I was watching Being Julia when the phone rang for the third time. No, I wasn't interested in taking part in a market study. The last time I said yes, I was lied to about how long it would last, I was told I had to listen to and answer every question in a long section that was not applicable to me in any way, and when I said that I had to go and didn't want to finish answering the stupid survey, I was harassed for several more minutes about the importance of completing the questionnaires. Fuck you. If your big corporation can contract out big market studies like this, they can do a better job of designing the survey, and they can give me a financial incentive or compensation for wasting 20 minutes of my precious time answering your invasive and poorly worded questions.
I conducted telephone interviews for the LSU Department of Sociology when I was a poor undergraduate student, and I have a Master's in epidemiology, so I know the importance of random sampling and fully completed questionnaires. But in contrast to corporate market studies, scientific research is blatantly honest and up-front about informed consent, and interview content and duration.
I'm happy to answer any survey for scientific or non-profit purposes. When the municipalities of Montreal were merged into one large city, the government sponsored a survey to find out about residents' satisfaction with municipal services, and I was more than happy to answer it. For free. But don't expect me to tell you how I spend my disposable income and what products I buy. Not for free, anyway. Do your own homework and stop wasting my time.
milky [email] said at 11:16 PM 07-13-2005: Some of us were poor undergrad mass comm students and had to do these surveys for corporate marketing because we needed to eat.
milky [email] said at 12:12 AM 07-14-2005: she snottily said she did research in sociology, which is apparently really important, and thus apparently better than what i had to do.
myriam [email] said at 12:18 AM 07-14-2005: whoa dude, how did you read "snottily" and condencension toward you into her random factual comment that she had done phone interviews in college for money?
jeremy [email] said at 11:38 AM 07-14-2005: You're going to have to accept that Gen is an academic and it's going to find it's way into every post. When you spend every waking moment thinking about school/research that's what happens.
gen [email] said at 6:35 PM 07-14-2005: Milky - I hope that you can see now that you completely misinterpreted this post and read in it things that are nowhere said or implied or meant. This post isn't about you or individual call center employees, but about the cheap and sleazy methods used by big corporations to gather information about consumers. I don't know why you took it personally, but it sounds like you did.
myriam [email] said at 1:07 PM 07-14-2005: Self-centered people make bad lovers. Just because I call him on his petty sensitivity does not mean I want to fuck him.
brandon [email] said at 10:02 PM 07-14-2005: In America, Woody, the name for those square slices of 'milk' you put between bread is cheese. You Canadians and your silly french names for things. Milk sandwiches indeed.
gen [email] said at 11:31 AM 07-14-2005: I never put down any of the poor souls actually conducting the telephone interviews. My beef is with the sleezy and greedy corporations that use this cheap method of getting valuable consumer information - at least pay your interviewees for their time, or offer them some sort of financial incentive to spend 20 minutes on the phone helping you increase your profit margin.
gen [email] said at 11:37 AM 07-14-2005: Not only should it be unacceptable to mislead interviewees who ask how long the survey takes on average - "Just a few minutes" is far from "about 25 minutes", but the average interview duration should be diclosed in the introduction without the interviewee having to prompt the interviewer for it.
gen [email] said at 11:56 AM 07-14-2005: I actually really enjoyed conducting telephone surveys. For one of the studies I got to interview crawfish and shrimp fishermen and the questionnaire asked about lifestyle, satisfaction with lifestyle, impact of new fishing quotas on lifestyle, fishing methods used, etc - each interview lasted about 45 minutes on average and there were several open-ended questions at the end - challenging for the interviewer to code, but it yielded a wealth of interesting information not otherwise captured by multiple choice questions. And the fishermen were generally very cooperative, and even happy that someone cared to study the deterioration in their lifestyle (apparently due to small family fishing operations not being able not compete with new large fishing companies).
milky [email] said at 12:26 PM 07-14-2005: I assisted in finding a location for a charity hospital based on the needs of a community. It was marketing research, for profit, and I spoke so fast, I got paid cash bonuses for keeping call times (overhead) low. I also helped people file for state refunds because they were overcharged for taxes on the purchase of mobile homes. Gouged.
In contrast, the academic telephone surveys I did at LSU _did_ annoy people. It was music preference one time, and something asinine the other.
But these are my experiences. Yes, my call center was like a sweatshop, but I was paid to work, not dick around on the telephone...so I did my job at the highest speed and efficiency, and removed people from random number generators who didn't want to respond to surveys. It was the first job I had that I earned outright because of skills I learned in college, not because the state university gave me employment, and considering where my life was, and that I took the bus to work, I was damn proud of myself.
I used the skills to do marketing research for a homebuilder.
These all translated into a speaking voice people were receptive to, as well as a non-condescending demeanor...all of which became natural benefits for counseling people, which I do for free and I love.
I learned to use research methodology, how to code data, and use SPSS.
And the people who worked beside me at that marketing research center worked as hard as I did or they were promptly fired. I earned a reference that was invaluable in employment and applying to graduate schools.
mary [email] said at 4:34 PM 07-14-2005: I agree that these calls are obnoxious. Fortunately, the do-not-call list in the U.S. seems to work pretty well. We used to get 3-5 calls like that every night. After I put the number on the DNC list, we get ...
mary [email] said at 4:37 PM 07-14-2005: I agree that these calls are obnoxious. Fortunately, the do-not-call list in the U.S. seems to work pretty well. We used to get 3-5 calls like that every night. After I put the number on the DNC list, we get ...
gen [email] said at 7:18 PM 11-20-2005: Today, the biggest asshole market researcher called while I was preparing dinner. I said I wasn't interested and hung up. Three seconds later, the phone rang again - same company, different asshole. Again I said that I wasn't interested in participating, and hung up. The jerk called right back. He tried to explain to me the importance of random sampling. Again, I told him that I wasn't interested in participating and hung up. He then called back 3 times, and I just picked up and hung up - I didn't want the machine to pick up. He called back again, and I repeated that I wasn't interested in participating and I asked him not to call again, and he told me "Fuck you!" as I was hanging up. He didn't stop calling, so I unplugged the phone until I finished dinner. He hasn't called since.
I thought of *69ing the number and asking to speak to his supervisor about this person's unacceptable behaviour. But I'd rather not talk to anyone from a company that allows this kind of abuse. He said the company name, but I wasn't familiar with the name, and I don't remember it now.
gen [email] said at 7:23 PM 11-20-2005: The freak just wouldn't take NO for an answer. What did he expect? 100% participation rate? NEVER happens. Fucking jerk.
Gracie said at 5:55 PM 12-16-2005: I run a small business from my home and so when they called me the first time, I said I would be happy to take their survey but ONLY if they called me after Christmas, when I wasn't swamped with work.
They called again and again I told them again to call me after Christmas. When they called a third time, the woman wouldn't take no for an answer, she begged me to take the damn survey "I know you have said no, but we don't have enough respondents in your area and I am asking you to "puleeeze", just answer the survey?".
I said no and I told her that I was no longer interested in taking the survey. Furthermore, I would not take the survey even if they paid me to do so. I asked to be taken of their phone list, she told me she couldn't do that and another operator would be calling me again.
It was at this point that I asked to speak to her supervisor, she told me to hold and then hung up on me.
Here is the company info in case anyone would like to call them back time and time again to ask them if they would like to take a survey with regards to harassing survey takers -
Their outgoing # is - 514-448-4585
The guy who called me tonight gave me this as their office number - 514-284-0221
This is what Canada411.com lists -
Impact Research
2100 Rue Drummond
Montreal, Quebec
H3G 1X1
514-845-3577
sara said at 10:05 PM 08-21-2007: i have been called by this "514-448-4585" over 6 times in the past hour. I checked the White Pages and it says its coming from Montreal Quebec, I was in montreal a few weeks ago and the only place i left my number was at the Hotel and a ghost tour...is anyone else's story similar to that?
Smumdax said at 12:39 AM 09-21-2007: Received the call from same number (514) 448-4585. Caller ID: MBA RE 323... The guy had a VERY clear accent from India (I'm not racist, I state facts). I said first I was not interested, he then said it would only take 5 minutes. I said I didn't have 5 minutes. He asked maybe he could call tomorrow, at what time? I said no, not tomorrow either because I'm not interested in answering his survey. He said that it was an important survey and that my opinion mathers. I said "There are over 6 million people in the province of Quebec... surely you can find someone else."
Then I asked that he remove me from his list. He semmed to be a bit confused. I said that I was not interested in being called back, so I want my name and phone number to be removed from his list. He simply answered "Uh ok..."
I then said... "Ok? That's all you give me? Can I have a confirmation please?" He then seemed confused again. I said again that I wanted a confirmation that my number and name were removed from their list. And then... that is were I almost laughed at him, he said: "Well, we can call you back tomorrow to give you confirmation"...!?... lol...!?
Man!... So I chukled a bit, then said that he must be joking right? I ask to remove my number so that I'm not being called again, and to confirm me that it is really remove, he must call me back??
