pumpkinstrokemarrow

Becoming something of an expert in the activities of people who pester one over the phone. Some of whom are honestly selling something, some of whom are pretending to do a survey and some of whom are actually doing a survey. They seem to have a penchant for calling in the early evening and weekends and to have a remarkable knack for annoying BH - who had thought that by signing up to something called the TPS she was exempt. (The telephone preference service being an operation run by the direct marketing industry and supervised by the Information Commissioner. See http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/).

It all came to a head last week when we get a series of calls, all from the same gang, but a gang which is not deterred by simply asking them to go away. Along the way we acquire the words tns and cantor to bite on.

Onto Google, and tns rapidly resolves itself into a serious looking outfit with a serious looking website at http://www.tnsglobal.com/. Possibly some sprig of our very own Taylor Nelson here at Epsom. Quite a lot of jobs going. I could for example be a VP in Canada answering to the description 'we are looking for a motivated, consultative client service professional who wants to leverage the best and most comprehensive research toolbox in the industry'.

I then move in on cantor which resolves into another serious looking outfit with a sufficiently cunning website that I am unable to capture the fascinating guff they put on it. See http://www.kantar.com/. For some reason, I try another of the Google hits at http://www.kantaroperations.com/ who admit to a substantial operation in India. Is it a call centre? But bigger in the UK and in North America. Quite a lot more jobs going. If I fancied something a bit techy I could try for 'a rare and exciting opportunity has arisen within the Kantar Operations Global Technical Solutions and Development Team for an experienced consultant/programmer/developer already well versed in the Dimensions platform and related technologies (e.g. HTML, XML, JavaScript, Flash/AS3, .Net etc)'. All of which suggests that IT has a big part to play in this operation. Probably a bit old for this, so I try the contact us tab instead. Fill in the various boxes, including a complaint about persistent callers. In just under two hours I get a serious looking reply from a person who has a name, postal address, email address and telephone number. It turns out that if you get a computer to generate random numbers to call for market research purposes there is no rule which says you have to pass that random number against the TPS exclusion list before calling it. Because, while marketing is included in the TPS, market research is excluded. However, if I care to supply my telephone number, they will see what they can do.

Which I do. In just under an hour I get another reply explaining what is going in and that I can go onto the Kantor exclusion list which will at least stop us being pestered any more by them. We hope that we are now on this list.

BH not completely mollified, but I am. This email exchange might have been largely computer generated, but it was quick, informative and, I hope, effective. My only beef is that the chaps & chapesses on the Kantor front line did not seem to be able to take no for an answer. That required email intervention.

Sadly, BH even less mollified when she was called by some other gang at around noon this Sunday morning. Don't the people who do this sort of work have hangovers to look after?