My Mummy's Pennies: Ring, Ring…. #dontcallme

Cold callers. Just typing those two words annoys me. I know that some lovely people (probably) work in sales, but they’re not the ones that call me! Now the annoyance starts before I even answer the phone, when Elizabeth was a baby and I spent a lot of time at home during the day I would get up to eight unsolicited sales calls a day! Eight! And always at the most inconvenient of times, just as she had latched on or dropped off to sleep… I’d try to ignore it but that’s pretty impossible when I had a 3 year old screaming… ‘mummy, phone ringing!!!’ So most of the time I would answer, and most of the time it would disturb my settled baby and she would start crying, but did that put them off? No! They would continue with their spiel despite me not being able to hear them over the wails of my overtired daughter disturbed from her nap. By the time I had politely declined their offer of a consolidation loan / double glazing / solar panels / switching my utilities ( or ‘accidently’ dropped the phone) I had a wide awake girl and would have to spend the next half an hour settling her down again. It got to the point where I would unplug the phone or turn the ringer off and tell friends and family and people I did want to speak to to call on my mobile. And then what happened? They started calling on my mobile too! And these all seemed to be for the same thing, claiming back PPI. Now IF I was entitled to claim anything back I would find a template letter online and claim it back from the bank directly, not allow an unsolicited caller to take a huge chunk of whatever I would get! As it is I’ve have never had PPI because I have never had a loan or credit card balances. I always try to live within my means. However I try telling that to a cold caller and they will not accept it, I have been called a liar and worse when I have admitted the only debt I have is my student loan, this by someone doing their job! If I spoke to anyone in my workplace like like that i’d have my P45 in seconds! It’s just so hard to get them off the phone, I’ve claimed my boobs were leaking, talked about the smell of my daughters nappy and more but they just won’t hang up!! But I have a secret weapon…. my 5 year old son! When I now get a caller who won’t take a polite no for an answer, I simply pass the phone to him… After a few minutes of, ‘Did you know castles are tall and made of stone and have moats, and drawbridges, and arrowslits and kings and queens and princesses and knights and jesters and  mummies and daddies all live in them…’ or ‘did you know my best friend Joe and I played in the construction area today and built cars, and houses and planes and robots and trucks and a bridge and planes and robots and trucks, then we knocked it all down…’ they always seem to have hung up! Genius! Do you get annoyed by cold callers too? How do you deal with them?

I was asked to share my experience of cold callers by bounty and as a thank you I was kindly sent a lovely Trimphone.