Pushy survey people

[MadMike]

As most of you know, I hate dealing with telemarketers. The Do Not Call list has helped reduce the calls, except for the outright scammers. Unfortunately, there are a few categories that are exempt -- non-profits, political calls, and surveys. This particular rant is about the survey callers.

Some of you who I have as friends on Facebook may know that the pipes at my son's place froze a few days ago when the weather got colder than usual, and then burst yesterday when things started to thaw out a bit. He called me at work to tell me what happened, and to ask me for the number of one of our friends who sometimes does this sort of work. I didn't know the guy's number off the top of my head, and I had left my cell phone in the car, so I had to run out and get it. Once I did this, I decided to keep it on me in case I needed it.

Shortly after I texted my son the number, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. Normally I don't answer anything I don't recognize, but I didn't know if it was my son calling from another number, or someone calling me about fixing the pipes (I told my son I'd cover it for him if he needed to call someone), so I answered it. It was someone conducting a survey. I don't know what it pertained to -- I wasn't really listening -- and then I thought she asked if she was calling a cell phone. I told her yes, she was, thinking that she'd end the call, because DNC list or not, I don't think they're allowed to call cell phones. Maybe I heard her wrong, I don't know, but then she told me that "before we start", she needed to make sure I was at least 18 years old.

That's another thing that rubs me the wrong way about these callers -- they don't ask if you want to take the survey. They pretty much tell you you're taking it. I just told her, "I don't have time for this!" and hung up.

Later that night, my son and I were at Home Depot looking for the parts he'd need to do the repair. While we were looking around, someone approached my son wanting to do some survey about his home. We were both in a pretty foul mood at that point, and didn't want to deal with it.

My son remained polite, despite his mood, and told the guy nicely he wasn't interested. Which, to these people apparently means "tell me more." So then the guy asked my son how old the house was. This time, my son wasn't so nice, and told him somewhat coldly, "It doesn't matter, because we're not doing this!"

What is so hard about taking "no" for an answer?

[Gravekeeper]

What is so hard about taking "no" for an answer?

Sadly? Your wages and/or job hinging on it. These people often get mandated a quota they have to meet by the slithering creatures above them. I have one friend that worked in an outbound center like this ( which actually neighboured my office's ) for a couple years and she had a daily quota. Failing to meet it was a demerit/point loss on her employee performance review. Too many demerit, you get fired and they replace you with the next poor bastard trying to pay his rent.

[HYHYBT]

The part where nobody wants to do it, so if they're not pushy they never get done. Which does not, of course, make their behavior OK.

[Gravekeeper]

The part where nobody wants to do it, so if they're not pushy they never get done. Which does not, of course, make their behavior OK.

No one wants to do outbound calling, trust me. The call centre industry is like a sweatshop to begin with. The outbound centers are even worse. My building had 3 other centers aside from us on other floors over the years. 2 were outbound. 1 was a collections agency. That one in particular I would throw myself in front of a bus before working for. You would run into employees of other centres on breaks and what not so the working conditions get around.

If you wonder why collections is so persistent, its because their quota was set as a weekly $ amount they had to secure promise of payment for.

I interviewed at some pretty shady places before I got my current job. They're never shady until you actually get there and they basically prey on people that need a job fast ( students, people new the city, people that just lost a job, etc ). There's usually a bait & switch in the job ad and what they offer when you get there as well.

Case in point, one of the first place I interviewed at when I moved to the city as for a CSR job. Everything seemed legit till I actually went ot the interview location and it was in the middle of an industrial district. The call center as it were was formerly an automotive repair center that they had just rolled some desks and computers into. The HR assclown looked at my resume for like 30 seconds, told me he thought I was overqualified for the CSR position but said I would be perfect for "Sales". ( ie cold call soliciting ). Trick of course being the CSR position doesn't actually exist.

These places would operate for 6-12 months until their reputation got around and the BBB started turning an eye on them. Then they would close up shop or lose their business license, whichever comes first. But the people at the top would just lay low ( and possibly pay some fines which of course did not exceed their profits ) for a bit then open a new business under a different name ( and they're always really innoculous generic business names ). They do that for several years till someone ( usually the local news media ) picks up on the pattern and exposes them. There's usually a few rich assholes working together doing it so the same name doesn't appear on the business license twice in a row.

Once they've used all their cards so to speak they just take all their money and move to the another city and repeat the process where no one knows their reputation locally.

And this is in Canada, were we have strong business and labour laws to chase the out of town. I can't imagine how long they could keep this shit up in the States just by picking the best State and city with the worst labour and business regulation + lowest minimum wage.

[Mr Hero]

Would you like to take a survey? Do you like beans? Do you like George Wendt?

[EricKei]

I used to work -- briefly -- for a phone survey place that dealt exclusively with surveys where the people being called were existing customers of the client. E.g., a power company would give us a call list that *only* included numbers/names of people they provided power to, and we asked questions about the power service/company/rates; no random cold calling at all. It was still hell getting anyone to answer questions (and a fair number hung up halfway through), even though we identified ourselves as clientname, because our clients explicitly ordered us to do so. Still got plenty of people cursing us out, accusing us of trying to sell something (we weren't)...usually immediately after the words "This is not a sales call" ~_~

That was the only job I've ever had where I quit by just not showing up any more. Never heard back from them, either. No great loss.

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah. Unfortunately this is a circular problem.

People hate surveys so they take it out on the surveyors and so the surveyors need to be aggressive to get people to answer the surveys, most of which are kind of important in some way.

Shit, they have to make it illegal to not answer the census, and that's just a form you fill out and return at your leisure and affects some really vital things. Yet people still hate doing it, despite it only being once every 10 years.

And you wonder why the call guys won't just accept "No?"

Add to that, most of them aren't allowed to hang up.

[protege]

People hate surveys so they take it out on the surveyors and so the surveyors need to be aggressive to get people to answer the surveys, most of which are kind of important in some way.

Of all the surveys I've dealt with over the phone, not one has been "important." It's all bullshit market research so they can send even more crap to my mailbox. There's no reason why a 3rd party needs to know where I buy my gasoline, my groceries, what vehicle(s) I own, my pets, or what I like to do with my free time. Those firms will collect that info and then sell it to other companies.

Shit, they have to make it illegal to not answer the census, and that's just a form you fill out and return at your leisure and affects some really vital things. Yet people still hate doing it, despite it only being once every 10 years.

I'll give you that one

And you wonder why the call guys won't just accept "No?"

Well, that's their problem then. I don't care if they're not "allowed to." If I'm not interested, I'll say "no thanks" and move on. Second time, I'm not rude, but I'm not exactly nice either. A firm "no" in other words. Third time, and I'll not only rip you a new one, but if I'm at a store like Home Depot (or Circuit City), and an employee is pestering me about something, I will have a little chat with your manager. In other words, "I've tried to be nice, I'm not interested, fuck off."

[Rageaholic]

Sadly? Your wages and/or job hinging on it. These people often get mandated a quota they have to meet by the slithering creatures above them. I have one friend that worked in an outbound center like this ( which actually neighboured my office's ) for a couple years and she had a daily quota. Failing to meet it was a demerit/point loss on her employee performance review. Too many demerit, you get fired and they replace you with the next poor bastard trying to pay his rent.

It sounds like the bosses are the real villains here. You'd have to be a real asshole to punish someone because other people don't want to take a survey. Though this shouldn't surprise me after reading stories on CS about managers yelling at employees for not pesting customers.

That said, I don't blame people for getting curt with anyone who's being pushy, even if it's their boss who's pulling the strings.

[Seshat]

Still got plenty of people cursing us out, accusing us of trying to sell something (we weren't)...usually immediately after the words "This is not a sales call" ~_~

Because of the number of times where 'This is not a sales call' has been a lie.

I used to accept it on the face of it. Let them do their little fake-survey or whatever. And then challenge them on the psychological trickery their company had made them use.
The "survey" (ha) was often set up to get you agreeing, so that you'd then be in the mental pattern of agreeing - and agree to buy whatever-it-was.

[siead_lietrathua]

if you want to complain about surveys, you have to take the complaints to the corp level, because even store management can't do anything about it. it's usually the corp that's doing the pressuring on the store as a whole, and store management can get in trouble as much as a cashier can for not hitting quota. and don't just complain about the staff being pushy, that will do nothing. you have to try to get them to change their survey format.

tangent: some stores up here have switched from paper, take-home surveys to digital ones in store. one i saw in a restaurant was a tablet bolted to a pedestal near the door. three questions, took ten seconds to do. another place had them by the pin-pads at checkout. poke the smiley face that indicated how your service was today. took less time than my payment card took to process. neither place had a person ask you to do the survey, the device itself catches attention. i love these and hope they catch on! (and i use them every time, cuz i hope it bumps the market research on their effectiveness lol)

[fireheart17]

Shit, they have to make it illegal to not answer the census, and that's just a form you fill out and return at your leisure and affects some really vital things. Yet people still hate doing it, despite it only being once every 10 years.

Over here it's every 5 years or so. It wouldn't surprise me if people have refused to fill it out because they fear that the government will come down like a sack of bricks on them for being anything but English speaking, Christian and privately educated.

I do remember there was a game going around at the time of the 2001 census for kids to understand the whole process. One of the minigames that made me giggle at the time was a hospital themed one. The idea was that you were meant to give it to anyone who was in the hospital on the night of the census. Sounds fairly straightforward, except that half of the people in there were either newborns or dead

[SongsOfDragons]

A bunch of these people have ensconced themselves at my train station for the past two days. >.< What a dumb place to be! People are legging it onto the platform at rush hour, ya dingus, and you're either going to distract someone briefly enough to miss their train or they're going to barrel into you as you go for the intercept...

[s_stabeler]

depending on the person, that may well get you punched over here, depending on the train, and the ticket they have. (for the longer journeys, it isn't exactly uncommon to have a ticket only valid on that specific train. Those tcikets can get expensive (the replacement ticket could easily be more than £50, and there's one specific route where it would be over £1k. That's standard class, by the way- all you get is a seat to sit in. First Class can easily be three times as much.) At the very least, you've got someone extremely pissed off at you. OK, station staff may perevnt it escalating into violence, but you'll get yelled at.

Oh, not to mention that I'm pretty sure it's actually illegal to do something like that at a train station w/o a permit (i'm in the UK)- and permits all include a probvision where you can't interfere with traffic ( aka, if you're intercepting travellers, you're going to get slung out- and likely barred from coming back w/o a lot of grovelling, as well as a lot of luck. ( the permits are extremely competitive, and the bets you'll get is to be allowed to apply for one again.)

[MadMike]

Because of the number of times where 'This is not a sales call' has been a lie.

That, and "This will only take a minute."