This is hard to get to work on some phones... but if you tap a metal spoon just right on the reciever... the telemarketer will get an undesirable ear-piercing screech. Kinda like a tuning fork.

I bet that will get them to remove you from their list.

Whaaa:( My house doesn't get telemarketer phone calls anymore. The New York state law works too good.

Unleash the plague of the Human Echo.

we usually don't get telemarketers, cause of the new law. of course, the ones who do call always call in the middle of dinner, and my dad just hangs up :p

one time a telemarketer called my house and they asked for my parents. i told them that they had died in a horrible car accident the day before and that i didn't appreciate them calling.
well...my dad is a lawyer, and it turned out to be a client...

i wasn't allowed to answer the phone for a really long time at my house after that. :)

Ack! That's horrible, Molly :D

I did the same thing once when a telemarketer asked for my dad ... the company hasn't called back since.

- Katie

Wow, that sucks

My two favorite responses to telemarketers:

1) Don't answer in English. When you pick up the phone, respond in another language. If you don't speak one, make one up. I use French, but Latin is always fun. Nothing like hearing a dead language on the other end of the line.

2) Think Jehovah's Witnesses over the phone. This one is my personal favorite. So far, not a single company has called back.

Hey!! I used to be one!!
 

Now, now. I used to be a telemarketer. The worst 7 weeks of my life. I finally up and quit because I just couldn't deal with it anymore. And because the job that didn't have quotas when I started all of a sudden had quotas at my 60 day review, which I wasn't meeting. I have no idea if what I just said made any sense to anyone but me. Oh well.

Anyway, the only thing I really got out of that job, i've always said, were great new ways to torture telemarketers. See, at the place I worked, you were not allowed to hang up until the customer hung up. Period. The only way you could is if you called your supervisor over, and he/she terminated the call. Which could be difficult, seeing as the supervisors were all usually sitting around talking, and nowhere to be found in their bays, and you were attatched to this 3 foot long cord for your headset, and couldn't move outside of a 3 foot radius from your desk. So, here are my favorite ways to torture telemarketers:

Sing the ABCs -- i actually had someone do this to me. it was so funny. even though it was really annoying.

Tell them you will buy whatever it is they're selling -- if they sing a song with you, all the way to the end. When they agree, sing "This is the Song That Doesn't End."

Hum.

Talk to yourself. Pretend you're a schizophrenic(sp?) with Tourette's Syndrome.


Those are just a few. Believe me, I have more.

I once got a call from a pysic thing and i said "then you should already know that im gonna hang up in 3 seconds 3... 2... 1... CLICK

lol my sister did the exact same thing. She told the "telemarketer"(calling for my dad) that "Sorry, hes dead". Well, it was the hospital calling to check up on him b/c he had been in for surgery a while ago. The doctor called my dad at work, and, discovering that he was alive and well, told my dad of the incident. So, my parents, being clever, decided to make up a story. You see, we were just about to get a new car. My parents told my sister that they had been expecting a car from the dealership and if the dealership had any reason to doubt the purchase we would'nt get the car (such my sister saying that my dad is dead) . My sister totally freaked out. Eventually we told her, but not after she had learned her lesson.

I once had a very persistent telemarketer, that kept calling me back, and he was only trying to sell magazines! Then, it was just the last straw. I was just about to curse at the guy, when my dad told me to just to say "hello, hold on a sec," and just leave the phone there, and go and do other things. I did that, and the guy was on the phone for a half an hour before he realized we weren't coming back to talk to him.