![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A while ago I got one of those phone calls, about some new, superior phone service and if I didn't want to sign up with them right away.
I really hate those. You'd think that, if I wasn't happy with my phone service, I'd go out and get a different one on my own initiative ...
Anyway, that was one really annoying telemarketer who didn't just leave me alone after I explicitly said "not interested", so after a while, in order to get rid of him, I agreed to get some info material sent to me.
What I actually got, a few days later, was an order confirmation from my current phone service provider, which told me that they're going to switch me over to the new one in a few days, and the cost involved in this (5.11€). Since I'd received that confirmation late Friday (or was it Saturday?), I waited until Monday to call them about it, and get it cancelled. They undid it no problem, and asked me to notify the new service provider of the cancellation too, since they can't do that ...
Once again two days later, I got mail from that other service provider, welcoming me to their service. At that point I'd finally found out that they're called "FlexFon" (if you're bored, do a search in german-land for them on google, you'll find plenty of interesting forum posts). Fortunately there was an e-Mail address on it, so I wrote them to cancel this whole thing, the reason being that I didn't actually agree to anything in the first place.
Surprisingly, I actually got a confirmation e-Mail from them today. Which apparently is a lot better than what others on the net got when they were involved with them.
Anyway, in this confirmation e-Mail, they also asked me to get in contact with my current provider to let them know of the cancellation, because that's something they can't do - Interesting, since they had no problem changing around my phone contract with them in the first place! So they just can't undo the change then ...
Anyway, just a few minutes after I got the cancellation confirmation from them, my phone rang, and a FlexFon representative asked me if I was interested in their new and superior phone service ...
For those of you also with the Deutsche Telekom: If you don't want this kind of thing to happen, you can call them up and ask them to set a "Wechselsperrvermerk" on your account, meaning that from now on, they'll only accept change requests from yourself, and not from other companies etc.
That's what I've done yesterday, too.
And that, folks, is why I don't answer phone calls with suppressed caller-ID ...
I really hate those. You'd think that, if I wasn't happy with my phone service, I'd go out and get a different one on my own initiative ...
Anyway, that was one really annoying telemarketer who didn't just leave me alone after I explicitly said "not interested", so after a while, in order to get rid of him, I agreed to get some info material sent to me.
What I actually got, a few days later, was an order confirmation from my current phone service provider, which told me that they're going to switch me over to the new one in a few days, and the cost involved in this (5.11€). Since I'd received that confirmation late Friday (or was it Saturday?), I waited until Monday to call them about it, and get it cancelled. They undid it no problem, and asked me to notify the new service provider of the cancellation too, since they can't do that ...
Once again two days later, I got mail from that other service provider, welcoming me to their service. At that point I'd finally found out that they're called "FlexFon" (if you're bored, do a search in german-land for them on google, you'll find plenty of interesting forum posts). Fortunately there was an e-Mail address on it, so I wrote them to cancel this whole thing, the reason being that I didn't actually agree to anything in the first place.
Surprisingly, I actually got a confirmation e-Mail from them today. Which apparently is a lot better than what others on the net got when they were involved with them.
Anyway, in this confirmation e-Mail, they also asked me to get in contact with my current provider to let them know of the cancellation, because that's something they can't do - Interesting, since they had no problem changing around my phone contract with them in the first place! So they just can't undo the change then ...
Anyway, just a few minutes after I got the cancellation confirmation from them, my phone rang, and a FlexFon representative asked me if I was interested in their new and superior phone service ...
For those of you also with the Deutsche Telekom: If you don't want this kind of thing to happen, you can call them up and ask them to set a "Wechselsperrvermerk" on your account, meaning that from now on, they'll only accept change requests from yourself, and not from other companies etc.
That's what I've done yesterday, too.
And that, folks, is why I don't answer phone calls with suppressed caller-ID ...
