Telco sets honey pot for nuisance marketers
Call centre spivs get dose of their own medicine
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A small telco has decided to turn the tables on irritating unsolicited calls by setting up a block of dummy phone numbers that play messages to trick marketers into lenghty and pointless sales pitches.
The wheeze is the work of Andrews and Arnold (AAISP), a small business provider, and was prompted by a deluge of unsolicited calls to its office lines over the past month.
The firm has reserved a block of four million VoIP lines for the prank. All are registered with the Telephone Preference Service, so any unsolicited marketing calls they get are likely to be the result of illegal use of autodialler software.
AAISP has adapted its anonymous call reject service so customers can use the honey pot message too. Today it kept one marketer punting "free calls" on the line for more than three and a half minutes.
The firm's boss has posted a recording of the call on his blog. The marketer is told the message is a recording and that she has called a honey pot line about one minute in, but stays on the line for a further two and a half minutes. ®
COMMENTS
How about ...
... getting the telemarketers to talk to each other?
With 4 million lines, the chances are there'll be more than one illegal caller in the system at any given time. Instead of playing recorded messages to each one individually, it should be possible to connect 2 of them together. That way each will be talking to a real person and eliciting "normal" responses from them,.
You never know, if they're any good, they might end up selling each other some unwanted stuff.
I managed something similar
I was at home when got a call from someone selling conservatories. Kept him going for about 15 - 20 minutes, asking about options, double glazing, heaters, etc. I think I spoiled it for him when I said "I know that building techniques have advanced, but just one little thing - exactly how are you going to attach a conservatory to my third floor flat?"
I nearly had a little toilet accident at his reply :)
Anonymous coz I don't want retribution
Is that all
I've had them on the line for over half an hour, even went through to a supervisor as the guy was so desperate to make a sale.
If I'm not doing anything when they call I always keep them on the line as long as possible as their whole business model revolves around talking to as many people as possible. If we all held them up pretending to want what they're selling, they'd soon go out of business.
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