Cut Off telemarketeers

Wired news teach a good trick on how to get rid of telemarketeers today.

If you're not the type to use the three-yes questions or the cheat-sheet to out-talk them that we showed you here earlier - Wired's way of screening might be just what you are looking for.

... First get a soundfile of the ascending three-note special-information tone you hear before the 'we're sorry...'

Wired figures you can find this soundfile on the web called "sit.wav" (try here). Alas, there are a lot of sit.wav's out there that aren't the telephone tone, you might as well try and make your own if you have the recording devices handy.

Edit the three notes on the soundfile, keeping just the first one. You could do this in most basic sound editing programs.

Play the note in the beginning of your answering machine message, before your witty rendition of Beethoven's fifth singing "nobody's hoooome". Or such.

Start screening all your calls. The telemarketeers high-tech gadgetery which dials your number will hear this note. Avaya Inc. says its predictive dialing system is about 80 percent accurate in detecting a greeting message, bypassing the operator, and leaving a prerecorded sales pitch on the answering machines.

Their only glitch is, computers hear that note and register "no such number" immediatly. Eventually, they'll stop calling.

sit back and relax while screening all your calls. Telemarketeers 0 - you 1.

another trick worth noting is what works a charm for me right now - answer the phone in another language than expected.

Moshi Moshi, Pronto, Hello and Daag all work wonders on Danish telemarketeers who apologise for the inconvinience and hang up on me as I never speak Danish on the phone.