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October 23, 2006

Hedge funds for the rest of us

Poor old Chad, I think that's what he said his name was. He was on the line for 30 seconds at least before resorting to insults. But it's an indication that boiler-room salespeople just don't have the stamina anymore to get through those vital first minutes before losing it.

I think it might have been the point where I said, "That's two lies you've told me. Want to try for the third?" that sent him over the edge. He got off to a bad start, using cold-call lie number one: "Hi, I'm from X. I'm checking to see whether you got the information pack we sent you."

As a journalist, I get PRs trying the goldfish-memory tactic every once in a while. ("If you recall our conversation the other week about meeting our client's marketing VP..." "No, I don't. But I think you'll recall I said no...") So, I'm used to it. That people try this one on never ceases to amaze me. I can only assume that, sometimes, it works. I told Chad or Chet or Jeb that he hadn't sent me anything.

For some reason he decided to then tell me he was ringing from "London, England"*. Which was curious because the caller display had INTERNATIONAL lit up on the LCD. (Why BT can't get it together to display most international numbers is still a mystery to me - it works the other way round.) I wasn't sure why he was trying to convince me he was ringing from the UK rather than some dingy basement in New York as all he was doing was convincing me that lie number two was in progress.

It all went wrong for Chad or Charles or Chuck at that point. I was less than convinced of his location so he offered to tell me the number of Dean and Bradshaw, the hedge fund for which he was selling so I could check them out. "Hey, I'm not going to give you that number because I think you're a dickhead."

I was waiting for the click, brr moment. But there was more. Which was nice, as I was a bit curious as to why a hedge fund was calling me for a financial injection. And I had to give our less than friendly boiler-roomee some credit. He was still trying to sell even after having called me a dickhead and somehow surmising that I must be a divorcee and that I've got to learn to trust somebody some time. I don't think he was expecting me to start laughing at that point, although he had a half-decent grasp of reverse psychology.

"You know, you sound like kind of a young guy. Most of the people I deal with are over 45. I guess you probably don't meet our criteria for investors," said Chad or Brad or Brett or whatever his name really was. Yes, I suppose it was worth a try. Try to insinuate that I'm not man enough to invest in a big boy's hedge fund in the hope that I will demand he takes fifty grand off me just in down payment. Having not had my brain sucked out and replaced with lemon jelly, I agreed with him: "I guess you're right."

No, the people that 'Dean & Bradshaw' (nice choice of name I have to say, got that ring of legitimacy courtesy of the D&B connotation) ring probably wouldn't know a hedge fund if it came after them with a large pair of secateurs. In some ways I regret having employed cold call tactic number one. I'm still curious as to what the patter is for selling what purports to be a hedge-fund investment over the phone. And I wasn't quick enough to think of the perfect retort when he said: "I guess you don't know what it's like being a broker for a fund like this. I only have to make two of these calls a year." Unfortunately, the rejoinder of "Yeah, I do actually. I used to work for Long-Term Capital Management" eluded me until after the call was over.

* A little tip for non-locals. Nobody who has spent more than a couple of weeks here calls it London, England. It's a city of seven million people. You're unlikely to mistake it for London, Ontario.

Posted by Chris at 8:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 21, 2006

Welcome to the spam-trap

Here's a little hint for PRs who think putting small logos in their emails is a really neat idea. It's not. It's a good way to end up in the spam-trap.

Like a lot of people, I have two lines of spam defence. One is on the mailserver, courtesy of good old SpamAssassin. The second line is the email client which, in my case, is Entourage. Its spam filter is fairly effective and has worked that a lot of spam messages have little GIFs embedded in them in an attempt to work around the Bayesian text filters.

What this means is that all those companies that think they're clever for having worked out how to format their emails prettily and stick little images of "PR Company of the Year" trophies and their logos in them are finding that the emails just wind up floating around with over-the-counter stock spam. Sometimes, I fish the messages out of the bin and, if they are really lucky, the senders get whitelisted.

Posted by Chris at 9:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Don't charm me with your telephone manner

My record for getting a call-centre rep to hang up is now at what I think could be an all-time low. The rules for this game are simple: time the call and, without resorting to insults or shouting, get them to either swear at you or petulantly hang up. Congratulations to some guy from what purports to be "The Phone Shop" to be off the line in less than 20 seconds.

It went something like this:

Him: "Hello, I'm calling from the Phone Shop. I want to ask if you've received your 10 per cent discount from Orange."

Me: "I think it's unlikely, as I told you yesterday."

Him: "This is the first time I've called you."

Me: "I don't think it is, otherwise, why would I mention yesterday's conversation?"

Him: "This is the first time I've called. Good. Bye." Click, brr.

I didn't even get as far as trying to get their address (generally impossible) or office phone number (probably false or permanently engaged). Other than hanging up on potential customers for no reason, I can't quite fathom what The Phone Shop's little wheeze is. They did actually call the day before (different operator of course) and we went through the dance of "Who are you? Where are you calling from?". So it took a little longer for that call to suddenly end. Before we got to that point, I was told, for some reason, they needed a house number and a postcode in order to "give me my discount".

At the time, I asked them why, if they were calling on behalf of my (soon to be ex) mobile-phone company - companies like this cold call with the permission of Orange - they didn't already have the information on record? The usual excuses about "needing the information to process the claim" ensued. If I hadn't before, I definitely lost interest there.

Posted by Chris at 9:29 AM | Comments (4)