A telephone call yesterday, and the young lady introduced herself as Ellie, and started to talk to me about financial planning. She explained that her boss would be in the area next week, and asked if he could meet.

"It's funny you should call today - just a couple of hours after a conversation I was having with my wife ..." I said, and you could here the sparkle in her acknowledgement of that "... because we get a lot of calls, and just today we were talking about this and I have registered our numbers with the telephone preference service ..." Poor Ellie couldn't apologise quickly enough - she said she had checked (and I how do doubt she had - registation takes a while to go through) - actually one of the better ones who does take note, and the call ended friendly.

I have a great deal of time for people doing their job ... but there are some jobs that simply should not exist, or be run as they are by the bosses. And that applies (in my opinion) to the jobs where people are asked to call numbers that are TPS listed, and if challenged give one of the following reasons:

1. Only applies to caller from within the UK
2. You are already a customer / signed up (e.g. appear in our telephone / business directory, probably as a free enty in someting like Thomson Local)
3. This is not a cold call - following up an email
4. I am not selling anything - I am doing market research / setting up appointments
5. Your Registration must have run out / must not yet be active

Those may (or may not) be true when used - and several are what I consider to be loopholes. I particularly dislike the companies who use an offshore call centre to cold call, and use this to sidestep the Telephone Preference laws. Don't they realise that someone who's taken active steps to request that such calls are NOT made is unlikely to provide them with a positive outcome / good return on their time invested? And don't they realise that damaging their company's name with the person they're calling by using sidestep techniques. Or are they so arrogantly sure that their product is so different and so worthwhile that - once we speak to them - we'll want it anyway!

The telephone preference service may be found [here] online. There is also a fax preference service [here] and a mail (post) preference service [here]. I note that even in the preference service world, there are cold callers who will ask you for payment for them to complete your registration. To quote from the front page of the mail preference service - "Be wary of people calling you claiming to be from the Telephone (Mailing) Preference Service asking for payment to complete your registration. MPS is a FREE service."

---

At Well House Consultants / Well House Manor, unsolicited / cold sales calls and recorded "information" messages take a great deal of our time. It's not only the time taken by the call, but the time taken to get and into the groove of what the person who answers the phone was doing - often complex design and programming work. So we do not welcome calls from people who are looking to buck the spirit of what we have elected for.

When we were hiring, we specified "email us or walk in" and the people who were able to follow that simple instruction were the ones who got the jobs. It shows that they fit in, that they can take instruction, and that they have a respect for working with us in a way that works for us.
(written 2011-11-03)

 G909 - Well House Consultants - Spam, Spamming and Spammers
  [259] Responding to spam - (2005-03-27)
  [268] Information request forms, cleaning up spam - (2005-04-05)
  [276] An apology to Mr Boneparte - (2005-04-11)
  [338] OO techniques are hard to teach - (2005-06-06)
  [347] Frightening and from-friend viruses and spams - (2005-06-14)
  [417] Telephone Preference Service - we're registered - (2005-08-17)
  [495] More spam - a success story - (2005-11-13)
  [872] Email metrics - (2006-09-20)
  [1037] Impact Engineering and Backscatter - (2007-01-16)
  [1115] Unexpected visitors to our site - (2007-03-22)
  [1523] Ive just received an email from myself. Should I be worried? - (2008-01-29)
  [1532] Comment spam blocked. Please comment via Forums - (2008-02-05)
  [1763] Co-operating to save, yet we dont - (2008-08-21)
  [1817] Marc Schneider is still having email trouble - (2008-09-30)
  [1978] From spam to mod_alias - finding resources - (2009-01-05)
  [2019] Baby Caleb and Fortune City in your web logs? - (2009-01-31)
  [2177] Preventing forum spam - checks at sign up - (2009-05-12)
  [2179] Offers that I can refuse - (2009-05-12)
  [2276] Who is Marc Schneider of Multilingual Search Engine Optimization Inc - (2009-07-10)
  [2398] Websitemediasolution and a goldfish called Carl Johnson - (2009-09-06)
  [2697] Email metrics and filtering - (2010-03-28)
  [2884] Hotlinked images onto adult material sites - (2010-07-23)
  [3016] The legal considerations of your web presence - revisited - (2010-10-26)
  [3166] Well house is strong - confirmed? - (2011-02-11)
  [3190] What do the following web sites have in common? - (2011-03-03)
  [3316] Twitter Phishing Trips ... and a great new alert service - (2011-06-04)
  [3352] World Trade Register - Certainly NOT worth 2985 Euros. - (2011-07-09)
  [3661] Keeping forum and blog comments clean - (2012-03-19)
  [3910] Identifying your real customers and keeping them well informed fast - (2012-11-02)
  [3912] Sand to Arabia, Coals to Newcastle or Woodburners to Russia - (2012-11-04)
  [3946] Moving from a warning system to a control system - PHP, forum spammers - (2012-12-07)
  [4135] Introducing your product to Well House Consultants - single, personally tuned email please - (2013-07-08)
  [4315] Welcoming genuine forum posters quickly - but turning away off topic advertisers - (2014-11-16)
  [4520] No cold sales calls please - but delighted to hear from others! - (2015-09-29)

G502 - Well House Consultants - Business Practice
  [15] 90 to 10 or 80 to 20 rule - (2004-08-15)
  [27] Sales technique - (2004-08-25)
  [68] Get the strategy worked out and the tactics just fall into place. - (2004-09-30)
  [77] Telephone systems - (2004-10-07)
  [88] Getting the right level of trainer - (2004-10-14)
  [95] Five red flags - (2004-10-21)
  [108] A typical morning - (2004-11-03)
  [121] Fair and Simple - (2004-11-17)
  [125] Staff theft - (2004-11-21)
  [129] Trawling our site to prevent student copying - (2004-11-24)
  [137] Certification schemes - (2004-12-02)
  [157] Automatic service upgrades - (2004-12-19)
  [180] Skunk works - (2005-01-17)
  [188] Pink elephant and appreciation - (2005-01-24)
  [200] Tips for the top - (2005-02-03)
  [211] Look after your staff and they'll look after you. AOL. - (2005-02-12)
  [217] Use of time - (2005-02-16)
  [226] Growing our systems - (2005-02-24)
  [297] A reminder that the customer is King - (2005-05-01)
  [321] Sales - the alternative close - (2005-05-23)
  [399] simplicity hides real size - (2005-07-31)
  [438] Fair system for travel and accommodation expenses - (2005-09-07)
  [457] Do the work and take the risk - a PHP contract to avoid - (2005-10-06)
  [467] Tell them three times - (2005-10-17)
  [487] On line course booking - credit card protection - (2005-11-06)
  [491] Being atypical is typical - (2005-11-10)
  [536] Cancellations and penalties - (2005-12-21)
  [626] Not just a pretty face to answer the phone. - (2006-02-26)
  [652] Morning Post - (2006-03-20)
  [664] Ruby course - oops - it's not happening - (2006-04-01)
  [766] Discounts and approved supplier lists - (2006-06-17)
  [808] Sales call - (2006-07-19)
  [849] Staff Meeting - (2006-08-30)
  [869] UNABLE TO ATTEND - (2006-09-16)
  [883] Age discrimination law - (2006-10-01)
  [906] A commitment we won't be making - (2006-10-27)
  [1057] Selling by phone and Skype - our policy - (2007-01-30)
  [1084] Writing terms and conditions for conferences and other events - (2007-02-17)
  [1133] B-2-B Networking, 20th April. Useful for YOUR business? - (2007-04-03)
  [1157] Speed Networking - a great evening and how we arranged it - (2007-04-21)
  [1165] Extended Credit request - train in June and be paid in September - (2007-04-27)
  [1243] Heavy duty hole punch - (2007-06-24)
  [1260] An inspirational business talk from one of our prospective MPs - (2007-07-06)
  [1263] 0800 043 8225 - a new phone number for Well House - (2007-07-10)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1342] Google, wwmdirectory, Freshwater, ATP - new scam? - (2007-09-09)
  [1373] New Month, New Quarter, New Laws - (2007-10-01)
  [1394] Business to Business Networking - North and West Wilts / Melksham - (2007-10-17)
  [1453] What makes our courses special? - (2007-12-02)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1626] Early May - a short chance to regroup and improve - (2008-05-01)
  [1713] Ways to accept credit cards - or not! - (2008-07-19)
  [1855] Volunteer v Employee - a skewed balance? (FSB) - (2008-10-25)
  [1913] Alastair Darling helps make paperwork and confusion - (2008-11-30)
  [2044] Please Trouble me - (2009-02-16)
  [2122] Commission Creep - (2009-04-08)
  [2126] Weeding out old phone numbers - (2009-04-11)
  [2161] Get it right ... if it goes wrong, it takes so much effort to sort out! - (2009-05-08)
  [2187] Are we IITT (Institute of IT Training) members? - (2009-05-17)
  [2190] How you are (re)presented at an exhibition - (2009-05-19)
  [2283] Everyone is in the customer relations business - (2009-07-12)
  [2331] Certification Revisted - Lua - (2009-08-09)
  [2465] Melksham Town - asleep or awake? - (2009-10-21)
  [2598] An excuse for making a sales call - (2010-01-26)
  [2788] Cost of Sales - (2010-06-01)
  [2821] Chancellor George Osborne inspires Perl Program - (2010-06-22)
  [2936] The service that customers should receive - (2010-08-27)
  [2966] Cheap Country Hotel in Melksham, Wiltshire? - (2010-09-21)
  [3073] Customer Service - the boundary - (2010-11-27)
  [3157] A new monopoly on the ferry to Northern Ireland - (2011-02-04)
  [3333] Honesty and a friendly welcome goes a long way - (2011-06-25)
  [3613] Keeping Business Local. But is that realistic? - (2012-02-13)
  [3665] Will will smile? - (2012-03-22)
  [3750] Matching opening hours to when customers can come in and buy - (2012-06-04)
  [3755] Cruising on the Mersey Ferry? - (2012-06-07)
  [4107] Snog, Marry, Avoid - (2013-05-31)
  [4293] Certification - (2014-09-15)
  [4415] Buffet review - taking the price into account - (2015-02-05)

Back to Well House Manor - Winter Warmers - Open 7 days a week, 11 to 5 ++

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to Melksham Forward - meeting summary and pictures

The skull above the door in Melksham Town Hall
Operator Overloading, Exceptions, Pointers, References and Templates in C++ - new examples from our courses
Destructor methods in C++ - a primer
Melksham Forward - meeting summary and pictures
Cold call contacts - preference services and turning off spam sales approaches
Well House Manor - Winter Warmers - Open 7 days a week, 11 to 5 ++
Coaches from Trowbridge and Melksham to London
Melksham House - a community facility
Sunday Evening ... newest and oldest Melksham pictures
Santa Claus - on the train from Melksham on 4th December 2011