No. You don't.

[Plaidman]

So I get a phone call at my store. Some telemarketer. Trying to sell my something. I tell them politely that anything like that needs to be called in at the corporate number 555-555-5555. The telemarketer proceeded to tell me that they have already gotten their permission, and now they need to tell me now. I proceeded to tell her again, we have NO say in sales, you need to call the corporate number. She then tried to tell me just to listen to her spew.

My manager grabbed the phone and just hung up on her.

I love my manager.

[technical.angel]

I have to do that occasionally for the AAFHeaven. She's too nice to hang up on some of them.

[edicius]

I just deflect any technology calls to another department on campus. Usually I'll have some company like Viewsonic calling me, trying to pitch LCD projectors. While I do have purchasing power in my department, LCD projectors have to be purchased by the Ed Tech dept. on our campus and additionally, we apparently have a contract with Sharp that renders us unable to purchase any other brand of projector anyway.

But instead of telling Viewsonic that, I just transfer them.

[lordlundar]

Now you see, this is why I wish I had an air horn near the phone. I figure any telemarketer that is that pushy is just BEGGING for a shot of it.

[penguingeekgod]

When I get calls at home from telemarketers, I ask them what they are wearing in a naughty voice. Making THEM hang up is always the goal. At work, we usually end up with some damned computer or someone that did business with use, like 5 years ago with a contract done and over. Indication of the latter is that they know the owner's nickname (an Italian name) and , if he isn't in (which is most of the time), asks for a co-owner (which there isn't). Hell, I screen these calls and rarely take messages because legitimate calls ask for the GM if the owner isn't in or ask for a message to be taken.

Rarely, we get calls from people using his REAL name (an Arabic name), these are the cold callers. I really need to start having more fun with them. The sport will have to be toned down, me thinks...

[Yfandes]

We get that all the time - I tell them that they need to talk to campus, they say they already have permission. HAHAHAHAHA like campus would give me a free ticket to order stuff.

They did catch our receptionist once though, it went kind of like : "Hi, I'm calling from your copy machine company, and we just need your machine type for confirmation..." all of a sudden we are receiving waaay overpriced toners for the copy machine That was easy to stop, as we hadn't signed anything, but what a racket.

I had a friend once who worked at a fairly shady place that sold very overpriced office stuff (think $1 for a regular wooden pencil). The trick was, they would send freebies (electronics, TV's, game tickets) to the person who ordered supplies from them. So if someone wasn't watching the books, the "office manager" would spend thousands of the company's dollars on absolute junk while getting free stuff on the side. I still see faxes from places like that.

[Bright_Star]

Just tell em that you already gave at the office & be done with that.

[Sparky]

We get that all the time - I tell them that they need to talk to campus, they say they already have permission. HAHAHAHAHA like campus would give me a free ticket to order stuff.

They did catch our receptionist once though, it went kind of like : "Hi, I'm calling from your copy machine company, and we just need your machine type for confirmation..." all of a sudden we are receiving waaay overpriced toners for the copy machine That was easy to stop, as we hadn't signed anything, but what a racket.

Ah, toner phoners.

Evil.

Got such a call once. "Hi, this is John from the warehouse and I need to have someone go take a look at your copier and tell me the numbers on the front."

Uh huh. "What warehouse would that be, John?"
"The one where your copy supplies are."
"And where would that be, John?"
>>click<<

Better luck next time, asshat.