Victoria From CRC.

At 8:45 this evening, I received a curious phone call.

Me:  “Hello?”

(2 to 3 second silence)

Voice on other end of phone:  “This is Victoria from CRC. I have an important message for you. I'm transferring you now.”

Now, “Victoria” sounded like a live person, as opposed to a pre-recorded message. The question that immediately flashed through my mind was, why did “Victoria” take the time to dial my number only to transfer me to someone else after a mere 5 seconds, without even confirming my identity?  Since I don't know any Victoria's, nor have I ever heard of CRC, I naturally did the logical thing – I hung up. Actually, the main give away that this was most likely a marketing call, was the telltale pause after I said “hello”.

I don't understand how people are still getting sucked into telemarketing calls these days, after all the deceptive stories we've heard in the news. I have a very simple method for determining whether or not I'm going to continue a conversation when I answer the phone. 
         First, did I hear the all-revealing pause after answering?
                   If I did, this puts me on alert and I ask myself:
         Do I know this person?
                   If not, I ask myself:
         Do I know the company/organization they're calling on behalf of?

If the answer is no again, I'm satisfied that this is a ploy by some sales-type person to extract information or money from me. Neither of which I am willing to give away, so I simply hang up. No excuse or explanation is needed. It's impossible to be deceived if you can't hear what someone is saying. From experience I know that no matter what excuse you can come up with to not give them what they want, they have a snappy solution. So now, I don't play their game. I know they're hucksters and I have no qualms about sounding rude. I'm sure they're used to it.

If the company is legitimate and they really do have important information specifically for me, then they will mail it to me. End of story.  Any legitimate organization should, by now, know better than to use telemarketing as a sales tool because most people are so fed up with receiving these types of calls, the majority of them are ignored.  Any legitimate company will, by now, have a policy in place to put noteworthy correspondence with their clients in writing. If they don't, do you really want to have anything to do with a slipshod establishment like that?

(My overactive imagination is already formulating a thriller-type fictional story about what's really behind these seemingly benign phone calls. Locking your doors won't keep them out.)

I guess there must be enough people out there who are still falling for their lies, otherwise, they would not be using this method of trickery. So as a public service to others, I've come up with a slogan, inspired by Nike: “Just hang up.”
Place it next to your phone as a reminder.  It might save your life...