The Ultimate Insult from a Telemarketer

Kevin LaFata November 29, 2007 Customer Service, Prospect and customer follow up, vendor communications

I recently received a “cold” call from a web marketing firm that suddenly took a turn for the worse.

Ok, so maybe this guy was just having a bad day, but I would tend to think the owners of this company would not condone this guy’s behavior. No names have been changed to protect anybody.

Also, a little background: I have what is medically described as “profound” hearing loss in one ear, and “severe” hearing loss in the other. For the most part I can do OK with telephone conversations, but occasionally need to ask a person to repeat something. This is especially true when the caller has an accent (relative to mine), or the call is coming from an IP phone.

Normally I wouldn’t bother posting this, but this call is so outrageous that I just had to do it.

A couple of people have asked if this call was “for real”. As far as I can tell, everything checks out. The caller ID was from an international phone gateway coming in from Texas, and the company seems to exist. No one that I know has owned up to playing any kind of practical jokes.

See below for the disposition of the call.

Dec 3, 2007 15:17 : Update:

I just received a call from the company mentioned in the phone call. They are saying they hire out to various locations for their telemarketing. They assured me that it was not an owner/director behind the phone call and are investigating internally. Hopefully they will let me know the outcome of that investigation.

Dec 4, 2007 12:55 : Update:

I’m removing the MP3 file for several reasons. First, even though it’s legal in the US to record phone calls, the UK has a different set of laws. The call itself originated (both caller ID and ANI) from Richardson, Texas. But with IP phones, Skype, etc. it’s probably better to be safe than sorry. Second, the company mentioned in the call claims they did not authorize the call and asserted it might be a rouge telemarketer. They have also been flooded with prank calls from people on the Internet after the call was posted. I personally would not recommend any type of retaliation towards that company.

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14 Responses to “The Ultimate Insult from a Telemarketer”

  1. Small Business Marketing said:

    Nov 30, 07 at 7:45 am

    That is simply amazing. I don’t know what else to say.

  2. Kevin LaFata said:

    Dec 02, 07 at 11:42 am

    For a pretty accurate transcript of the phone call, try this site:

    http://www.daivrussell.com/Blog/default.asp?Display=8

  3. llamapus said:

    Dec 03, 07 at 12:45 pm

    I recognize that voice. I recieved a similar telemarketing call, not related to GoogleAdWords, don’t recall the specifics. But when I told him I was not interested and would not allow him to speak to the relevant person, he got angry, cursed, and said “Well if you’re going to treat me this way, I don’t want to business with your company anyway” and called me names as well.

    As far as I can tell, its an amateurish social engineering technique to get people to open up to the idea of him, or others from his company or similar scams calling you and being listened to. The accent is the initial part of the approach. Watch something like Glengarry Glen Ross for further demonstration.

  4. Kevin LaFata said:

    Dec 03, 07 at 12:50 pm

    llamapus: That’s pretty funny you mentioned that. I just rented and watched Glengarry Glen Ross two days before I got that call. I’m not sure how that technique would work on the general public, though.

    The company is based in the UK, so the British accent may not be “intentional”.

  5. sethm said:

    Dec 03, 07 at 4:12 pm

    I can’t believe that the so called director of the company would do that. I check out their company and it seems pretty big. There minimum marketing pan on there contact form says 300-500 GBP. I live and work internationally and I can’t imagine being spoken to like this by anyone, it’s just rude.

  6. Pete Bondurant said:

    Dec 03, 07 at 4:49 pm

    “As far as I can tell, its an amateurish social engineering technique to get people to open up to the idea of him, or others from his company or similar scams calling you and being listened to. The accent is the initial part of the approach. Watch something like Glengarry Glen Ross for further demonstration.”

    Could someone further explain this for me?

  7. ellerbestyle said:

    Dec 03, 07 at 4:59 pm

    That was pretty funny. Why were you recording the call? I sort of had a hard time figuring out at first what he was asking and I have perfect hearing lol.

  8. iambigred said:

    Dec 03, 07 at 5:28 pm

    Thats a very specific British accent that guy has. I’d say he was born within 15 miles of Sunderland, UK.

  9. Paul said:

    Dec 03, 07 at 5:57 pm

    Wow, that’s pretty unusual.

    I think I can help you narrow the voice down geographically: the accent sounds a lot like that of the Middlesbrough area, in the North East of England. There are quite a few call centres in the region, and quite a few morons working in them. so it’s plausible that the company outsourced their telemarketing. :)

  10. merv said:

    Dec 03, 07 at 6:38 pm

    Wow, what amazing presence of mind to record the call. And might I say the call quality is stellar? I simply must know who maintains your lines!

  11. Kevin LaFata said:

    Dec 03, 07 at 7:25 pm

    RE: Recording the call — Our phone switch is based on Asterisk (an open source PBX program that runs on a Linux machine). Our default call script has the server record every call “for quality assurance purposes”. After that call happened, it took me about 20 minutes before I realized that there may be a recording of the call. Turned out there was.

    More on Asterisk (it’s pretty neat):
    http://www.asterisk.org/about

  12. indie1982 said:

    Dec 04, 07 at 6:01 am

    Definitely North East accent, but I don’t think Middlesbrough. I’ve been there 25 years now and it doesn’t sound quite the same. Maybe Hartlepool or like iambigred said Sunderland.

  13. indie1982 said:

    Dec 04, 07 at 6:07 am

    Found a PDF on their website, their telephone number is an 0845 non geographic number but their fax number has an area code of 01204 which is Bolton, a good 90 miles away from the North East and nothing to do with their office addresses!

  14. WK said:

    Dec 05, 07 at 4:18 am

    I tried listening to the mp3, but it was horrible quality. I only listened for twenty seconds, and came across ten cracks in that time. I couldn’t do that to my ears, or my speakers.

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