We all get fed up with cold callers – trying to get us to buy products and services we have no interest in or the criminals attempting to get personal information, tricking, lying and conning for their living.

You can slam the phone down or decide to have a bit of fun at their expense and waste their time as they waste yours.

The cold callers expect to make a connection with you by asking simple opening questions such as ‘How are you today?’ then moving on to getting your personal details and/or convincing you to buy something or transfer money to them etc.

Cold callers have a script to follow – their set of questions and expected answers and if you behave unexpectedly – they don’t know what to do and will often give up i.e. put the phone down.

There are endless things you can do to confuse them, such as

1. Keep a take-away menu by the phone and start reading it out – place an order and ignore anything they say – just keep reading it out. E.g. I’d like to order 3 spring rolls followed by the Peking Duck with egg fried rice and 2 portions of crispy noodles and some of that seaweed stuff . Plus … and so on.
2. Say pardon to everything and just keep saying that when asked anything
3. Say ‘I don’t speak English’ to whatever they ask
4. Invent your own religion and try hard to convert them. I’m glad you called today as I have the good news of the 3^rd coming of Quixacoatl to tell you about. Now, Quixacoatl created the earth in 5 minutes and he’s due back tomorrow to collect all of the believers. And so on.
5. Accuse them of breaking into your garden and damaging your flowers. Claim you know it’s them. The more ridiculous your story the better.
6. Say Thank you for calling the PPI hotline – we can get your thousands of pounds back. I just need you name, address and bank details first. You’ll hear the phone slam down
7. In these days of Coronavirus, accuse them of breaking the restrictions by not wearing a mask on the phone. They cannot prove otherwise.

Any unexpected behaviour will do the trick – so confuse them.

Or you can confuse them with genuine questions

So, you could for example, tell them you are busy at the moment but will call them back at home that evening and ask for their home phone number.  You wont get it – unless they fancy you of course.

If they say they can’t give out a home number then that leads in to the comment  “I presume  you don’t want anyone bothering you at home, right? Now you know how I feel!”

Or how about this example:-

“while I’ve got you on the line, I’ll just ask you a couple of very brief questions?

Where are you based?

Who do you work for?

What computer systems do you use?

What is your name?

What is the name of your manager?

It’s amazing how people who want to know so much about you are so unwilling to give you information about themselves.

So, annoy the cold callers by asking them personal questions they don’t want to answer.

If you have any good ways to get rid of the cold callers or have fun at their expense – do let me know, by email.