Being the owner of a company, I receive many irritating calls per day from companies trying trying to either gain my business or scam me. Special rewards and promotions, cheaper overseas work, & discounts. Some are bold and indicate they are from a survey company or some well known company asking to update their records. They want you to confirm information (mailing address, email address, owner of company, phone, fax, number of employees).
I get so many of these that you tend to lose patience, cut them off, and ask them to remove you from their list. Hang up and don’t give them another chance. They are very smooth talking and have been coached with their scripts on how to counter anything you say. They have an excuse for everything. Some will even try to bully you and/or talk fast and not let you interject. Otherwise will say it is a limited time offer and you need to act immediately.
If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. You aren’t that lucky, you haven’t won that dream vacation. There is always fine print and a scam in play. If something is legitimate, there are many ways to qualify it and you don’t need to be time pressured. You can ask questions and ask for written information. Ask for their number so you can call them back.
If you are suspicious of a business, you can report them to:
- Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre
www.antifraudcentre.ca
1-888-495-8501 - Competition Bureau of Canada
www.competitionbureau.gc.ca
1-800-348-5358
Well, I get lots of fraudulent emails, calls, and texts myself. And I just can’t but wonder how people fall stuffs like that. Sometimes when I get a call like that especially when I’m having a very bad day, I just raise my voice at them. Sometimes I let it slide. Its just so sad how people fall for this kind of implausible stuffs.
But, maybe what a friend of mine told me is true after all, “The human psyche is configured to fall for too good to be true offers”.
My problem is more with those suspicious emails. If I would have a penny for every time I won the lottery for something I didn’t enter, I’d be a happy camper. I just mark it as spam and forget about it.
The phone solicitations are a nuisance. I agree. Once they have launched into the script it is difficult to interject. I usually interrupt and ask to be taken off the calling list. I have been fortunate, thus far, to not have run into any who are overly aggressive and belligerent.
But a relative of mine was not quite so fortunate. She was not scammed, and did not fall for anything, but oddly, she kept getting calls from the same individual — trying to offer her a low-interest loan — even though she kept telling him to take her off of the calling list. We all found it quite surprising as he persisted for a couple of weeks and finally stopped. It made no sense. Why not phone other prospects since he already knew he would get no where with this one? Very puzzling. And for a time it was quite disruptive.
They are annoying but they’re just trying to make money. I just say calmly that “I’m not interested”. I don’t understand why people get so angry at them. I mean at the end of the day they’re just people out there to earn a living.
I’ve also found that if you’re generally kind and nice to them then they tend to leave you alone. So there’s no harm in being nice to them.
I agree. I think the blanket condemnation of all telemarketing is extreme.
People can be extremely rude. We hear in the news sometimes the novel ways that people get their revenge against telemarketers. There are legitimate phone solicitations, and, as you point out, people are just trying to do their jobs and earn a living. That I can relate to. I do ask to be taken off the list as it is of mutual benefit, as they will save time by not contacting me again.
But unfortunately there are scams and they do prey upon people. It’s costly in many ways, as not only are people scammed, but it also stigmatizes the whole industry.
I am so tired of being advertised to. Whether it is commercial text messages, e-mail spam ads or telemarketers. I hate them all. Just go away and let me carry on with things. I get more spam mail than normal mail.
If I had every dollar I supposedly won or inherited, I would be able to live a life of luxury in Switzerland. At one time, I used to get messages on a certain social network from some Eastern European non-person who had decided for reasons never disclosed that I was selected as a suitable candidate to inherit her considerable fortune. Different names, but always the same awful deathbed hospital photo as profile pic. At another time, I got messages of someone who supposedly had compromising nude pics of me and was planning to pass them on to my wife – which was hilarious, because I’m female. The ones that annoy me the most though, are the spam messages where the sender ID has been changed so that it seems as if the message came from your own email account.
THANK YOU for these numbers. I get dozens of calls each day from solicitors. I have no idea why. I have tried adding my number to do not call lists but it doesn’t seem to help. Hopefully these numbers help my situation. It is maddening to have the phone ring all day due to sales people.
This is probably one of the most annoying issues I face day to day. I get many calls from solicitors on my home phone. I have added my name to do not call lists but I haven’t seen a difference. I tell solicitors who call me to remove me and that doesn’t seem to matter either. I guess I will have to start reporting these companies to the BBB.
I began thinking about charging them for the advice that they take for granted coming from our phone calls. None of the annoying solicitations would have been believable without their companies. Good thing that there are ways to cope with the annoying disturbances. I would prefer being exposed to straightforward ad videos than going back and forth over things with the fraudulent emails. They hurt my characters, sort of.
I hate these cold-calls. What’s even worse are the cold-calls that say that you’re being sued by the IRS, and try to gain more personal information and steal your identity. I really wish there was an easy way to report these businesses. Also the national do-not-call registry doesn’t work against telemarketing calls.