Steaming made over cold call gang

3:06pm Thursday 26th June 2008

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MY heart sank when I received a call at work last week from a woman asking if I was interested in buying a kitchen.

Cold callers have hassled me at home for years. Now they've tracked me down at work.

A day or two earlier I asked my home telephone company to block all calls from telephone salesmen.

Apparently it takes a month to activate, and it's as if the never-take-no-for-an-answer brigade know they've only got limited time left to make my life a misery.

I'm being blitzed by electricity, gas, telephone and insurance companies ringing me out of the blue to waste their time asking for my business.

Now, I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression of what I think of these people, so I'll say it nice and clear. I hate them.

Not all of them. Only the overwhelming majority who have no manners or respect for privacy.

I despise the way they always phone at tea-time when the house is at its busiest, how they always know your name, the anti-climax of realising it's a cold call, the emotionless delivery of their carefully-scripted pressure patter, and the way they think the words I'm not interested in somehow mean I'd love to hear more about their product.

And they are just so nosey.

The questions are endless: "Why did you leave us?" "Who are you with?" "How much are you paying?" "Are you thinking about switching?"

If I was I wouldn't give my business to a telephone stalker with obsessive curiosity and an attitude problem.

I'm a one-syllable-response-then-phone-down-man as a rule, callously ignoring the fading sound of their desperate tinny voices as they make a last-ditch attempt to revive the conversation.

But as my time talking to these cloth-eared ignoramuses is hopefully nearing an end, I've started to play them at their own game.

First I pretended to be interested then say I'd changed my mind once I'd got them all excited.

Then I started seeing how long they stayed on the line without me saying a word.

My record is 42 seconds and I'm determined to break a minute.

The potential for fun is endless. You could ask them to hold the line, put it on speakerphone and see if they say anything when you don't return, or you could pass the phone between different members of the family to speak until they latch on.

Cold callers are a blight on society. But don't get angry, get even.