1

I’ve been getting bombarded with phone calls from vendors who don’t seem to understand what “$%#& off” means. Its at the point that I am about to loose my professional manner with them and start shouting derogatory words for the sake of getting the point across.

Who is this wonderful vendor? PC Connection / Ziff Davis

I come in to work with 2 voice mails from them every day. 1 hangup, and 1 actual message from some pretty voice. By the end of the week I have something around 20 voice mails from vendors whom I’ve never initiated contact with. The admin staff is getting put out with me for not taking the calls because they are calling at least 3x a day. You would have thought they would have taken the hint.

Every 3-4 months it starts over. It starts with random emails. I click unsubscribe all. Then I start getting personal emails from actual humans that I cannot unsubscribe from. After a polite “we are not interested in your services at this time” they play a hard sell and switch to phone after 2 weeks of no response, auto-trashed emails.

They are skirting the 30-day list scrubbing by saying that it’s some contractor. I know it is a contractor, but that is no excuse. In this day and age, I find it negligence on the part of the parent company, its contractors, and the sub-contractors to not be in communication or even not being able to communicate such things within 10 seconds between computer systems. Perhaps they need to rethink that whole, “IT Services” angle and consider fixing their own broken communications.

Forgive me for turning this into a horrid rant but I am just seething with animosity towards people who fail to understand even the most polite answer of “No thanks. We already have someone handling this.”

22 Spice ups
2

Caller ID plus the delete key works for me. Life’s too short.

2 Spice ups
3

I’ve never understood how vendors thing badgering and pissing off potential customers is a good way to drum up business. Does someone think, hey if we bug them enough maybe they’ll just buy something?

1 Spice up
4

Just tell them they’ve been put on your companies Do Not Use vendor list, and to stop wasting their time (and yours).

2 Spice ups
5

when registering for stuff like webinars I use BS phone #s either one of my fax machines, 800-437-7950 an ANAC (old pots troubleshooting tool that reads your # back to you) or 985-655-2500 my personal favorite the rick-roll phone #

this has drastically reduced my call volume

9 Spice ups
6

Haven’t tried it myself, but I’ve seen others be pretty successful by pretending not to speak English.

1 Spice up
7

I like this idea.

8

Obviously it works… It has to work

9

I’ve got a major vendor calling me literally everyday now, just after asking for ONE quote through Spiceworks, months ago.

10

Pretend that you don’t know how to speak English.

11

The sad truth is that just like spammers still selling Viagra, despite all the incredulity it must work or they wouldn’t do it.

12

I just had cold call today call reception, and ask to speak to the director. They got through to the director. I heard her talking to this person on the phone and she tried to transfer them to me, but I just let the call go to voicemail. Thirty seconds later an incoming call from a number in Toronto I didn’t know.

Surprise.

Then an email from this prospective suitor 30 seconds after that (telephone number confirmed).

Then a linkedin request.

Needless to say, none of that will be answered.

I really don’t like pushy sales people, and I can tell by the communication blast that this will be one person I won’t be dealing with.

2 Spice ups
13

I must certainly try this.

Derp, hit wrong key.

I had a VMware vendor burning my phone line up after doing a Citrix Xenserver webinar. I will definitely start using fake numbers for webinars.

2 Spice ups
14

I have been thinking of setting up a dummy voice mail account for a purchasing manager, “oh you need to go though our purchasing manager”. Send those cold calls to them.

Or just tell them you are not interested at this time and hang up.

15

Mimetic Virus - otherwise known as spam (Not the canned meat product), political ads, and tv commercials. People will buy the product just to make it stop.

16

This makes them call more unfortunately.

17

I think one of our vendors wanted to kill me the other day. Was about to order $1500 worth of toner when our fiscal officer did a price check on it through another account. Turns out we can get it for half that price through a different vendor because of state contract pricing. I was on the verge of ordering too. Told the vendor I had to put through a purchase order first though. Didn’t order from him obviously, two days later he makes a visit to our business to talk, I could almost see him clenching his teeth with rage. Not my fault you drove out here for nothing buddy, sorry but we have to go with the cheapest price. Loyalty means nothing to me when I can get the same toner in the same amount of time for half the price.

1 Spice up
18

If they are persistent, I just tell them I have no need or budget for their product and that I don’t accept cold calls from vendors, tell them goodbye and hang up.

I also have our operator send all calls for me that come to our published number to my voicemail. If they don’t have my direct line, I haven’t talked to them and probably don’t want to.

19

Tell them to call Jenny.

867-5309

3 Spice ups
20

If we get a warning from the receptionist we have them put the unwanted vendor in voicemail. If the vendor gets blind transferred to us I generally cut them off tell them we are not interested and have another company that takes care of that for us or we are not interested and hang up.