On Fridays I help out at a local business (in Melbourne, FL), and among my duties is answering the telephone when calls come in. The shop gets a lot of telemarketing calls; AT&T is by far the worst offender (they call daily, even on days when the shop isn’t open; on days where someone does answer, they will call up to three times per day), but occasionally others trickle through, too.

Bad news for them. I hate telemarketers. A lot. I am a merciless asshole on a telephone with a telemarketer. I am fiercely proud of this, and I make no apologies for the way I treat telemarketers. I am never rude, never raise my voice, never curse, and in fact I don’t even interrupt. I do, however, ask questions, and get more and more inquisitive as the conversation progresses. I ask the right questions (“who are you?”, “who is your actual employer?”, “what phone number can I call to contact you, or another agent if necessary, to further discuss this product/service?”, “what mailing address can I write to contact your organization with questions or comments?”) so I can figure out who’s being ballsy enough to ignore the Do-Not-Call registry to pester me to buy stuff I don’t need/want, and actually go after the bastards.

By the way, if you’re a telemarketer, please find new work in another field. Don’t even bother with the “but I have to pay the bills!” excuse — you need to find work that doesn’t involve pestering people en masse trying to trick or fast-talk them into buying products and services of dubious quality and/or necessity. The only people I’ve ever heard who actually defend telemarketers are … telemarketers. Any line of work is superior to telemarketing, in every respect. Being a telemarketer teaches you to hate people, to be a wise-ass, and to scam people. Call it “sales” if you want, but that’s just a rationalization, and all you’re really doing is cramming shit down people’s throats. We don’t want your stuff. That’s a “no,” not an “opportunity to make a different presentation to change our minds.”

Now, back to the call from this afternoon. The firm AT&T has hired for its “direct marketing to businesses” campaign to upgrade business DSL accounts is a standard telemarketer racket — they insist they’re only calling “on behalf of AT&T,” refusing to identify themselves, and then hang up immediately when you press them for details. They’re not supposed to do that, but they do. Figuring out who they are is going to be a real blast, since when I do, I can hand the store’s owner a list of dates/times they’ve called, a summary of their violations of law, and a dollar amount he can sue the morons for. And maybe he can have a word or two with AT&T with that material in hand, to ask “why the hell are you paying these people to bug me every day?!?!”

The ones who really got my attention, though, were these dipshits. The caller, speaking in a louder-than-normal voice because of the background noise (lots and lots of telemarketer monkeys at his phone bank), asked to speak to the owner. Not by name, of course, just by title. I told him I was an “authorized agent,” and asked how I could help him.

I let him ramble for a few minutes¹ so I could take my chance to ask some questions. First when I asked who he worked for, he said he “represented Visa and Mastercard.” I wonder if the “big guys” approve of having these guys calling people “on their behalf.” When I asked who his employer was, he relented and admitted he was employed by “TransTech Merchant Group” (a.k.a. “Trans Tech Merchant Group” — it’s unclear whether they prefer the space between the first two words or not).

¹ One of the best ways to make telemarketing far less profitable is to keep an agent tied up on the phone as long as possible; thus, listening to the introductory speech chews up time that agent could be spending on another victim. By listening for a couple of minutes, you’re sparing at least one other person the discomfort of having to listen to it. It also gives you a fantastic opportunity to make observations about the product or service being sold so you can poke holes in the pitch later.

A quick Google search immediately reveals the “Rip-Off Report” page for the company. While that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a scam, it’s certainly not a good sign. The company sells credit card processing services, and apparently leases equipment (this is the stuff businesses use when you want to use your credit card to pay for a purchase). They also appear to sell their offerings in a very “unique” way — cold-calling businesses, asking to “verify their address” so they can “check to make sure they’re not being overcharged for their credit card processing services.” Right at the start of the call, the agent wanted me to rattle off the store’s address so he could schedule someone to come visit (i.e. high-pressure in-person sales). It was clear they didn’t know or understand our business (nor did they seem to care) since they wanted to schedule a Monday visit (the store is only open Friday through Sunday).

Reading through the Rip-Off Report page was enlightening — the phone agents cold-call businesses, and try to sound “official” enough to justify sending someone out in person to “check” that the business isn’t being “overcharged.” They do this by asking right off the bat for the owner, then asking him/her to give the office address, then by setting an appointment. If it’s presented with enough polish, an unsuspecting business owner might think their own merchant account vendor is coming out to make sure everything’s set up correctly. With an appointment set, the company sends an in-person grunt to pressure the business owner into switching from whatever merchant they’re using to their merchant service. Naturally, all the usual hard-sell in-person tactics apply here — invariably no matter who you’re using currently, they suck compared to the agent’s offering.

To end the call, I asked the guy to put our number on their own do-not-call list, and warned him that if he or his company calls again, I’d file a complaint with the FCC and propose (to the store’s owner) pursuing legal action.

Then I went back and read through the whole page at Rip-Off Report. The most amazing kind of scum crawls out of the woodwork when someone takes aim at a shady company like this. It’s pretty clear where general opinion comes down on this company — it seems to sell overpriced services, and refuses to actually sell hardware (instead requiring businesses to enter into a five year contract to lease equipment at very high monthly rates), and charges exorbitant account fees (monthly and annual fees, among many others) to its customers. Meanwhile, it pays the in-person sales agents on a commission-only basis, and seems to pay minimum wage plus commission to its phone agents. There are many indications that the company gives its own sales agents as well as its customers remarkably bad tax advice (“you don’t pay for this $3,000 credit card reader, the IRS does!”).

Most telling, though, is the rabid defense that at least one (probably two — “Mallory” seems to switch writing styles after her first couple of posts) employee engages in to combat this “negative review.” Similarly to an experience I had back in 2006 (you know who you are, you miserable bastards), the employee here attacks the reviewer instead of offering a genuine rebuttal. She spins her own “success story” (such as it is, since it doesn’t even bother providing actual numbers) and pokes at the reviewer, arguing that “nobody said sales was easy!” Finally two other (former?) employees chime in and take essentially the same approach — “Sales Just Isn’t For All People…Sorry,” “Why do you blame someone else for your problems?” and “some have what it takes - and other’s [sic] simply do not.” Typical blame-the-victim mentality.

This is always the biggest telltale sign of a scam — when you try to discuss and accurately define the merits and attributes of a product or service, and all you get back is misdirection, attacks, or evasion (not one employee was ever willing to give real, actual numbers, or offer up a sample contract they ask their clients to sign — either one would have immediately silenced any detractors if things really were working in the company’s favor), run away fast.

If you’re good at what you do, you scream it from the mountaintops. You show your work. You put your numbers on display. You rub it in your competition’s face that you do what you do better and cheaper than they do. You don’t hide behind smoke and mirrors. You don’t use high-pressure sales tactics (your product and/or service should sell itself if it’s even remotely good). You don’t hire telemarketers. And you don’t fight in public with potential or former customers or employees, or let your minions do it.

On the flip-side of that, if you are running a scam, you need to be very firm and clear with your employees — “do not make any public statements about this company or your involvement in it for any reason without permission.” Any time I’ve ever seen an employee trying to spin or twist a customer’s complaint into something “positive” about a company, it’s failed miserably and fallen flat on its face.

The product offering itself is unimpressive to me, and the company’s own web site is remarkably devoid of important information (like costs, contract samples, and hell, even testimonials), so even on its own I would never have given this company serious consideration. Seeing how badly they defend themselves on a web site, and how unfriendly they are towards constructive criticism tells me my gut instinct was right. Steer clear.

Anti-moron disclaimer: These are solely my opinions, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of any other persons or companies. Do not make a purchasing decision based solely on this content; please conduct your own due-diligence investigation of any company that solicits your business by telephone or in-person sales.