Thwarting telemarkers

I love my office. We're so cheerfully, curmudgeon-ly, deeply non-modern.

I particularly savor my relationship with telemarketers. My response is nearly always, "We don't care; we are perfectly happy without whatever you're peddling; go away and leave us alone." (I'm much more tactful, of course.) They certainly don't get to talk to the good doctor. If they are very persistent, I let them mail us things, which we immediately throw away. "New and improved" does register occasionally--if there's reliable data behind the claim!

The phone company has been particularly annoying lately. I would tell them we didn't want their thingy because we were very happy with our account as it was, and they'd just call back another day. I finally called their help line and described the symptoms, which deeply weirded out that representative. He claimed they didn't do that, but there was a sneaky backdoor company that would call and sound like they were them, and next time that happened try and get the name. Well, they called back, and I got her first and last name, and she claimed she really was with the company itself; and she did sound above-board. I told her to take us OFF the list, and sure enough they haven't called back since; there the matter stands.

Today I got to tell a particular credit card company to go away. We did work with them a while ago--briefly. But they were expensive and a nuisance, so we quit. But they called back today. The lady told me all about their new whatsit "for our merchants only" and if we liked the FREE 30-day trial period, it would be only so much a month thereafter.

I said thank you, we didn't want to be one of their merchants and were extremely happy as we were.

She sounded taken aback. "But you are one of our merchants!"

I replied, "We used to be, but we cancelled our account some time ago."

"Oh."

We wished one another a happy Valentine's Day--I should have wished her a blessed Feast of Saint Valentine, but didn't think of it in time--and we parted.

:-D