Small business owners annoyed by cold calls?

[Premierbass]

Any other small business owners completely annoyed by cold calls selling stuff you don't need? And they call your published business number and your cell number?

I get numerous calls every week for the following:

1. Merchant Services (credit card processing). They all offer rates about the same and I already have merchant accounts for my retail bricks and mortar store and my website.

2. "Card Services" calling saying that "there is no problem with your account, but press 1 now to lower your interest rate...". Yeah, right.

3. Website SEO optimization scams. Calls offering to do stupid stuff like site map, keywords, etc. Promise to put you on page 1 or 2 of search results. Problem is that they don't even bother to look at your website before they call.

Example from today. Some poor cold call sales rep calls me from visible.net. Says he can help me create site map and add key words to my website. I tell him:

1. I already have a site map...did you look at my website?

2. Key searches like "bass guitars colorado" "bass guitars denver" and "bass guitars boulder" already have me on page 1. Searches for specific product info yields similar results.

3. I search the company doing the cold calling and find that visible.net has been sued by the Wash. State Atty General. It is also very easy to find lots of other complaints about them.

Seems to me they need to do SEO on their own website before they call me.

But, the real question is: Does anybody fall for these stupid sales pitches?

Call me cynical.

Dan

 

[Simo98]

We don't get a lot of calls, however I get a good 5 or so faxes every day from people trying to sell all sorts of crap. Only the occasional one from someone trying to get us to change phone companies.

And don't get me started on SEO emails though. Hundreds of them. The best part is half of them come in from the inquiries form on the website, which tells me how they arrived there. 9 times out of 10 they found the website originally from as a google search result

 

[Premierbass]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the phone company switch scams. They call pretending to be "customer retention" for my current phone provider.

I'm assuming someone actually responds to these types of calls, otherwise they would stop.

It is kind of annoying to pay for phone service only to have these morons call you.

I recommend having fun with them. I kept the guy from visible.net on the phone for 15 minutes. What a waste of his time while I played with him.

 

[Lonesomedave]

don't they have a "no call" list or some such? they introduced this in Tennessee a few years back, and we have been on it and not gotten any such calls in forever.

 

[canopener]

I work in sales, and my boss gets annoyed with cold calls. I find it kind of ironic. Where would your small business be without sales? I don't suppose you just get an income for the fun of it.

 

[Premierbass]

All my personal, cell, and business numbers are on the no call list. It doesn't work. They call and play with the caller ID so often you can't even find out who they are. Visible.net did leave a real phone number, so I left a message for the rep there...we'll see if he calls me back.

It was actually quite funny when he called. I spent 25 years in IT, and a friend in the store at the time is currently employed in IT. When the dude said he could build me a site map, we both laughed out loud. Of course they say all the initial analysis is "free", but won't tell you what ongoing "services" cost.

I actually feel sorry for the people who have to make cold calls like this...but not enough to keep me from having fun playing with them!

 

[canopener]

I can imagine a lot of those "fringe" services have a lot of employees that hit the bottle a ton, or are just lucky to have a job. I can appreciate where they are coming from, but yeah, they are kind of bad at what they do.

 

[Simo98]

don't they have a "no call" list or some such? they introduced this in Tennessee a few years back, and we have been on it and not gotten any such calls in forever.

We have one in Australia, but you can't put a business number on it.

I recommend having fun with them. I kept the guy from visible.net on the phone for 15 minutes. What a waste of his time while I played with him.

Haha, yeah, I had the guy from "Microsoft" looking for a "Virus" on the phone the other day for almost half an hour. I think I got him to explain the difference between a right, left and double click about 5 times

 

[Jim Nazium]

I can imagine the frustration. At home I've mostly solved it by keeping a low profile - I only have a cell phone (no land line) and I'm on both "do not call" and "do not mail" lists. But if you run a retail business, your contact info has to be public so customers can find you, and that means the sales guys are going to find you too.

 

[burk48237]

The "card services" are the worse. I bet I get 3-5 calls a week from them. I am on the no call list. I have tried in vain on more than one occasion to play along with them to find who and where the company is. At any point in the conversation if you ask them what company is this they hang up literally. They know what they are doing is illegal, but I suspect anything short of you giving them your credit care or SS# they wouldn't identify themselves.