Cold call

16-08-2006

Pete Millington gets to grips withone the greatest menaces of modern life...the cold call

*****

Considering we have had an ex-directory telephone number for the past 15 years, it no longer seems to provide much of a firewall to prevent unsolicited calls from the likes of double glazing salesmen, dentists touting for business, far eastern sales folk from rival telephone companies in Bangkok, the chap from the Mumbai branch of my High Street bank and nice ladies trying to help me with my Will.

After our initial irritation for a couple of years, my wife and I now relish the prospect of someone cold calling us so that we can try out one of our huge repertoire of silly responses.

These range from

“sorry pal but you've called a public phone box”

to

“Hello… hello?…. HELLO!!... there doesn't appear to be anyone there… is there anyone there? … HELLO!!!”

to

“Hello you're through to Anglian Windows, what is it you're after today madam? A conservatory or perhaps some nice new double glazing, and it just so happens that our specially trained quantity surveyor is in your area right now….”

(I actually had a bloke in a call centre in Edinburgh telling me that he lived in a rented flat in response to that one! I kid you not)

to

“Yes hello sir, would you mind just pressing the hash key on your telephone, there we go, you are now through to our special premium rate line which costs just £15 a minute….”

(revenge of the victimised nerd or what?)

Or if it's one of those days when the old imagination just isn't firing, you can always fall back on the simple but reliable

“just bear with me for a moment caller while I transfer you….”

Leave the phone on it's side and continue cooking dinner for 10 minutes before returning to deal with the call…

“How peculiar, they appear to have gone… nowt more strange than folk!”

We've turned it into such an entertaining art form these days that my wife and I sometimes injure each other in the race to beat one another, or one of the children, to the phone.

But the call this evening threw me completely.

I'd already seen off a guy from the electric company trying to sell me cheap gas, cut my phone bills, provide me with broadband and throw me in a pair of nylons and 10 bars of chewing gum if I sign up for the special 10 year introductory contract, er I mean offer, so I was on a roll….

“hello, Mr Millington?”

Pleasant female voice, here we go, spark the old comedy gene…

(shame the wife's upstairs putting the kids through their nightly Gina Ford ‘go-to-nigh-nighs' regime… she's gonna be well upset at missing Show Time for a second time tonight…)

“I'm calling on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry…”

(this bit is true, I swear to you that's who cold called me this evening, talk about flaming irony!)

Now anything that starts off with the word Department, puts you on the back foot immediately…

“Shucks! What have I done?” tends to go through my head.

Or perhaps someone at government level has finally been monitoring our inward coming calls and realised that some nasty person has had us on a revenge black list for this past 10 years…

Perhaps they are here to help us….

Finally…. someone is going to tell us how to block all these nuisance callers…. especially the ones we get when we are trying to break up a sibling rivalry free-for-all between our over-tired children, with The Simpsons on at full blast in the front room, competing with the tumble dryer and the smoke detector which has been set off by the burning oven chips….

(or is it just our house? Surely not?)

“yes hi Tina Marie, I am Mr Millington, how can I help you?”

“hello Mr Millington, yes we're carrying out a survey into job satisfaction, have you got 5 minutes?”

ArrrrhhhhhhggGGGGHHHH!!!!

…someone, somewhere, possibly quite high up, is trying to outsmart me….

But I am not just a telephone number, I am a human being…

and one day, I will get the last laugh.

Ring ring. Ring ring.

“Hello?”

“Good evening is this Mr Millington?”

“No, I'm afraid this is Mr Forbes…. of Lucius Forbes and Sons…

…the undertakers…. I just happen to be in Mr Millington's house at the moment. It is unlikely that I will be able to assist you on this, ahem…. rather sad evening…”

Died of laughter following phone call from Department of Trade and Industry. A low-key service, priest asked for all mobile phones to be switched off. No flowers, family request all donations to Ofcom.

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© 2006 The Stirrer