You say Hello...I say Goodbye....

Have you ever noticed how the telemarketing industry spends so much effort in trying to make the sales people who call us at home seem nice, clean cut and approachable....sort of like this...



Our own perspective however, is generally to despise that 5:30 phone call, and our vision of who is on the other side of that line is more along the lines of something like this.....




So how can you avoid talking to these crazy spinning furry devils on the other end of that line?

Well besides adding yourself to the National Do Not Call Registry, relying on telemarketers to honor your request to be placed on an in-house "do not call list", and screening your phone calls through caller ID, I discovered something recently that you can add to your "Anti-Telemarketers defense kit".

I'm sure someone out there besides me must have noticed this already, and have probably written about it in a blog, or obscure news article or something, but I didn't read it, and this is what I found. The last few times I noticed that the telemarketer on the other side doesn't come on until you say your initial phone greeting, twice.

That's it, it's that simple, if after the first compulsory "hello" at the beginning of the call, if no one responds, its a good chance that it's a telemarketer calling through an automated system. Of course, there's a chance that it could be "old" Aunt Helen who is hard of hearing, then again, if it is her (or someone else besides a telemarketer) they will call back. This is just a means to try and thwart the automated systems they use to avoid answering machines, but still catch a live person at home. Now you can fool em ;).

I've tried this several times when I didn't notice an incoming number. I answered the call saying "hello", and after waiting for over 5 seconds said hello only to hear an audible click and a spoken script to follow.

Try it out for yourself, next time you get a call from a mysterious number, just say hello once and wait. It's harder than you'd think, to remain silent like that, we're so used to saying "hello" repeatedly to an apparent dead line to make sure no one is there, and they have exploited that.

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