The past few weeks, at my work, we have been getting tons of calls supposedly from our current phone service provider. The big one who was recently involved in a big merger. I answer the phones, but the president of the company is who makes the decisions.
When the calls first started, the telemarketers claim to be from this company, and ask to "speak to the person in charge of your phone service". They say that they want to save us money and put us on a new rate plan. Now my boss is the type that does NOT switch phone plans and carriers very often. Every time he has, our phones have been screwed up. When we switched to this company, the first few days they had cancelled our roll-over, so many customers would call, only to get a busy signal when the main phone line was being used. Instead of rolling over to line 2, line 3, etc.
But, the way they go about it has been sending up red flags. My boss' name is on the account as the contact person, but the caller doesn't know who to ask for. AND, they do not know how many phone lines and what services we have!
My boss has told them several times he is not interested in changing plans, and told them point blank to stop calling. We are on a good plan for unlimited local and long distance, plus a toll-free number that is ppm. When we switched to this plan about 3-4 years ago, it saved about $200 a month. I think if it IS really our phone company calling, they are just wanting to get us off this good plan.
But, of course, the calls continue. Then the story changed to our rate plan is being discontinued, and that our bill will "skyrocket" August 1st if we don't change. Again, the person on the other end does not know who to ask to speak to, and don't know what services and how many phone lines we have. How can you tell us that our bill will skyrocket if you know nothing about what we have?
I've been instructed not to transfer the calls to him anymore, and not to give out his name. Boy, the callers sure get pissy over that when they realize they aren't getting past me. We get so many telemarketing calls each week, it would be ludicrious for him to talk to everyone of them. But, each caller thinks they are the most important call. I give them the fax # to send over something and I will put it in front of my boss, but they get hateful and say "well, if YOU aren't the person who handles the phone service, then HOW can *I* discuss this with you?"
It would seem to me that if our rate plan was going to be discontinued (or the rate increased), there would be something about it in our bill. If they weren't honoring company A's phone plans anymore, wouldn't there be something in writing about that somewhere?
So, I wonder if it really is our phone company, or another company trying to bait and switch. ???