advice on a cold calling company

regularsaver1

oh no

does that mean that your dad has the managers number stored in his phone? if they didnt use 141 before - you could try calling

do you now have the company details?

GUMPO

Get onto your dads phone provider right away. The number was probably on a premium tariff and could have cost a fortune.

Do you have enough details about them to use the local media to shame them into getting lost?
Do you have any family, friends (or friends of friends in the police)? These people always push the law without breaking it but a uniform will put the fear of god into them.
Good luck and remember as nasty as it sounds if there are easier targets out there you and yours will be left alone.

T.F.S.B.I.G.W.S.

That was crafty of him to demand a signature - very firm of you to refuse. Well Done!

Elmer_Dudd

These leeches did exactly the same with an elderly relative of mine-they asked to use her phone to call their manager. I said then that it was probably a premium rate line they called and she should check her phone bill.
The Maggots.
Elmer

Elmer_Dudd

And they now have your Dad's number to sell on to other cold calling companies or to keep calling him back themselves.
I hate these guys!
Elmer

T.F.S.B.I.G.W.S.

scumbags indeed to have called back and cheeky f*****g b******s to have used the phone. Hopefully, the call was not a premium rate and the whole episode was a complete waste of time for them.
Perhaps EVERYONE should contact that company and ask them to call round - but don't let them near your phone (or even in the house - insist on a doorstep interview). Well it would be funny...

tawnyowls

Well, yes, but ... First, let me make it clear I'm not trying in any way to defend this company's tactics - I also have had experience of them, and if it's the one I suspect it is, they are unethical to say the least. However, I would just like to point out that the salespeople are not the company - yes, they're pushy, but that is the way they're trained - the whole getting into the house, staying for hours, ringing up the manager to negotiate a 'fantastic discount' because the person really 'needs the bed and can you do anything for him, Mr Manager' is all part of the (American, where most of these companies originated) sales pitch that the salesmen are forced to use (hence the reason they often turn up in twos - one of them is there to check on the other and report back any deviation from the script). The salesmen are usually self-employed and have to pay for their own petrol, expenses and so on (and knowing the sort of territories they often have, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that salesman had travelled 40 miles - 200/300 isn't unknown), and don't get a penny unless the customer buys the product, hence the hard sell and the air of desperation about some of them. Thus, if you get someone out to your house as described above, you're punishing the salesman, not the company. If you really want to get the latter, complain to Trading Standards, and make it clear it's not the saleman you're getting at, it's the company's lack of ethics and targeting of vulnerable people. No harm contacting Watchdog and Rogue Traders either (the latter had a programme on said company very recently).

In the meantime, if anyone has a parent expressing an interest in this type of bed, tell them that no, there is no free bed (you can prove that by reading the small print in the ads) - they might get a pillow if they're really lucky - and if you go into pretty much any decent-sized furniture shop such as Furniture Village, you'll get a better-quality bed for a lot less money. Even Argos do adjustable beds now, and they really aren't that different, apart from being about 3 grand cheaper.

Oh, and well done from me too, jonnym - your dad's lucky he's got someone looking out for his interests.

westernpromise

I have no scripting skills myself but to those who do there is an exquisite form of revenge available against such as this company.

Essentially, you write a program that crawls the web subscribing the target to every free catalogue and giveaway you can find.

This has actually been executed in real life against an infamous spammer:-

In December 2002, the notorious "spam king" Alan Ralsky gave an interview. Aside from his usual comments that antagonized spam-hating e-mail users, he mentioned his new home in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The interview was posted on Slashdot, and some enterprising reader found his address in some database. Egging each other on, the Slashdot readership subscribed him to thousands of catalogs, mailing lists, information requests, etc. The results were devastating: within weeks he was getting hundreds of pounds of junk mail per day and was unable to find his real mail amongst the deluge.

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0304.html

So essentially you bury the target in so much junk that they become unable to function. One of the links in the above article is to a study suggesting that something like this could be used deliberately, as a form of non-lethal warfare or as an adjunct to something else!! Eg if some loony were sending anthrax through the post, he could deliberately clog up sorting offices to make it impossible to find.

My only reservation about this against dodgy salesmen is that you are costing legitimate businesses money, in that they incur cost sending catalogues in response to what appears to be a legitimate request for them.