Marketing Calls from Slingshot

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Marketing Calls from Slingshot

LennonNZ

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#29326 3-Jan-2009 13:34

(Alot of this is paraphrased as I can't remember exactly word by word what was said)

Phone: Ring Ring..
Me: ooks at Caller ID (90222) Strange I thought to myself.. the only people who fake CallerID is Telemarketers usually from Australia tryng to sell me timeshares
Me: Answers Phone
Me: Hello....
Me: Pause..
Me: Hello...
Caller: Hi there.. is this Mr XXXXX (XXX = Wifes Previous Name which she hasn't been used for a long time)
Me: Can I ask who is calling?
Caller: Hi there.. my name is XXX and I am calling from Slingshot. (Starts long rant to try and sell me cheap phone calls)
Me: Excuse me.. I work for Another Provider and I am not interested..
Caller: I am calling from Slingshot.. (tries to repeat tring to sell me)
Me: I work for your Competitor in New Zealand and I am not interested. Can I ask your company NOT to call me again. Your company has called numerous times in the last year and I am not interested.
Caller: Thank you (Sounds supprised)
End Call..

- CallerID is faked - Can someone at slingshot please get your outsourced company to get correct Caller ID _PLEASE_
- I have asked them NOT to call me again in the past...
- Call Quality is REALLY bad. Last time they called me it was worse with like a second delay. This time they sounded ALONG way away (India I think the accent was)
- They could not understand me when I said I worked at another Provider . My Accent is not that bad..
- Using Old Data? How do I get off their phone list? (I've asked in the past as far as I can rememeber)

Thanks
Craig

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#187176 3-Jan-2009 15:10

Had same issues with them calling, and no, they dont remove you from there calling 'list' when you request it.

I dont use a DSL technology for internet, and nor do I want to, but if I was, I would NOT consider using slingshot in the future due to there marketing practices.

I can accept telemarketing (dont like it, but accept it), but if slingshot call and want to sell me internet and tolls, and I say I'm not interested, and request that they never call me again in regards to there products that should be it. If they cant respect my wishes as a customer, why would I want to be a customer of theres?

hellonearthisman

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#187179 3-Jan-2009 15:34

LennonNZ:
- CallerID is faked - Can someone at slingshot please get your outsourced company to get correct Caller ID _PLEASE_

- They could not understand me when I said I worked at another Provider . My Accent is not that bad..
- Using Old Data? How do I get off their phone list? (I've asked in the past as far as I can rememeber)

I like those ideas Craig. Fake caller ID's for marketing is rude.

When I have called the helpdesk I have at times had language problems, especially when I had to read random letters and numbers from a youtube url for testing purposes. I wonder if Slingshot uses this kind of Sales calling to expand there operators language skills or to expand some kind of data mining. My tin foil hat also has flags poping up, your a Competitor and your getting these unwanted calls that just mess with you. Maybe not. :)

I am a Slingshot customer and I got a few calls from Slingshot, trying to sell me... I managed to get off the list, for now. Would have been cool if they when, "hey your a customer, cool, here's $5 tolls". I don't get calls from any other ISP trying to sell me there warez.

Ragnor

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#187196 3-Jan-2009 16:57

Might be useful to you...

NZ Marketing Association Do No Call List
http://www.nzma.simplicitycrm.com/editors/content.aspx?config=NRR_DoNotCall

.. of course not all companies honor the list but many do.

BlakJak

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#187218 3-Jan-2009 19:55

Cheers for posting. You've just validated my ongoing intention to stay as far away from Slingshot and her parent company as much as I can. The ol' phrase 'vote with your feet' works here as well as anywhere else; if it can be established that it doesnt work, they will give up. Eventually.

Never EVER buy services sold via telemarketing. Ever.
And refuse to support companies who engage in it.

No signature to see here, move along...

LennonNZ

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#187228 3-Jan-2009 20:37

BlakJak: Cheers for posting. You've just validated my ongoing intention to stay as far away from Slingshot and her parent company as much as I can. The ol' phrase 'vote with your feet' works here as well as anywhere else; if it can be established that it doesnt work, they will give up. Eventually.

Never EVER buy services sold via telemarketing. Ever.

And refuse to support companies who engage in it.

I have nothing against Slingshot themselves (Yes I work for one of them competitors but that really had nothing to do with it). The problem was the Outbound Callcenter they where using.

I've delt with quite a number of non NZ helpdesks in the past for various reasons and I've never had good dealings with them getting problems resolved. Language , Local knowledge and Phone delay are all quite a problem, but it seems alot of companies do it these days.

Vodafone, Telecom , Slingshot..

See: http://www.tuanz.org.nz/blog/35597212-63c7-42ac-9f09-b11740cee745/5315031c-1ded-42cf-ae2f-7abdc4259ee3.html

smeenz

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#187229 3-Jan-2009 20:38

Okay Craig, you made me register... and I guess <competing provider> doesn't do the same thing ?.. hmmm...

But yes, Marketing types... I actually had the questionable luck of being conferenced in on one of their calls to hear how bad it was.. it was indeed bad, and provided those who were listening at the time with much entertainment. Sorry about that.. apparently they can't be trained.

BlakJak

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#187232 3-Jan-2009 20:55

Craig: Onceuponatime Callplus had an in-house telemarketing firm. I cant remember the specifics but it's a goneburger these days. The fact theyre outsourcing to an apparently utterly incompetent firm based (probably) in India just serves to further highlight various personal beliefs i'm not going to bring up here at this stage in the game... after all telemarketing is a 'sales technique' and sales is all about driving up profits...

What really racks me off though is when these firms are deliberately evasive. For example, my home landline is unlisted, confidential and rarely given to anyone. I still receive marketing calls. Each time when I ask where they got my number from, it's a 'third party list of numbers supplied'.

Once I traced this back to an Australian firm who weren't able to tell me where they got the number from themselves, but were able to assure me I was in their do-not-call list from there on in. That's better than nothing, but I liken it to dealing with spam; it should be opt-in, not opt-out! People don't sign up to telephone services in order to be cold-called by people selling junk they generally don't want.

Thus my animosity. The only firms with any credibility who also engage in telemarketing use people who can be understood; who are readily accountable, and who respect 'do not call'. And who don't 'war-dial' phone numbers or purchase contact databases from third parties... !

Correct CLI is the least you should ask for, though, in all likelyhood the best you could expect would be for them to point it back at Slingshot's inbound pilot number :(

No signature to see here, move along...

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

Doctor

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#187399 4-Jan-2009 22:31

Had an interesting experience when they rung me once.
I could barely understand them to begin with, the inhead translation service was going full speed trying to decypher what they were saying.

Anyway they started their speil about fabulous calling rates etc and then asked numerous times who I was with (they had to, I couldn't understand them) to which I said TelstraClear. What followed was amusing and roughly went like this

"Who are you with sir"
"TelstraClear"
"Not Telecom Sir?"
"Nope TelstraClear"

*pause*

"f em" followed by a prompt *click* as they hung up on me

Not sure what caused them to hangup like that but it was damn funny

boby55

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#187404 4-Jan-2009 23:37

While I was a slingshot customer I use to still get calls offering there services to me even asking multipul times to be removed from there mailing list even in writing which I got a writen reponse back stating I had been removed.

So I took it apon myself to annoy the caller by the following:

Caller: Hello Sir I am Ringing from Slingshot and I have great offers on toll calls/internet.
Myself: Who did you say your ringing for sorry?
Caller: Slingshot Sir
Myself: Ah Slingshots I use to have one of those but my rubber band broke, Are you able to sell me a replacement?
Caller: No sir Im calling from Slingshot tele......
Myself: Yes I know what slingshot are, I use to enjoy them as a 10year old did you?
Caller: Ar, Goodbye Sir
and they hung up.

After doing that two times Ive never had another call from them in the last 2 years

brentbart

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#187437 5-Jan-2009 09:08

Perhaps I am just rude, but as soon as I get a call and I know its a telemarketer, I terminate the call. Not in a overtly rude way ...

more sort of

"Hi, I am calling from ..."

"No thank you" <click>

After living in London for a few years and getting bombarded with them, I found that if you listen to their script you might give them false hope and they might try to call back again.

The classic one for me though was a TelstraClear rep who knocked on my door awhile back saying he could get a better deal for mobile calls then the plan I am on now. "Better than free?" He went "ummmm .... no"

xpd

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#187452 5-Jan-2009 10:10

brentbart:

The classic one for me though was a TelstraClear rep who knocked on my door awhile back saying he could get a better deal for mobile calls then the plan I am on now. "Better than free?" He went "ummmm .... no"

I had similar from a Slingshot rep.... told me SLingshot guaranteed they could beat any deal out there for cellphone calls etc - at the time, both my wife and I had company cellphones, and her company paid for our internet and home line.

I told the rep this and he insisted they could beat it..... I should have let him continue and see how he worked out that Slingshot would make money from paying me because that was the only way to beat free....

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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riahon

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#187457 5-Jan-2009 10:26

If someone asks for the owner of the house or Mr (my surname) then the answer is "Sorry he is overseas. I'm just housesitting, give me your number and I'lll get him to call you back"

honem

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#190293 18-Jan-2009 00:43

My apologies for the ninja 2 week old thread bump but Ive only just seen this thread (prehaps close to a lock lol)

From my time at Telecom the most insidious thing Slingshot used to do was swtich people over [b]without asking for permission to do so[/b].I remember getting soo many calls from people confused as to where their Toll calls were. These were people that made regular calls overseas every month. They thought it strange they weren't getting billed for their toll calls (god bless honest customers :D). I'ld check their line and lo and behold the code for non Telecom tolls were in there !!!

Used to happen a lot. To the young and elderly citizens alike.

"Who are you with sir"
"TelstraClear"
"Not Telecom Sir?"
"Nope TelstraClear"

He was ringing from Telecom and didn't even try to win you back to Telecom ? Fail !

==================================
- Hone , Often accused of Excess Verbosity
==================================

Slingshot

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#190492 19-Jan-2009 11:41

Applogies for this - agreed not a good look.

Anyone that would like to be removed please PM your phone number.

www.slingshot.co.nz

www.twitter.com/SlingshotNZ

https://www.facebook.com/SlingshotNZ

rossmnz

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#190519 19-Jan-2009 13:11

im with Slingshot for voip calls via iTalk and have never had a call from them that i can remember. They didnt even call me to tell me my credit card had expired and i didnt give them new details(id forgotten). When i did call up to ask why my iTalk wasnt allowing me to dial out the dude just said "your credit card details are wrong and you owe us $50 for your last 3 months billing".

I just have to keep my eyes on the website occasionally to keep track of any updates in the plans etc. Recently they changed the plans and had different tiers. Had to call again and confirm which plan i had been put on.

Still when Telecom ditched the Go large ie unlimited plan they also tried to move me to a different plan "its faster, and cheaper!" without telling me either.

After several irate phone calls they put me back on the Go large plan. Total 'tards.

The force is strong with this one!

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