Discover Merchant Services. WTF?
For the last several weeks I have been noticing calls on my phone from "Unavailable" coming up while I was sleeping on an almost daily basis. The caller did not leave a message during any of the many times this happened. I was just about to go to bed and my phone rang… it was them!
I picked up the phone and was greeted by an employee who was obviously reading from a script, talking at a mile a minute, slurring her words. I was half asleep, and it sounded like she was asking me to confirm some information about my Discover merchant account, and that a packet of information would be mailed out to me.
She started reading me terms and conditions as fast as possible, and as incomprehensible as possible. Eventually I thought I heard something about a fee. HOLD IT RIGHT THERE. Can you please repeat that, because you were talking way too fast? She apologized for talking fast and then read it again, just as fast. I asked her straight out if I'm going to be charged anything and she explains (a bit slower this time) that there is a $49.95 enrollment fee for a premium services package. Knowing that I definitely don't need this, I stopped her right there and told her to please not make any more sales calls to me ever again.
If you work in sales, there are some simple lessons that can be learned from this:
1.) Don't talk so damn fast!
2.) Try to sound like a human, not a robot reading a script!
3.) If you are going to sell me something, and don't do #1 and #2, even if I actually do need your product the answer is probably going to be NO!
4.) If you call me over twenty times, don't leave a message, and continue to call again, you're not going to be dealing with a receptive customer!
It's no wonder these types of jobs are becoming more susceptible to offshoring.
UPDATE: It turns out this was one of their "business partners" that called me. I called up Discover and requested that they refrain from sending me third-party solicitations.