How I Had Fun Dealing With Hundreds of Unwanted Marketing Calls

If you keep calling me, you’re fair game!

At some point in the mid-2010s, E.ON energy suddenly began a very one-sided love affair with my employees and myself at one of my internet cafes based in Berkshire, England. Like many love affairs built that way, it was never going to end well.

It all started one innocent afternoon when we received a cold phone call from a representative, obviously not based in England, asking if we’d like to move our electricity supply to their company. We declined politely, partly because I almost never buy from cold calls, but mostly because we were locked into a very preferential contract for another year to come.

But, as it later transpired, this was just the beginning of what would amount to hundreds, possibly thousands, of phone calls from this company over the next couple of years. These guys were just asking to be played with. I have no guilt whatsoever about what happened next.

We even gave them fair warning. We were very patient at first, politely declining, explaining the situation, and asking to be taken off the call list. Then, we tried bluntly declining, explaining the situation, and asking to be taken off the call list. After that, we moved to demanding to be taken off the call list. Each time, of course, we were assured that we were. We always were actually, sometimes even for several hours.

I quite often worked the shop floor myself in this branch as it was local to me and at other times, it was managed by Alex, a hard-working, fun-to-be-around guy with natural leadership abilities and a quick, cutting wit. When we worked together on busy days we were very much the dream team, working hard, fast and efficiently, whilst still finding time for banter with the customers and each other.

One day we received four calls in one afternoon from the same Indian call centre, all asking us if we’d like to change to E.ON, presumably just to check we hadn’t changed our minds in the few minutes between each call.

We hadn’t.

Alex was there as I took that fourth call, and he could sense that this was the one that finally pushed me over the edge. He looked at me as I slammed the phone down.

“No way! Again?” he said laughing. “That’s insane!”

“Right! That’s it,” I said in a way that sounded a little Basil Fawlty like.

“From now on, let’s do anything we can to waste these guys’ time and wind ’em up. Let’s have some fun!”

To Alex, this was basically permission to go to town, and I immediately got the impression that he’d basically been waiting for it. He was ready.

We spent the next few months trying to outdo each other with the best responses. We had competitions to see who could keep them on hold the longest before they hung up, who could do the silliest accent (Welsh, French or Chinese were always favorites) or make up the unlikeliest reasons for not getting any electricity from E.ON, such as three-letter acronym companies being illegal in the town we were in or it being the wrong colour for our logo.

Sometimes, I’d just repeated whatever they said down the phone, so it went like this:

Them: “Hello. Can I speak to the manager please?”

Me: “Hello. Can I speak to the manager please”

Them: “Yes please, sir”

Me: “Yes please, sir”

Them: (confused): “Can you hear me?”

Me: (confused): “Can you hear me?”

Them: (spelling the words out) “I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER, PLEASE.”

Me: (you’ve guessed it, spelling the words out) “I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER, PLEASE”

Pause.

Them: “Why are you copying me?”

Me: “Why are you copying me?”

Sometimes the caller would get irritated and swear at me before hanging up, but the calls kept coming.

Once, Alex picked up the phone, paused for the obligatory request for the manager, and just shouted “aaaaaaaarrrrrrrhhhhhh!” in one very long breath gradually getting deeper and slower until they hung up, much to the amusement of the customer he was literally in the middle of serving at the time.

But my three favorite put-downs ever remain the ones listed below, now, and forever.

The Abundant Electricity Ruse

“Hello, can I speak to the manager please?”

“Why?”

“Are you the manager?”

“I’m not sure, am I?”

“You must know if you’re the manager?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you. Hang on a minute. I’ll check” (Holds phone and shouts over it, “Alex, am I the manager?” He shouts back, “Sure, why not?”)

“He says, ‘why not.’ How can I help?”

“But are you the manager?”

“I think so. My colleague thinks so. My mum’s pretty sure too. How can I help?”

“I’m calling from E.ON energy about your electricity supply ….”

“Electricity?” I say, cutting him off. “Oh, no need, we have loads of it already.”

Pause.

“No, it’s … I’m calling about the electricity…”

“Oh, that’s really nice of you. We love it. Thank you. It’s really handy. It’s like magic isn’t it? You just put a plug thing in the wall thing and it works! Do you have electricity in your wall?”

Another pause.

“So you use electricity there?” (ignoring my comments) “Who is your supplier at the moment?”

“What do you mean supplier? It just comes out of the walls through the magic holes. Sometimes I take some home in a carrier bag to use there too. My kids are amazed by it. Do you have kids? They’re great aren’t they?”

There is a frustrated mumbling followed by a click.

The No Electricity Put-Down

“Hello, can I speak to the manager please”

“This is he.” (adopting haughty voice) “You may call me Mr. Shumplpuddingpop.”

“Mr. Shumplpuddingpop, I’m calling from…”

“No, that’s Shumplpuddingpop, not Shumplpuddingpop”

“Mr Shumplpuddingpop, I’m calling ….”

“No, SHUMPLPUDDINGPOP, S-H-U-M-P-L-P-U-D-D-I-N-G-P-O-P.”

“Shumplpuddingpop.”

“Close. Try again. It’s Shumplpuddingpop.”

“Shumplpuddingpop.”

“Tell you what, it is a tricky name. Lots of people struggle with it, just call me Keith.”

“OK Keith, I’m calling from E.ON about your electricity ….”

“Oh, OK. Can I just stop you there?”

Pause.

“We don’t have electricity here. Never use the stuff. Heard it’s bad for you.”

Another pause.

“You don’t use electricity?”

“No. Only oil lamps and biscuits.”

(Caller is laughing and suspects something is up.) “You don’t use any electricity at all?”

“Not a volt.”

“Then how are you talking to me on the phone?”

Immediately scream like a child and drop the phone. Leave it there until they give up.

The Electricity Tragedy

“Hello. Can I speak to the manager please”

(Whispering) “Oh God no”

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

(Still whispering) “Yes. I can hear you.”

“Can I speak to the manager please?”

“No” (bursting into tears) “he’s … he’s dead! Oh god…”

“I, er, er, er …”

“It was terrible. He was electrocuted. It was such a shock for all of us. We’re still getting over it …. “ (calming down) “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I have to remain professional. Life goes on. How can I help?”

“I’m calling from E.ON about your electricity…”

“Oh god nooooooo!” (crying uncontrollably)

Click.

Epilogue

The calls never stopped coming and hundreds more variations ensued. Even on the very day I sold the business and we were posing for that obligatory (and slightly awkward) photo where I hand the keys to the next owner, the phone rang just as we were finishing up.

For what would be the very last time, I answered it.

“Hello. Can I speak to the manager please?”

It seemed like a fitting end to my years in the place and, without hesitation I replied, “Of course you can,” and handed the phone to the new owner.

“It’s for you,” I said, with a broad, and very obvious, smile.

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The Takeaway

All of these encounters, calls and comments are absolutely true.

Whilst it has, hopefully, provided some amusement, it is also a lesson to any company that runs any sort of outbound cold-calling operation.

First, it should be clear that I would never now buy from E.ON, even if they weren’t, as is almost certainly the situation here, in direct control of the calls made. As the consumer in this case, my perception is that, ultimately, you’re the name in the call script, not the call center's. Your name, your responsibility. This will apply to everyone you call — be careful.

Second, it cost E.ON a lot of money and took a lot of time to ensure that my dislike of their brand would be long-lasting and complete. This was a sort of anti-marketing operation in many ways and, whilst (I assume) it wasn’t intentional, it is a crazy and entirely useless waste of a marketing budget.

So, if you are in any way involved with any sort of cold-calling operation on any level for any product, do us all a favour and check those lists first.

Or, I’ll be writing another one of these articles with your company in it.