John Niland sent me these 2 great ideas from Angelika Poltz. I’m going to use both for those annoying inbound telemarketing calls I get at home!

1. Three Little Words That Work with Telemarketeers

The three little words are: ‘Hold On,  Please….’
Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more  time-consuming that boiler room sales would  grind to a halt.
Then when you eventually hear the phone company’s ‘beep-beep-beep’ tone, you know it’s time to go back and hang up your handset, which has  efficiently completed its task.
These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.

2. Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?

This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.
This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a ‘real’ sales person to call back and get someone at home.
What  you can do after answering, if you notice there  is no one there, is to immediately start hitting  your #  button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as  possible This  confuses the machine that dialled the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Job done!