Hi learninmypc... Legitimate telemarketers have a do not call list, and if you say put me on your “do not call list” they will stop calling. So that is the way to take the first call.
Illegitimate phone criminals do not have a do not call list (which is their weak spot), and from the second time they call you on, there is no reason to be nice about it.
Just being rude and hanging up isn’t effective. They may sign your number up for all their scams and your calls will increase instead of decrease.
You have to be more careful than that. The criminal phone room has many employees and a manager. The manager has to keep employees coming to work and keep wasted time down.
Convincing criminal phone room employees to get another job, wasting their time and frustrating them, and causing a bad attitude in the phone room is how to do this.
Basically you are doing psychological operations, what they call psych-ops.
If they are calling about credit card debt, always have a lot of debt. If they are going to refund money always be interested and want the refund. If they say your auto warranty is about to expire, be concerned about your warranty being cancelled. If the IRS is about to call the police, always be scared of them calling the police. The list goes on. Play along.
Always draw the phone call out as long as you can to waste as much of their time as possible. Remember, you are a fat stupid rich American, and you will notice, most phone criminals are calling from another country.
Most of my phone criminals are from India, and you can tell by their accent. This knowledge opens up some vulnerabilities.
At some point in the call, you will be asked for personal information. Your age, your name, your location, the expiration date of a credit card, your customer id from a legitimate business, the list goes on.
There is even one scam where they try to get you to go to a website and get infected with malware/ransomware. Slowly get walked through the whole thing but do not press enter, say you pressed enter and it is not the website they said and they will think they got you, and the mask will come off.
Always lie or have a story about why you can’t give personal information to people on the phone, and always act like you are about to give in and give it to them. Importantly, never never do.
So that is all about time wasting. On to other things that are frustrating for phone criminals.
Sharing your concerns about giving information to phone criminals is always a good start, at some point in the call. That will open up another time wasting phase of convincing you they are legitimate. Then slowly come to the realization that they are a “phone criminal”. Be appropriately shocked. Remember, you are a stupid fat rich American.
That prostitutes have more honor than phone criminals seems to get some reaction.
Asking if they are going to work in the phone room for the rest of their life is popular.
My personal favorite is to suggest that their father is Pakistani. That’s a winner.
Sometimes I befriend the phone criminal and branch out into other things to do for a living, leading to their quitting the phone room and quitting being a phone criminal.
And always go for the manager. If you seem about ready to tip over and give it up with just a little more reassurance you might get transferred to the manager. Especially if it is a new phone criminal that doesn’t have much experience.
Now the managers are experienced, and it is like getting a boss at a new level in a RPG game. You have to be more careful to keep a manager on the line, so always start off with a manager from the beginning and always make them walk through all the steps again.
For managers, my personal preference is to go from friendly to slightly creepy in a man to boy sort of way, and slowly ratchet up the creepy to explicit descriptions of sexual acts. It is just unfortunate that it is always end up to be something they really wouldn’t like.
Basically…
Waste time.
Frustrate.
Make/help them quit/get a new job.
Add to the frustration level in the phone room.
Creep the managers out hard.
The goal is to make them make their own do not call list, because you are bad for business.
The long game is that there are only so many street rats willing to take the phone criminal job, and to increase the turnover in the phone room, to deplete that finite number of employees.
They will make their own do not call list, eventually, and stop calling.
Bottom line is, you’re bad for business.
