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| Orangutan in Aalborg Zoo, Denmark (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Since this is a very low readership weekend, for today's post I've decided to go with a rant of sorts. This will maybe not be so much a rant as it is a precursor to upcoming posts leading to my Battle of the Bands coming up next Monday June 1st. And I won't even bother to rant about the passage of time. June already? Somebody must be stealing time from me. But let me tell the story.
Last week I received a call from "Microsoft Windows Technical Support" to tell me that they were receiving error messages from my computer that indicated that my system had been hacked. I get these calls once or twice each year and I'm sure many of you have as well. Hopefully you don't work with these people as they are scammers trying to gain access to your computer.
My caller ID had indicated that the call was from "Private Caller" and since some of my family members often seem to show up like that on my display, I went ahead to answer to call. After I was made aware of who the caller was I asked for her to give me the business name, the phone number, and the address where they were located thinking that this would cause her to terminate the call. Instead she gave me everything I asked for including an address in California. I was certain, judging from her accent, that she was most likely calling from a call center somewhere in India.
Advice that I had read had suggested using the asking for info tactic in order to cause the caller to hang up, but now apparently the telemarketing firm had caught on to this and had the information ready for the callers to come back with to the person they were trying to dupe. This is a logical psychological tactic since many people who were already scared about the news concerning their computer would be more open to providing a caller information that was being sought about their computer now that they knew who the caller was and where they were calling from.
Not to fall for any of this scammer shenanigans I told the lady on the other end that I would do some of my own research relating to my computer and would be calling them back. Of course, I had no intention of calling back and I figured that would be the end to these phone calls for another several months. This time however I was to be surprised by another call the following day.
This time the caller was a man with an Indian accent who started off with the same phone pitch as the lady from the previous day. I cut him off saying, "Do you realize how ridiculous this call is? How would you even know to call this number in the first place? This is a scam!".
The caller immediately hung up on me. This time I figured the calls would be ending for sure. However, the next day at about the same time a different Indian accented man called with same spiel as the callers from the previous two days. Before this caller could even finish I started laughing loudly. The absurdity was now too much. As I was laughing I could hear the caller's voice demanding to know why I was laughing. I was so amused by this third call that I couldn't contain myself and continued laughing.
I could hear the frustration in the caller's voice as he continued to probe me as to why I was laughing. Finally, I said with great amusement in my voice, "This call is so stupid! This is all a big scam!"
Now the caller was furious with me. "A scam?" he shouted. "You think this is a scam?"
The caller continued to ramble on with an angry defense of what he was doing and why I was being foolish not to pay attention to him. Instead of continuing the discussion I firmly let him know I was very busy (and at that moment I had been) and was not interested in his call. He was highly displeased with me, continuing to shout at me as I clicked the off button of my phone.
I had obviously pissed the guy off. It seems like I should have been the angry party, but the guy who called was doing all the yelling. This has happened to me before, not often, but on a few rare occasions. Once an angry telemarketer even called me back to yell at me more after I had needed to disconnect his initial tirade. The second time I calmly let him know he was being highly unprofessional and that I was going to be hanging up the phone, which is what I did. That time there was a number on my caller ID that I called back to report the telemarketer to his supervisor, but no one answered the phone.
I've done my share of telemarketing in my life and two things that I've learned is that sometimes there are people who are not interested in what I'm calling about even to the point that they might get angry and abusive and one thing a telemarketer should never do is be impolite or argue back. Even though I disliked much about telemarketing, I always approached the job in a professional and respectful manner.
Actually the reason I'm telling this telemarketer story is that there was another puzzling incident that happened to me. Also last week, a blogger got angry at me, or perhaps he's just an angry sort of person and I happened to be the one there at the time for him to unleash his anger toward. Having a telemarketer get angry, though inappropriate, might be understandable. But in this business of blogging, fellow bloggers should be a bit more reasonable and not lash out at others who are just trying to engage in a friendly manner.
Maybe I'm wrong about this so I want to get your opinion about what happened between me and another blogger. However you'll have to wait until my next post to hear about this story. I don't want to upset anyone with an overly long post, so please return on Wednesday.
Have you ever received a "Microsoft Windows Tech Support" call? What was your reaction to the call? What would you do if a telemarketer began arguing with you in an angry tone of voice? Have you ever done any telemarketing work?
