The US has their Car Insurance robocall scam, up here in BC we seem to have the “lower your credit card interest rate” robocall scam. The calls are robots, and generally go something like this, in a pleasant female voice: “There’s nothing wrong with your credit card, but you could reduce your interest rate, the time for doing this will be over soon! Press 9 to change your interest rates now.” Normally you hang up, or hit the number and yell at the person, demand to talk to a manager, and be put on hold forever or disconnected.
This time the conversation went something like this:
- Telemarketer: Hello? (almost like she wasn’t sure why the phone was ringing, wonder in they have people working from home)
- Me: Hello.
- Telemarketer: Hello, this is Sunny! You were interested in lowering your interest rates?
- Me: Not really. If I ask to talk to a manager will I get to talk to a human, or will I get put in an infinite hold loop? Like what happened last time
- Telemarketer: Pause Do you really want the truth? OMG, honesty!
- Me: Ah, say no more. How about if I ask to get taken off the call list?
- Telemarketer: I’ll take you off manually.
- Me: Thanks and hang up
I’m under no illusion that I’ll not get another one of these calls of course, but it was refreshing to have just that hint of honesty, even if it’s all said in the half second pause before answering a question.