There is a special place in hell for the inventor of telemarketing

Like most sane people, Husband-person and I hate telemarketers. Husband-person even has a special tone of voice he saves just for them - the wrath inflicted upon the poor telephone operators is truly disturbing, given he is normally nice and pleasant, but it’s great fun to listen to.

To avoid them, at our past two residences we have invested in a silent number, which is a lovely invention and has afforded us much peace and quiet. However, due to some service providers being a bit free with our number (not mentioning any names, MajorVideoStoreChain) we have also added the tactic of only giving out mobile numbers except for health care services. It's not like we are home much anyway.

This has worked reasonably well so we went for the silent number at our new house (which will be far more permanent given we have bought it). Unfortunately, the lady who had the number previously (for the purposes of this posting, let’s call her Mrs D) obviously didn't follow the telemarketer avoidance rules and we now get 3 or 4 calls a day when we are in. GRRR.

They are all looking for Mrs D - so now when the phone rings during the day, I answer "Hello" and I wait to see who they are looking for. When it's Mrs D, they get "Sorry wrong number", and then I can just hang up. Except for the genius that rang today - when I gave them the usual routine, I got “Oh, I don’t know if I have the wrong number or the wrong name”. Honestly, if you don’t know the whose number this is, don’t try to convince me that you are calling ME.

Hell, I tell you.