calling me about a problem with my MBNA credit card), I ended up buying insurance I didn't want. Cancelled it two days later, but still the only way I could get rid of the fugger off the phone.
We do get frequent automated calls from a company called Call Serve. I always put the phone down, but I'm occasionally tempted to hang on until I get through to a human being and just shout at them really loudly.
I do like telling them that I really enjoy spending more money with somebody else because it confuses them no end. But it takes time that I don't have. The most effective way of getting off of their lists (I have found) is to say,
"I would be really interested in listening to you but I would like to make some notes, can you hold on while I find a pen and some paper"
They will say yes, and then you just leave the phone off of the hook for about 10 minutes. They hang up and take you off of their databases as it's costing them money.
Alex, that's brilliant. We haven't had one of these calls here yet but when we inevitably do, that's exactly the tactic I'm going to use.
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