First, let me say honestly and with all my heart – I hate telemarketers.

I believe that anyone that is a telemarketer is an undiagnosed sociopath and should kill themselves.

Seriously, if you are a telemarketer – KILL YOURSELF! Really, I’m not joking…KILL YOURSELF, NOW… I’ll wait.

Now, this may sound like a conversation right out of sitcom, but it happened to me.

A telemarketing firm was trying to gather information about our company to include us in some kind of “green” business directory. My office was bombarded with literally dozens of phone calls.

Basically they wanted to know what we did, how many employees we had, the amount of our budgets, and the who’s who of our executive staff.

At the time, we had over 120 employees and everyone’s phone number is published on our web site. So it was very easy for the telemarketers to get ahold of us.

Apparently they had a team of callers, each with a copy of our phone numbers. We were getting repeated calls to the same phone numbers over and over, from different telemarketers.

Now as we are a service oriented business, we are trained to be polite and courteous to every caller, no matter the situation. They would call, we would politely tell them that we could not give them the information they wanted, 30 minutes later -a new telemarketer would call, rinse and repeat.

We had so many repeat phone calls that it was interfering with our regular business operations.

Finally, our executive director sent out an email telling us, next time we get a call, please tell them politely to stop calling us.

Day one was irritating, day two was annoying, and on day three – they finally picked my phone to call.

The first call I received, I politely told the sociopath on the other end that we could not provide them with the information they were requesting. Two hours later, I told the next sociopath, politely, that I was not allowed to give them (and I was not privy to) information regarding our payroll and budgets and to please stop calling our offices. The third call, I recognized the number on the caller ID, I was ready for them.

The conversation goes as follows:

Me: “Thank you for calling ______. This is Randy”

Sociopath: “Hello, I’m calling from ______. Can I ask you for some information about your company?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I can’t give that information out over the phone. What information we do give out is posted on our website.”

Sociopath: “Can’t you tell me who your director is and the approximate budget size of your department?”

Me: “No, I’m sorry, but I can’t provide you with that information.”

“Your associates have been calling our office for the past two days asking those types of questions, and repeatedly calling the same phone numbers over and over.”

“Our director has told us to ask you to stop calling our office. I have had two other calls from your company in the past few hours. And I have asked each caller to stop calling, but your staff will not stop calling.”

“We cannot give out the information you want.”

Sociopath: “Hold sir.”

At this point I’m transferred to a manger or some higher up sociopath.

Sociopath Manager: “Hello, my name is ____. Don’t you want to be part of our “green” business directory? We are creating a business directory that features companies like yours that recycle and operate in and environmentally manner.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but we cannot release the information you want over the phone. If you want a list of our staff, it is on our website, but I don’t have access to or permission to give out financial information about our office."

“On top of that, your people have been calling us for the past three days, calling the same person multiple times, even after being told that we were not allowed to give out the information and please stop calling. Some of our people have gotten a dozen calls in one day.”

Sociopath Manager: “Maybe you don’t understand. Don’t you want your company to be listed in our “green” directory? I’m sure it would be a plus for your company to be recognized as being an environmentally friendly business.”

At this point, an evil thought entered my head. (Picture me sitting there with an angle on one shoulder and a devil on the other – scratch that, there was a devil on both shoulders! :-P)

Me: “I’m sorry, but maybe you don’t understand. We are an information business. And information is valuable. We charge for providing information.”

Sociopath Manager: “Yes, sir. But what has that got to do with being in our directory?”

Me: “Well, we charge for answering questions. We charge $25 for each question we answer over the phone.”

Sociopath Manager: “That’s a lot, to answer a question.”

Me: “Yes it is, but information is valuable. At this point I must inform you that this phone call is being recorded and if you ask one more question, you accept our terms and conditions and agree to pay $25 for each additional question.”

Sociopath Manager: “You’re kidding?”

Me: “Thank you for asking a question and acknowledging that your company is agreeing to pay the $25 per question fee. Please feel free to ask anything you want.”

CLICK!...

He hung up!...

The nerve!

When I hung up and turned around, my director was standing there with a horrified look on her face.

I asked, “What’s wrong?”

And she asks, “What if they file a complaint against us?”

I asked, “File a complaint with WHO? They called me, I didn’t call them. I was polite and treated them with respect at all times. They have been calling all our departments for three days now, repeatedly calling some of us, even after we have nicely asked them to stop calling.”

“Obviously, they do not care what we want or that they are costing us man hours and interfering with our operations.”

She says, “You lied to them. We don’t charge for answering questions over the phone.”

I replied, “They don’t know that. And how would they find out?”

At this point, my director gives up and walks away. With a worried look that said, “Somehow a telemarketing company is going to lodge a complaint against us.” Because I lied to a telemarketer!

But we didn’t get any more calls from them – ever.

P.S. I’m still trying to figure out who the telemarketing company would complain to and how the conversation would go?

I imagine it would be something like this:

“Hello, we would like to register a complaint against a business that lied to us.”

“Yes, sir. Could you describe the situation?”

“Yes. For three days, we have been repeatedly calling every phone number at a business, asking them for their financial information, budgets, names of staff, names of their directors and executive staff. And they have told us that they can’t give us that information and to please stop calling them. As our phone calls are disrupting their normal operations.”

“Yes, sir. Go on.”

“Well, on the third day of calls, I talked with a gentleman that informed me that THEY charge $25 per question. I was so perplexed that I hung up, told my staff to stop calling, and have been afraid to call them again – as we might get charged. Since then, I have been afraid to make probing calls to other businesses! Afraid to ask questions that even I realize no sane business person would answer over the phone.”

“It’s really interfering with my staff’s ability to continue normal business operations.”

“Since that time, I have learned that gentleman lied to me. They in fact, DO NOT charge $25 per question. I want to lodge a formal complaint!”

Pause

“Thank you for your call sir. I would be happy to register your complaint. But first I must tell you that this phone call is being recorded and that we charge $25 ……………”