RejectReality

I hate telemarketers.

I’m pretty sure I can’t get much clearer than this - as much as I try, it always seem to boil down to the same thing. Just for fun, I’ll try again anyway.

I hate telemarketers.

<shrug>

I received a phone call on my mobile at around 9:30pm advising that I was “fortunate” enough to be “selected” to participate in a “survey” for Australia’s major telco - Telstra.

As I have never provided that particular number to Telstra, I asked the telemarketer how they obtained my number, given this and the fact that it is a silent number.

His first response was an outright lie. His second attempt wasn’t much better. I’ll admit that it slightly shocked and annoyed me — “one of your friends or family have provided your name, address and phone numbers to us so that we can discuss your long distance calling plans and having a land line enabled at home”.

There are a couple of amusing things with this:

• My friends or family would not have released the details he specified
• The only way that I will be changing my long distance provider is to swap it out for a VoIP setup and an ATA so I can bypass as many of the major telco services as I can (with significant savings)
• I already have a functional land line as it’s a Telstra business decision to require a working (read: being actively billed) voice service to have DSL provisioned
• None of the land line services are in my name, so I can’t technically authorise anything like what he wanted to talk me in to
• I’m in the process of actively reducing the amount of my money that is (directly or indirectly) currently going to Telstra

These were really cruddy tactics. Especially considering he gave me a hard time when requested that I be immediately removed from all databases and call lists for marketing purposes.

All I can say is bring on the Do-Not-Call list - I’ll be the first to sign up.

</rant>