To have had a rant at the cold caller this morning ...

[redskyatnight]

... I'm sure she was a very nice lady and I know she was only doing her job. But she was the fifth person from her company to ring in the last few days. I was polite to the first 2 and told the third one what he was selling before he got a chance to. I restricted myself to a "I have already had 3 phone calls about this, I really am not interested" to the 4th caller. 5th caller today was the final straw and got the full brunt of my rantiness.

I mean, it's not too hard to mark my "file" as contacted and was not interested. surely?

Register with the TPS.

Oh and YANBU, my patience would have worn thin at call 2...

YANBU - I hate cold callers and find it really intrusive. I feel sorry for the person concerned, but if they've called you 5 times they deserve to get a bollocking.

Who was it? It wasn't the Telegraph was it? They have phoned us so many times yet we have never bought or read the Telegraph in our lives, and have no intention of doing so.

Every time I ask them to remove our details and tell them that we're registered with the TPS but still they ring....

TPS are useless when your number previously belonged to someone who must have ticked the "wooo hoo please endlessly contact me with offers of rubbish - from the worst overseas callcentres going."

Caller ID means I don't answer anything tagged international and only things tagged witheld when I'm expecting calls... come on Ikea ring back about my broken mattress so I can go back to ignoring withheld numbers again!

Don't bother just telling them you are not interested.

You need to demand that they remove your number from their records. It is your right to do so under the data protection act.

Sometimes I hang up mid-call with these people, sometimes I negotiate with them until they finally realise they're getting nothing out of me (depends how bored I am), sometimes I tell them to fuck off. I never engage in a survey though. I understand the rant totally. YANBU.

The person who rang you didn't deserve a bollocking the people you spoke with before who didn't put you on their don't call list did. You should have spoken to the manager...

This looks like an answer to all our prayers!

Do what a friend of mine does:

1. Bangs the phone about a bit as if there's some sort of rumpus going on in the room then yells "handcuff him quick"

or (for a bit of variety)

1. When they ask for Mr or Mrs so and so say "I'm the funeral director, we're just taking the body out. Can I help?"

I hate the people that call you and then ask you to confirm your name and address or telephone number.... No, you phoned me - you tell me what my name and phone number is and why you're ringing me!

I always hand the phone to one of my children. It's wonderful to listen to the caller try and get information out of the 20mth Dt's who can only manage a few words amd nod a lot.

"Can I speak to your Mummy"

"mumumumumummmmuuuummmmuumumum" nod point

They don't call back.

The first caller would have been asked where my details were obtained from before getting the abuse.

My sis used to work in a cold calling call centre (worst job ever she said). When someone gave them a load of abuse, they'd just pass the number onto the next person so they'd get rung again. And again. And again.

Ok, a bit childish, but they are real people too. And listening to hours of abuse every week really made her depressed.

I just politely say I'm not interested and put the phone down.

I'm more irritated by the automated ones where they ring several numbers at once and if you're not the first person to pick up then you just get silence.

Get an answer phone, screen you calls. Viola.