It was the ring of my mobile phone followed by the inkling from my wife which woke me up from a very lazy Saturday morning nap. “Hey… its and STD call” my wife grumbled. I just wondered how the hell does it matter if its an STD or an ISD call if I pick it up a bit later. I grabbed the phone from her hand cursing and at the same time a bit curious too. As I pressed the accept button in my new fancy mobile (damn… picking up the receiver was a much easier task than finding the “accept” button :)) the sweet sound of a lady just started flowing in …“Good morning Sir I am “xyz” calling from Citibank Chennai office. Am I speaking to Mr. Sajith G Augustine?”
“Yes” – I replied. Wonder why they should ask this question when they are calling to a personal mobile number!
“Sir based on your excellent transaction with our Bank, we are pleased to inform you that we have approved your request to increase your credit limit to 60,000!!” – She informed me with a tailor made tone.
I was quite confused and asked her “Dear one, when did I ever made such a request to your bank?”
“This is a free offer sir, we have done it voluntarily and it’s absolutely free of charges sir” – she replied.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I am happy with the current credit limit and please do not call me again for any such offers henceforth please!” – I requested to her while trying to imitate an annoying tone
She was not going to leave me and asked – “Sir may I know the reason?”
I was getting a bit irritated now and told her – “No you may not” and I was just about to say thank you and end the conversation, here comes the next question –
“Sir if you don’t mind would u like to take a pre-approved loan of about 2 lks sir”
This is it. I really got pizzed off and replied with a raised, rather annoying tone “Yes I would love to. If you just give it to me for free. I promise I would return the amount in 25 years or so”. Without waiting to hear the response I disconnected the phone.
This was just one of the many calls I received on my mobile on the same day. All the Banks, Clubs, Insurance companies seems to have my number with them somehow. If you think the newly introduced “DO NOT CALL” service from TRAI would help you in this, think again. I would suggest you to read the article on this which was published a few days back in Times Of India. It says even with this service enabled, people still get such prank calls and even one of our high court judge who received numerous such calls got pizzed off and had to lodge a complaint against it
Most of the time we end up shouting at the person who is calling us where in they might be just doing it as part of their job. Its not them who is deserved to be kicked around, rather it would be these companies who should get the penalty.
Government have to come up with some laws such as taking the number off the air if it is reported doing telemarketing to prevent this rather annoying practice. Till such times we the poor consumers are to bare with this it seems.
One advice would be to, never fill in your phone number in any shopping malls gift coupons, courier delivery boys etc…. net net… reveal your phone number only if you have to :)
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