Alarming Robosales Fail

Customer service and I are having our usual love/hate relationship--which means that I love to hate them and they love to give me reasons to hate them.  And although I try to cut the humans on the line some slack, since I am kind of in that line of work myself; I have virtually no patience with automated systems and robocalls.

The other evening I was sitting at home minding my own  business when the phone rang--a blocked number. I have family and friends with blocked lines, so I needed to answer, but almost immediately the robovoice came on the line:

"Hello, You have been identified by a family member or friend as someone living in a high crime area who is in need of an alarm service."

Normally they would have lost me at "hello"  but since I deal with alarm companies a lot at work I thought it would be fun to appraise their sales pitch professionally.  But my robosalesperson was already in danger of being cut off since the only thing in his first sentence that was true was the part about "high crime area". Namely none of my friends or relatives would give my unlisted phone number out to anyone, let alone an alarm company.  Moreover, I know burglary alarms are mostly a huge pain in the neck for police officers since over 90% are false. Many bigger cities don't even respond to routine alarms any more, or low prioritize them.  But I let robosalesperson continue.

"Our alarm company will provide direct connection from your home to your local police fire and emergency medical services." Ha, I really do know better than  this one. Unless you are a local service in a small town, or a very large business, you don't ring directly into a police or fire department.  Your alarm rings into a call center which then calls your local public safety providers. Frequently the calltakers are in a region completely different from where you live, and they not only mispronounce your street and city but they can be pretty rocky on the state as well. And yes we do occasionally get the calls that sound like they were outsourced to Calcutta.


 (By the way, should you ever decide to get an alarm service make sure you know where you actually live and who your service provider is.  The address on your bills isn't necessarily the place you actually live in, and if you live in the boonies it can be anybody's guess who responds. Just another helpful hint from your friends at Meg on the Go.)

At this point I was so disgruntled by the halftruths, not to mention the intrusion upon a  perfectly nice evening of "Sherlock" reruns, that instead of hitting the "Remove me from the call list"  button I hit the "tell off a live human" option instead.  I was to be thwarted however...the phone rang about six times then disconnected.

I never got the name of the company, nor their phone number  because it came up blocked on my caller ID.  If the ever call back though they are getting a piece  of my mind--for the sake of my peace of mind.