Robocall Response

[j2mcgreg]

Like clockwork, every Fall and every Spring I bombarded with phone pitches for duct cleaning services. It does no good to just hang up, nor does explaining that my house does not have ducts. Of course telling them not to call again seems only to increase the number of calls rather than stopping them altogether. So, after a lot of frustration and anger, I came up with this response instead:

Caller: “Hello, may I speak to Mr. M*******?” #

Me: “Speaking”

Caller: “I represent the ********* Duct Cleaning Company

Me: “You want to clean my ducks?”

Caller: “Yes Sir, we clean your ducts spic and span.”

Me: “But, my ducks are self-cleaning”.

Caller: “We are much better than automatic cleaners.”

Me: “Oh I Don’t know about that. My ducks are very thorough, but they are noisy. Can you do something about the noise?”

Caller: “I’m sure that after we are done, your ducts will be very quiet.”

Me: “My ducks go quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. And the bird poop is everywhere and the stink is foul!!!! Can you come quick to clean up the bird poop and stink?”


At which point they usually hang up. I’ve been doing this for a couple of weeks now and the calls are down from about 15 to maybe one a week. Although today, the caller bumped me up to his supervisor and he also got an earful about the bird poop. He then politely told me that his company could not help me.

# I have a fairly common Scottish surname and they never pronounce it correctly.

[Eadwine Rose]

My father usually goes.. "Oh my wife handles that, do you have a moment, she'll be right here" *puts phone on table*

Then after about a minute or two he picks the phone back up

"Sorry about that, I thought she'd be right here but she's getting dressed from showering, please wait a wee bit longer ok?"

*puts phone back down, then picks it back up after ten minutes, then puts the thing back on the receiver*

[Stevo]

You can also divert robocalls to a roboanswering service that fools them into wasting as much time as possible, though it seems they would get wise to that pretty fast.