The phone rang this morning. I answered after the second ring, and heard the tell-tale pregnant pause that heralds a telemarketer. I steeled myself for someone to mispronounce my name and prepared to interrupt at the first pause to inform the telemarketer that I don't like to be solicited by phone and to please remove my name from their calling list.
Then my world turned upside down.
The pause ended and a recorded voice came on the line, said, "I'm sorry," and hung up. A telemarketer hung up on ME. No, worse than that-- the telemarketer's computer hung up on me. Politely.
I'm trying to imagine the business model behind this call. Is the first apology free, is that it? "So, Mr. Sarrett, you liked that politely curtailed telemarketing call, yes? The next one's going to cost you. And we think you'll pay. If you don't, the next call will last a little longer. And the one after that longer still. Soon we'll be calling during dinner, and interrupting your favorite television programs. Yes, we're confident you'll pay."
Or was this a telemarketer trying to weasel his way out of a bit of creative sentencing? Perhaps someone was ordered to call everyone he's marketed to in the past and apologize for his tactics, and instead of doing so himself he set up his automated dialing system to do it unattended.
What kind of Twilight Zone have I stumbled into?
Posted by Peter at January 25, 2005 10:43 AMI get a lot of what I assume are telemarketer hangups... I'm thinking that maybe they're only targeting women or something... I don't know. I get about one a week or so. Bastards. :)
Posted by: Jack on January 25, 2005 11:23 AMTelemarketers use what are known as predictive dialers. They have teh database of people to call, and the reps on the phone are logged into a queue for that campaign. When someone hangs up on them, the predicitive dialer sees there is a person idle in the queue, dials the next number, and connects it to the idle rep once the connection to the customer is made.
Of course, what happens if someone goes on break? As soon as they can, the rep hits a button on their phone to put them into a "busy" state. If they were idle, the dialer may have already placed a call for them, and now suddenly there is no one to take this call. Instead of putting *you* on hold, it politely says "I'm sorry" and hangs up.
Posted by: Carl R. Knecht on January 25, 2005 11:42 AMOnce in the late 80's I got a call on my machine with a lady's voice (accented, rolling the r's, maybe Latino) that said "Prepare, prepare, time is running out!" and other such eerie things.
About 6 months later someone I worked with asked me if I pranked them the day before and proceeded to describe the same call.
About a year later, a friend asked me the same thing.
About 12 years later, the subject was brought up with friends out to dinner. Someone told me it was a local religious group that thought they were called to try to warn everyone of some Rapture or other. The law had supposedly finally caught up with those responsible for all the strange calls and got them to stop.
Posted by: davidme on January 25, 2005 01:33 PMActually, this is a service that telemarketers provide. I know this, because it was offered to my company by a firm I employed over the holiday season:
For $x per thousand phone numbers, their computer calls up all the names on your list. If a human answers, it hangs up. If a machine picks up it leaves a personal-sounding pre-recorded message, intended to appear to be a human marketer leaving a message.
This is 100% true.
Posted by: Russell on January 26, 2005 04:20 AM