Category: Guest Post

Doreen Deals With Cold Callers

Confused Cold CallerDoreen has strong views on cold callers. She says:- I tend to regard these people as invading my space and I think that more should be done to stamp out cold calling.

We are registered with the Telephone Preference Service., I get fewer calls than I used to but there are still some cold callers.  I like to tell them THIS IS A BARRED LINE GET OFF IT!

I do say it quite curtly! If they don’t put the phone down straightaway then my follow-up is I will get your company fined. That stops them.

Before we registered on the Telephone Preference Service, I used to have several strategies for dealing with cold callers. One of my favourites was telling them they had rung a crime scene and I needed their number for further action! That stopped that call dead.

Graham Annoys a Car Accident Claim Scammer

Phone Caller

Graham says:

I had done some shopping and coming back to the car park a women was about to put a note on my car saying she had accidentally scrapped my car when parking next to me. We exchanged details and her insurance company was excellent ringing me the same day, admitting full liability and got my car fixed within a couple of days and loaning me a car. Great I thought.

But then I was plagued by calls from legal firms wanting to claim personal injury for me. They claimed the insurance company had set aside a sum of money for my personal injury. I just kept telling them I wasn’t interested.

Then I decided to waste their time as they were wasting mine.

So, next caller I answered her questions about the accident  and waited till she got to the end of the process then said casually

“Does it make any difference whether I was in the car at the time of the accident?”

“You weren’t in the car?”

“NO”

“You’ve just wasted my time on this”

“NO! You phoned me. You wasted My Time!”

That’s good riddance to one annoyed cold caller.

Guest Post: ‘A Humorous Way To Greet Cold Callers’

While the intrusive and irritating nature of a cold call can infuriate the masses, there have been quite a few times in the past when I have tried to treat the unwelcome interruption with a bit of humour. How? Well when I see that the Caller ID has been withheld again, I resort to answering the phone in a way that could lead to an interesting conversation. Here are some of my favourite ones so far:

“Hampshire Constabulary Incident Room, DI Smith speaking,” (a personal favourite of mine).

“Surbiton Pizza Hut, is your order for collection or delivery?” (in the typical teenage tone).

“Cyber and Communications Crime Unit,” (always goes down well!)

“PPI Compensation Hotline, can I help you?” (get them with their own game).

“Thank you for calling ‘The Smithson Clinic’. To book an appointment, press 1.” (usually followed by a long list of different fake options).

What ends up happening next? Most of the time, the caller returns the handset within a split second but sometimes, comedy gold ensues! So next time you see the all-too-familiar ‘Caller ID Withheld’, pick a persona and see how it goes.