So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[LizzieMaine]

I make a point of letting my rosebush grow all wild around my front door, so you have to navigate the prickles to get to the bell. You have to be really determined to want to get in my house, and I find most door-to-door types aren't. Friends know to come around to the unimpeded back door.

 

[ChrisB]

Doorhangers annoy me as well. If your aim is never to get any business from me, just leave that litter of yours on my front doorknob.

What's worse is that these things are an announcement that nobody's home. I hate to come back from a trip and find my door has been festooned with this stuff.

 

[tonyb]

What's worse is that these things are an announcement that nobody's home. I hate to come back from a trip and find my door has been festooned with this stuff.

Yup. When the dewy-eyed bride and I were first seeing each other, and I was residing in a high-crime district, she left a couple of gifts for me at the front stoop. I hurt her feelings by telling her I wish she wouldn't do that, as it was an announcement that no one was home. I added that we were fortunate nobody stole those gifts ahead of my finding them there.

Even here, in a relatively "safe" neighborhood, crimes of opportunity are fairly common, or so I am informed by the neighbors who post on the NextDoor platform. One day back in December I checked the mailbox (on a post out by the curb) as I was heading out for a drive. I saw that I had nothing but junk mail and a Christmas card from my dear old mom, so I left it in the box to take in later. Later became the next day. The junk mail was there, but the card was gone. The likeliest explanation is that it was stolen by someone hoping to find cash or gift cards in such an envelope, as there often is that time of year. In this case, all he found was Christmas greetings from my mother.

 

[Fading Fast]

How 'bout the people trying to sell stuff who will tell you they aren't trying to sell you stuff? ...

A somewhat variation on this theme is the billion on-line surveys you get after visiting a site or, God forbid, actually buying something. That's bad enough, but as people are clearly ignoring them, the new trick is to ask you to take a "one-minute" survey (with a bunch of gobbledygook about how it is to help you, improve your experience, blah, blah, blah) and, then, if you're stupid (like I am sometimes) and do so, after you've answer two or three question, the surveys says "you're done, unless because your opinion is so valuable / or you are so good at this" (got that one yesterday - really!), would you answer a few more questions.

To be sure, I could have ignored the survey altogether and I certainly didn't answer the additional questions, but I still felt lied to as it was obvious the "short" survey was only a bait and switch. I will go to my grave arguing that doing the right thing is good long-term business (I built a reasonably successful career acting that way personally), but convincing business people of that - in the company you work for - is a hard swim upstream against a very strong current. Companies will spend millions advertising their brands, and then will do stupid bait-and-swith gimmicks or other irritating things to anger their customers - it's crazy.

 

[Zombie_61]

...Doorhangers annoy me as well. If your aim is never to get any business from me, just leave that litter of yours on my front doorknob.

This extends to all forms of junk mail at our house, all of which immediately goes into the recycle bin unread. It seems wasteful to me to put so much time, effort, and money, into something that will likely end up taking up space in a landfill.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Telemarketers who not only disregard the DNC registry but never stop talking long enough for you to tell them you're not interested. Especially when they say they got your number because you stayed in one of their resorts, and you've never stayed in a resort in your life.

 

[ChrisB]

Telemarketers who not only disregard the DNC registry but never stop talking long enough for you to tell them you're not interested. Especially when they say they got your number because you stayed in one of their resorts, and you've never stayed in a resort in your life.

I hate to be rude, even to telemarketers. But I don't owe them any explanations, so I just hang up.

 

[Bushman]

Telemarketers who not only disregard the DNC registry but never stop talking long enough for you to tell them you're not interested. Especially when they say they got your number because you stayed in one of their resorts, and you've never stayed in a resort in your life.

I love telemarketers, but maybe that's just my natural disposition to be mischievous. It's robo calls I can't stand.

 

[Fading Fast]

Telemarketers who not only disregard the DNC registry but never stop talking long enough for you to tell them you're not interested. Especially when they say they got your number because you stayed in one of their resorts, and you've never stayed in a resort in your life.

That one's been happening to me almost weekly and it start with a very pleasant sounding woman saying "oops, I dropped my headset" and then she giggles and then goes into her spiel and, as you note, you can't get a word in to say I haven't stayed at your resort. I'm sure the planned headset "accident" has been market tested as has the "you can't get a word in -" it's all so obnoxious.

 

[Zombie_61]

Telemarketers who not only disregard the DNC registry...

I'm convinced the only purpose that DNC registry ultimately served was to provide companies with a list of verified phone numbers to call. Almost immediately after submitting our home phone number we received at least five times the number of solicitation calls than we received before.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm convinced the only purpose that DNC registry ultimately served was to provide companies with a list of verified phone numbers to call. Almost immediately after submitting our home phone number we received at least five times the number of solicitation calls than we received before.

We had the opposite result - it truly cut the calls down to practically nothing for the first few years. But they have been creeping up over the last couple of years but are still well below the pre-DNC implementation. And I'm well-known here as being willing to criticize the gov't, but for this one, our experience was good until recently it seems to be slipping back (and we did re-up as suggested).

 

[LizzieMaine]

That one's been happening to me almost weekly and it start with a very pleasant sounding woman saying "oops, I dropped my headset" and then she giggles and then goes into her spiel and, as you note, you can't get a word in to say I haven't stayed at your resort. I'm sure the planned headset "accident" has been market tested as has the "you can't get a word in -" it's all so obnoxious.

That's exactly the script I heard, and the gal had a voice and manner like a QVC hostess. Probably a very sophisticated and obnoxious robot. Computer, end program.

 

[tonyb]

That one's been happening to me almost weekly and it start with a very pleasant sounding woman saying "oops, I dropped my headset" and then she giggles and then goes into her spiel and, as you note, you can't get a word in to say I haven't stayed at your resort. I'm sure the planned headset "accident" has been market tested as has the "you can't get a word in -" it's all so obnoxious.

Those "oops, I dropped my headset" delivered in the voice of a pleasant sounding woman are recordings. Or so I have experienced a couple times in recent months. I fell for it for a few seconds the first time, until I realized I was telling a recording to let me get a word in edgewise. The second time I just hung up.

Should I ever meet that pleasant sounding young woman who lent her voice to that recording, I will suggest she find a more honorable line of work. Street-walking, maybe. Or insurance fraud.

 

[Haversack]

The ones that really annoyed me are the obvious scams: "Hello. This is _Frank_ from Windows Security Division. Our instruments indicate that your computer is sending out viruses". All said in a South Asian Accent. This scripted scam, with different names, used to call every day and sometimes twice a day. They finally stopped after I started yelling some incredibly foul Hindi insults at them. Maledicta is sometimes useful.

 

[Bushman]

Those "oops, I dropped my headset" delivered in the voice of a pleasant sounding woman are recordings. Or so I have experienced a couple times in recent months. I fell for it for a few seconds the first time, until I realized I was telling a recording to let me get a word in edgewise. The second time I just hung up.

Should I ever meet that pleasant sounding young woman who lent her voice to that recording, I will suggest she find a more honorable line of work. Street-walking, maybe. Or insurance fraud.

Yeah, I got the "oops I dropped my headset" robo call once. I too fell for it, until I tried getting a word in. I realized it wasn't a human speaking then, because the speaker continued without pause.

The ones that really annoyed me are the obvious scams: "Hello. This is _Frank_ from Windows Security Division. Our instruments indicate that your computer is sending out viruses". All said in a South Asian Accent. This scripted scam, with different names, used to call every day and sometimes twice a day. They finally stopped after I started yelling some incredibly foul Hindi insults at them. Maledicta is sometimes useful.

I used to get the one from "I-R-S, INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE" that was saying I was being sued. I laughed the first time I got it simply because anybody knows the IRS doesn't sue, they audit. My dad, who, as a retiree, is home more than I am, has gotten the calls asking to go to his computer, though I never have. He shares my mischievous attitude and likes to mess with the guys who call him. The scary thing is, the IRS now has permission to sue those under audit or debt, so sifting through the scams and the actual guys has just become far more difficult.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I'm convinced the only purpose that DNC registry ultimately served was to provide companies with a list of verified phone numbers to call. Almost immediately after submitting our home phone number we received at least five times the number of solicitation calls than we received before.

I have heard that many telemarketing operations have moved abroad, outside the reach of the U.S. government's ability to prosecute/sue. I have been on the do not call list since the first day. The call volume dropped initially, but more and more of them are outside the reach of the law.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I have heard that many telemarketing operations have moved abroad, outside the reach of the U.S. government's ability to prosecute/sue. I have been on the do not call list since the first day. The call volume dropped initially, but more and more of them are outside the reach of the law.

This is 100% true. Most calls nowadays come from overseas, outside the reach of the US government. Many of these places gor the numbers back in the 90s when companies outsourced their call centers to Asia, India, & the Caribbean.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Lately the most dangerous call is one where the first thing they say is "Can you hear me?" What they want is to record your voice saying "yes." With that, they can get all sorts of stuff concerning you. I no longer answer the phone. They can leave a message and if it's someone I want to talk to I call back. Not otherwise.

 

[Zombie_61]

My favorite solicitation call was from a young lady who was obviously new to the job because the way she spoke made it painfully clear that she was reading from the company script. She rambled on for nearly a minute before I was able to respond, at which point I said, "No matter what you say, I'm not buying whatever you're selling." At that point I heard nothing but pages being turned on her end, and after a moment I asked, "You can't find a reply for that on your cheat sheet, can you?" She laughed and admitted she couldn't, and I laughed with her for a moment before I said "Good bye" and hung up.

Another time I was at a friend's house because we had plans to see a movie. We were running a little late, and just as we were stepping out the door the phone rang and his wife ran back to answer it. My friend and I could tell it was a telemarketer and his wife was trying to be polite, but after hearing her say, "We're not interested" for the third time I took the phone from her hand and said, "Listen, my wife has already told you we're not interested. Don't ever call here again," and hung up. She was shocked by what I did, and as she was trying to scold me for "being so rude" I heard my friend say, "Hey, I was supposed to do that!"

 

[Fading Fast]

Two others that have popped up recently are

• "We can reduce the rate on your credit card" (I don't have a credit card, I do have an Amex card that is paid off each month on time as - at least when I took it out (in '85) - you can't run a balance on it)

• We can help you with your student loan debt - (never had any)

As noted, the DNC list worked really well for us for several years, but there has definitely been an uptick in those type of calls in the last year.