A Reverse Social Engineering Tip

The title is named as it is so I can explain my idea on getting a telemarketer to hang up on you.

You receive a telemarketing call. Sound pleasant as you talk with a little dash of eagerness. Let them go through their script a little, asking questions that relate to what they're trying to sell you. You will notice (especially if they haven't had a sale in a while) a eagerness in their voice that should closely match your own.

This is the point that you stop them and ask for their name again. Once they give it, tell them the following:

Well (their name), my name is (fake name) and I want to take this time to thank you. This call has been a routine audit by Call Center Auditing Inc. of (some city and state). We are contracted by the FCC to monitor various call centers around the country to verify that the TSR is adhering to the strict guidelines put forth in the FCC manual of telephone etiquette. You did a wonderful job handling this call and I will be forwarding the information I have gathered to my corporate headquarters and you should receive a copy of it as well in two to four days. Thank you and have a great day.

They WILL hang up!

Hope this helps out...

DO NOT JUST SAY: Put me on your do not call list
WHY? Its a call center with multiple programs...they will only be obligated to put you on the program's DoNotCall list.
DO ASK FOR THE NAME OF THE CALL CENTER: They will most likely try to again tell you the name of the program they are calling on behalf of. Do not be fooled, continue insisting on receiving the name of the physical calling center they are calling within(if you must, get to the supervisor). Once they name the physical calling center and you request to be put on the DoNotCall list, by law, they are required to remove your name from all program calling lists they handle. Much more effective.

Hope this helps...

Over here they seem to have some sort of automated process that produces a few seconds delay during which you don't get a normal "connected" sound like with a regular phone call.

As soon as I hear that I hang up, and they never call back, presumably because the automated dialing system has moved on to the next number?

;)

A TSR will sit at a screen...put on a head mic thingy (no, it's a technical term, really) and wait for the beep...then he starts reading from the screen...I did it for awhile...maybe try it again...

That's pretty silly considering we've had a national do not call registry for a number of years now.

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Originally Posted by The-Spec

That's pretty silly considering we've had a national do not call registry for a number of years now.

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That is true in many countries..
My trick is..

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Hello.. and your name is.. and your company is..NO NO NOT the company your promoting.. The company that pays your wages.... If you do not answer this question I can very easily access the trace I placed on this call at the start of this conversation and you as well as your employer will be liable for breaches of the Telecommunications Act 1995 ammended 2005...

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If I am lucky to get this far.. I store the information into a db and post off each month telling the feckers at our national register what useless runts they are for the fecking lousy rate of clean up they are managing.. Also listing the number of these (international read Indian) call centers that return fire at 2 an 3 in the morning to any number that does advise the ops (politely) that they're on the No-Call list..
..it is good to know a few true phreakers.. (not loud mouth know nothings)..
After 3 months of this approach.. my telemarketer call rate has dropped to less than 1 per week.. and it is more likely our wonderful national carrier (exempt from the no call list) and I start on my list of groans about their poor service.. their ISP arm provides me with 3 or 4 reasons per week in just fecking a users browser or TCP stack or worse....
I wonder how long before they too stop bothering me.. I heard of sending bills to some of these companies for wasting your time.. may try that next..

Hi there undies~ that sounds like an "outsourcing" problem to me. I'll bet that the overseas call centre doesn't have a copy of the local register?

The solution would be for the local regulators to go after the people hiring the call centre, but I guess the legislation may not be in place to do that?

That would force them to prepare their call lists locally and check it against the register?

Pretty silly huh? For one thing, you'd have to be on the National Do Call Registry in the first place, and for another, they aren't obligated to scrub each and every call against that list. They usually scrub once a quarter. So there are at least two months that you could possibly be called and then if your name is on the list at the time it is scrubbed against the national list...your name will be taken off the calling list for that calling center...doesn't stop them from using a different calling center who haven't scrubbed their lists and it doesn't stop them from buying a separated calling list....the National Do Not Call Registry works but is not completely fool-proof...thats why I gave the suggestion...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tripstone

DO NOT JUST SAY: Put me on your do not call list
WHY? Its a call center with multiple programs...they will only be obligated to put you on the program's DoNotCall list.
DO ASK FOR THE NAME OF THE CALL CENTER: They will most likely try to again tell you the name of the program they are calling on behalf of. Do not be fooled, continue insisting on receiving the name of the physical calling center they are calling within(if you must, get to the supervisor). Once they name the physical calling center and you request to be put on the DoNotCall list, by law, they are required to remove your name from all program calling lists they handle. Much more effective.

Hope this helps...

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I've previously worked at a call center as an inbound TSR, and while we didnt have a script we were required to lie about our location when asked, and insist that we were at such said location. Point being, if your getting calls from a shady outbound call center you will probably never get the actual company name/physical location of the call center by directly asking them for it.

But I am interested in giving that script in the first post a try =)

Bah, amateurs:

The last week or so I've been getting about a call, sometimes TWO calls, PER DAY, for satellite TV... We have Digital Cable, we get a good price, and me, being who I am, usually try and have some fun with them, or at least get a laugh out of it.

Here are the things I've been doing just to the satellite people over the last month:

First I'll talk about the one I've used all this week:

*Ring* "Hello?"
"Hi my name is blah blah and I have a great deal for you on your TV..."

*Me interrupting* "We steal cable" *click*

Now this one I've used all week and I still laugh, and so does my Mom, because really, WTF are they going to respond with? Apparently one of them thought it was comedic gold because he called right back so I could hang up on him again.

A few weeks back one flat out told me he couldn't compete with the rate I currently pay after I told him. He called all arrogant like he was going to impress me with his rates and told me how I probably pay whatever amount he said each month and when I said the following he sounded defeated and hung up:

"Actually I pay 99 dollars a month, that includes my phone with long distance, Digital Cable, on demand, HBO on demand, HBO, which we don't pay for and got free when one of the techs pissed me off, and internet and I currently have 7 MBs a second".

All that is true including the fact that we got free HBO for a year when one of the service techs pissed me off when he was supposed to fix our phone. I called in and told them what he did, which was track snow and mud all through the house and act like a dick the whole time and not even fix the problem. His boss came out the next day after I told the guy exactly what the problem was because I checked into it myself.

He was pretty impressed that I not only knew their little trick for checking the logs and system info on the cable box, but the fact that I was dead on with what the problem was.

To keep us as a customer, they offered me free HBO for one year and when the year is up, I asked to be sure, I can cancel it so I won't be charged ever.

Also by the way if you have trouble paying a bill one month for the internet, TV, or phone, call up and tell them you're tired of the problems you keep on having and that you starting looking and found a better deal and are thinking of canceling the service. The person on the other end is almost required to offer you a month or more free to keep your business.

Works every time.

Now, another one I like to use to get them to leave me alone, is I'll answer the phone, they'll start going on, and I'll quit speaking English and only answer them in German.

Now this one is REALLY funny, because half the time, they transfer me to the Spanish department. which in itself shows incompetence.... But it's so funny!

I started speaking German and pretended I couldn't understand English and then I hear someone ask in Spanish "Hello Sir, I'm sorry we couldn't understand you at first, there was a problem with the phone". they pretended like it was a problem and I knew what the guy was saying in Spanish,which is how I'm able to tell you about it right now, but I kept on going with the German and even tossed in a Carlos Mencia line of "I'm not a beaner" but I said it in German except for the beaner word, which, I'm not racist and neither is that word...just watch Carlos Mencia. Anyway, the guy heard me say it and got all pissed off but his buddy who was monitoring the call started laughing his ass off like LOUDLY. The guy got mad and hung up on me but I could hear the first guy I talked to laughing before the click.

That one I've only done a few times, because getting transferred to the Spanish department when you're speaking German, is a little bit hard to pull off because I could barely contain the laughter.

One that pisses me off is when they ask if my "Mommy or Daddy" are home. I point out that I own this house and they back pedal like a champ to try and go for the save with "Ah well you must look very young and strong!".

To bad I'm faster on my feet and manipulative as **** because I'm generally waiting with "Actually I'm overweight, I smoke and drink and can't stop masturbating".

You'd be surprised how few people can respond to that one. I'm not exactly horrible shape wise right now but I used to be BAD with how out of shape I was before I started working out a bit. I dropped like 120 pounds, so now I look a lot different. I'm still kinda big and would like to lose another 50 pounds or more, but it's kinda hard to complain.

Another good way to do this is ask what number they called from, and then trace it. Telling someone where they live while they're annoying you rarely makes them sleep well at night.

OH OH OH!!! I almost forgot !!!!!! This one I used to do back in high school because I was a little **** then too! This:

My Cousin and I used to play Twisted Metal 2 a lot on Playstation back then, and when one of those little shits would call, I'd answer since I had my own phone line, and of course end up getting killed which would piss me off.

One time one called, and I'm playing and trying to win, and they start taling about rates, and I had literally just chugged an entire two liter of Pepsi, and I burped SO damn loud my Cousin almost fell over laughing right into the phone.

I don't really care how un-professional it was, or if someone thinks it was gross, I was laughing so hard it didn't matter. That guy hung up so fast....

Anyway, another time this same situation happened; I was playing and winning, and one called, and I was pissed they called again, so when they asked for whoever they asked for I said "Hold on" and just put the phone down and went back to playing.

After 5 minutes or so, I burped into the phone again, the guy on the phone started laughing, my cousin started laughing, and I hung up. Anyone who waits that damn long and laughs, isn't going to hang up.

Now, this last one, is pretty easy to do, and lots of fun; I was at my cousin's house hanging out and one called, and we had been playing guitar, so of course we had the amp still on, and the distortion all the way up. Imagine how it sounds over a phone when you put the amp to 10, grab the guitar, put the phone DIRECTLY in front of the amp, and just HAMMER on the G - String.....

I thought we had broke a window it was so loud and high pitched. The guy on the phone was like AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

And I was laughing.... Then he tries to STILL sell us something ! He said "You guys aren't no rage against the machine but that was cool!" and "Wanna buy blah blah blah?".....

Amp back to phone, play like it's 1978 punk, and they hang up.

Of course you need a guitar and an amp to do that one, and of course it has to be an electric since you can make WAY more annoying distorted sounds than when you hook up an acoustic and hit the distortion button.

I play bass and it does work too. I generally find if you thumb slap or finger pick the 20th fret on the G - String it makes a noise high pitched and loud enough to make anyone hang up.

Now, do I feel bad for torturing these people? Not really. Hell, one of my friends used to do it for a living. I told him flat out his job was annoying and that if he ever called my house to wear ear plugs. He also had some good stories about how rude people are when he'd call and I'm like "No **** man you interrupt someone's dinner to try and sell them something that if they wanted it, they'd go buy one, and wonder why they get mad?"...

Anyway, I do understand some people just can't find a different job, but seriously, that job can't pay THAT well.

Personally I just ask them to hold the line....put the phone down and go off and finish what ever I was doing..... for a couple of hours

MLF

Seems like you've made a career out of making telemarketers miserable Gore =)

If you want to know the actual name of the company, "go along" with the caller for a bit. If it is a phone sales type thing, while you are "getting your credit card cause its in the other room" ask them who is going to show up on the CC bill for the billing, because you don't want to dispute the charges.

Slightly off-topic, but please read my thread here:

http://antionline.com/showthread.php?t=278503

I am sure that there will be all sorts of global variants?

:(

I must share this.

We do not have a long distance carrier with our home phone.

We used to get two to three calls a week from each of the long distance carriers with a sales pitch.

We would just hang up.

One evening SWMBO was talking on the phone asking all sorts of long distance questions and answering, what I thought, were some strange questions.

This went on for about 40 minutes. Finally the wife says...

"So now tell me again what a phone is for? So I have to have a phone to get long distance? Oh ok then, never mind". After a short pause, wife says "No we don't own a phone." and hangs up.

We have yet to get a call from anyone trying to sell us long distance.

I did telemarketing for about 2 weeks once... I went in out of my mind though, [not going into any specifics, but neither the customer or I knew what I was talking about by the end of the conversation] and walked out. I can tell you though, I loved it when the customer would put the phone down. I hardly made commission anyway, so that was just a nice break to be able to sit there and do nothing. They tried to keep us offline by removing the icon to internet explorer from the desktop, and the start menu [no seriously], so that was easy enough to figure out... So really setting the phone down may hurt the actual company... but may make the agent's day. I mean really, would you rather have to talk to the next pissed off customer, or sit and play games and read news?

Granted, I was young and had no respect for my employers time/money... but it is kind of hard to respect a telemarketing agency.