Telemarketer Joyride

Years ago, a scam telemarketer called, offering a free "Life Alert" system for seniors and $300 worth of grocery coupons for absolutely no charge.

Hmmm.... I'm almost 40 but certainly no senior citizen. Still... opportunities like these should not be wasted. The only thing that should be wasted is the scam telemarketer's time.

That is exactly what I did.

Yeah you can hear the manager in the background several times saying "way to go, we hooked another one!" - con artists!

You had him going over 20 minutes! I thought he hung up after you took so long to "find a credit card" because the background noise was gone, then I was rolling on the floor when the background noise on the phone came back and that guy was STILL waiting for you!

He finally hung up toward the end when you did the other voice pretending to find Bob / Bill Smith in distress. I guess by then he knew he probably wasn't going to get that credit card number.

I guess Mr. Smith didn't get all those valuable coupons so he could shop for prunes at the Big Bear.

If everyone did that, the telemarketing business would dry up.

It would dry up if no one actually bought what they were selling but, somehow, some people actually say yes to telemarketers. Which is terrible because it makes harassing people profitable.

I guess that the guy on the other end was about to lose his job because he didn't make any sales and he was so desperate that he was willing to wait forever just to make one sale. I'd feel sorry for him if it weren't for the fact that he knew he was working for a scam operation.

I can understand legitimate telemarketers that respect the do-not-call list and do mostly business to business cold calls but the ones that prey on the elderly and run outright scams just deserve to be led on and messed with.

Has anybody noticed how scam calls and spam have gotten worse over the past few years?