Smart Guy Gives Telemarketers a Taste of Their Own Medicine

Most of us must have received a call, a text message or maybe even an email from telemarketers enjoining us in various surveys and advertisement campaigns which later on will actually bill us for a donation. Some would even promise a kind of raffle where we can win exciting prizes, but does anyone really win from those? Or those are only hoax promises to entice us? Then there is the issue of our time being consumed by yet another telemarketer! Sometimes admittedly, it can get annoying right?

Tired of getting calls from telemarketers, one guy decided to give them a taste of their own medicine by smoothly trolling the caller. Read the story below:

Tired of receiving telemarketer calls? You can try this technique.

My friend is always getting calls from telemarketers, this is what he does…

Friend: Hello?

Them: Hello sir, I am calling from *A Market Research Company*. Would you be willing to take a short study with us?

Friend: Absolutely! We here at Evermoon Consulting are always ready to provide opinion based data to our clients!

Them: Um… Ok? Anyway, the survey just takes about 5 minutes and when finished you are entered into a drawing to win a 3 day vacation to Cancun.

Friend: That will not be needed. Our usual remuneration per our standard service agreement is all that is required. However please be aware that our lowest billable period is one hour and this call will be billed for an hour of service even if only five minutes is used.

Them: No sir, this will only take five minutes not an hour.

Friend: I understand, however your firm will still be billed the minimum hour as per our services agreements. That comes to $225. How would you like to take care of this today? Do you have billing set up with us already? If so I just need the corporate code for your company.

Them: I don’t have that… This only enters you for a trip sir.

Friend: Ok, that’s alright sir. We can set this up on a company credit card for a small fee. Your new total will be $257.98, sir. Go ahead and give me the credit card number sir.

Them: What credit card?! We aren’t paying $257 for this!

Friend: Oh, you are absolutely right sir! I am so sorry! We are talking after 6pm CDT so you are correct that we are in “premium time”. That is correspondingly higher. Your total will be $517.54. Thank you for reminding me!

Them: What?! No… No… We can call you after 6pm. The law says we can call until 9pm.

Friend: Evermoon Consulting prides itself on meeting our customers needs 24 hours a day sir, but between 6pm and 6am is premium time. I am ready for that credit card number now sir.

Them: Look, I just have the calls routed to me. I didn’t call you, a computer did.

Friend: Oh, I see.

Them: Yeah, so can we just get to the survey?

Friend: Yes, but I will have to add our auto-dialer fee to the charges. It’s due to our consultants time being so valuable that we do this to keep them from having their time wasted. With that fee your new total is $759.99. What are the first four digits of the card you would like us to use, please?

Them: Hold on for my supervisor please.

Friend: Ok.

*5 minutes later*

Supervisor: Hello sir, I understand their is a problem?

Friend: None at all. Your total charges for one hour of premium time consulting with auto-dialer charge and supervisor level respondent fee with credit card processing is $1163.67. Will this be on a MasterCard, Visa, or American Express today?

Supervisor: For what?!

Friend: Consulting on your survey of course. What method of payment will you be using today?

*click*

Well we kinda feel sorry for the telemarketer who has to endure the prank or trolling, but sometimes things like this is just fulfilling and fun. The guy might have wasted more than 5 minutes for the survey with his trolling but at least he seemed to enjoy it. We are all just doing our jobs we know, but it is also our right to enjoy how we handle those calls 🙂

For more stories like this, we highly recommend the book Messing With Telemarketers by Haven Riney. And you can also follow them on Facebook.