French Letter: How to give a cold-caller the cold shoulder

I don’t know how it is in the UK these days, but in France telemarketing remains part and parcel of everyday life. There’s a government-sponsored service that’s supposed to cut them off, but it requires you to enter the caller’s numbers onto an online list, which is both time-consuming and usually impossible. 

My wife and I each have a mobile phone (mine being a replacement for the one that I left in a motorway service area in the Vendée), and these are not affected. But the chunky little phone that squats on the bookcase next to the French windows might as well be described as a marketing device for the French services sector. 

At the very least they ought to foot the bill. 

It rings every ten minutes. Its tiny screen used to show nothing, just a row of zeroes, in which case I let fly with a well-rehearsed curse before pressing the red disconnect button. But more recently, numbers have started to show, suggesting that there is someone on the other end who genuinely needs to speak to me. 

“Allo,” I say. “Qui c’est?” 

Silence. Various whirrs and clicks, followed by a plaintiff voice inquiring if I am indeed Monsieur Ellis Walter.

Either that or nothing. Nothing at all. Just a distant whirr, as if from an echo chamber, followed by the realisation that the line has gone dead. 

My assumption in the latter case is that the caller, sitting in his bedroom in Grenoble or Bayonne has got at least four phones ringing out at once so that when someone picks up he shuts off the other three. 

There is no point, you have to understand, in phoning any of these people back. The numbers that come up on screen are bogus. If you attempt to return the call, all you get is a non-stop ring-tone or the dread “Desolé, mais ce numero n’est pas disponible”. 

I would like to set my voicemail so that it emits the sound of a trumpeting elephant in response to nuisance calls. But I don’t know how to do that, and anyway what if the caller is my son, or my sister, or the doctor’s surgery, or — as was the case this afternoon — the man from Bricomarché announcing the arrival of our new lawnmower? 

In the case of the delivery man, he was calling from our front gate, which is clearly marked with our names and street address. He could have walked up the steps and knocked on the door. But this is 2022 and everything has to be done remotely. I leaned out the window to wave to him and he waved back while continuing to speak into his phone. 

Anyway, the new tondeuse now sits downstairs in our basement, awaiting my attempts to assemble it, which may very well be the subject of next week’s column. 

But who are these people who call me constantly? I’m guessing that each of them must have got through to me, however briefly, at least a dozen times. I mean, how many individuals can there be who desperately want to sell me life insurance, health cover, double-glazing, alternative energy supplies, thermal heat pumps, solar panels or external insulation? And how many of these are willing to keep on calling me just to hear that they have in fact reached a Chinese laundry? I am reminded of Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. 

But what a dismal job to be in, where your calling is literally calling. It would drive me mad. Do they make a sale one time in a hundred or once in a thousand? I would like to think it was more like one in ten thousand.  

It’s not that I am altogether impervious to the possibility of change. I would, for example, like to invest in a thermal heating system, just not on the basis of a call from someone I don’t know. 

Should we get rid of our landline? Probably. Lots of our friends and neighbours are now completely mobile. But I am old-fashioned and prefer a belt and braces approach to telephony… excerpt that I’ve just realised that if our mobiles go dead, so will our landline, which is part of the same Orange package that otherwise includes our internet Livebox and multi-channel tv link. 

Gerry Seinfeld, of 1990s sitcom fame, knew how to deal with telemarketers. Feel free to follow his example. 

Caller: Hi, Mr Seinfeld, would you be interested in switching over to ENI long-distance service? 

Gerry: Gee, I can’t talk right now, but why don’t you give me your home number and I’ll call you later? 

Caller: I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed to do that. 

Gerry: Oh, I guess you don’t want people calling you at home. 

Caller: Er … no. 

Gerry: Well, now you know how I feel.