Marketing Surveys
It seems like marketing surveys conducted via telephone are getting “fashionable” lately. That doesn’t make me very happy. I had somebody phone yesterday and two of them phoning today. Both times (today) I thought it would be somebody else and rushed to the phone.
Pisses me off when the first thing I hear after picking up is … silence, because then I already know what’s coming next. The call gets dispatched to a call center agent who subsequently starts rambling about some survey or something — and, of course, they are persistent. I even understand why. 99.9% of all people they phone want to get rid of them as fast as possible, so the first thing they are trained in are techniques to keep the callee on the line. That pisses me off even more.
Usually, I try to tell them politely that no I am not interested once or twice, and when they keep rambling and rambling, I finally hang up on them. Not very nice, but what else can I do? I’m not going to sit there listening to them (especially when I have a suitcase to pack for a trip the next day).
The second guy that phoned to night, unfortunately, only got a rude click (from me hanging up) right away. I was so annoyed that I didn’t feel like having the same useless discussion (which he was trained to not listen to anyways) yet again. Even less nice to hang up right away, but hey, it’s still better than having to deal with my annoyed sounding, pissed off voice — that’s what I’m telling myself, anyways. 
We should really get ourselves entered onto those “do not phone” list pretty soon. Maybe that helps.
