I abhor telemarketing.
I've received a number of calls from automatic diallers which start by saying something like "Congratulations! You have been selected for ...". I usually hang up as soon as I hear the robot sounding "Congratulations!" but today I realised I should return the favour by wasting the telemarketer's time. If you hang on for a few more seconds the next statement is something like "If you would like more information, please press nine". So I hit 9, put the phone on speaker, mute and waited to see how long I could tie up their phone line (thanks to the wonders of VoIP I have 2 personal phone lines and am not in the least concerned about tying one up).
After hitting 9 the line went silent and I wondered if I had mistakenly hung up whilst pressing the speaker & mute buttons but after about 15 seconds some guy actually started speaking. "Hello? .... hello??". So the automated dialler is just to pre-screen people so that the telemarketing company doesn't waste costly human time cold calling.
At this point if you want to be a real prick you'd abuse the person on the other end of the phone. I'm not sure of the legalities of this but IMHO psychologically abusing someone seems an effective way to discourage folks from working in telemarketing centres. I don't buy into the argument about poor students, uneducated folks etc having to work in call centres as there are loads of other jobs for unskilled workers that don't involve annoying people. Anyway as I don't really have the balls to yell at random people over the phone I just let the guy say "hello?" a few more times before he eventually hung up.
So in summary I encourage you all to at least hit 9 and get someone on the phone before hanging up just to waste that little bit of the telemarketer's money. If you can be bothered, throw in a "this sounds interesting please tell me more" before putting the phone into mute. :)
I think this could be an effective counter since there are literally millions of people receiving telemarketing calls, and only a much smaller number of people calling out. Each lucky "victim" only needs to waste an extra few seconds and pretty soon the telemarketing scheme becomes ineffective/expensive.
