I get a lot of telemarketer calls at work. Our admin assistant knows that she can dump people into my voicemail and I won’t care. (Especially now that I know how to delete a message in the first 2 seconds.) Unfortunately, a lot of those vendors write down my name and then continue to call me, until I finally take the call and tell them to buzz off.
In a much nicer, Disney appropriate tone, of course.
Usually I come up with off the wall excuses. “The office supply vendor we currently use is owned by our CEO’s relative.” ”The building owner will not let us install an osmosis system, due to fear of cabinet or wall damage.” “We just switched over to Alltel and got all of our phones for free, including the Blackberrys.” All of them are blatant lies of course, but unless the vendor can provide us with a significant amount of savings, it’s not worth the hassle of switching accounts.
Recently, I realized that the current state of the economy is a great excuse. “I’m sorry but with the current economic situation, I would not feel comfortable presenting a new cell phone service plan to our CEO. We really shouldn’t spend the money on new equipment right now.” They can’t argue that one! There’s always a slight sigh and a “yes, I understand unfortunately. Well, thank you for your time.”
Now if only I could use these skills to get out of bills. “I’m sorry, but with the current state of our nation’s economy, I just can’t justify paying the electric bill at this rate.” “OK ma’am. I understand. We’ll reverse the charges.”
Hey, it could happen!
