I had them call me today. They were quite polite... When you don't speak English to them. I ALWAYS answer the phone from a number I don't know in Spanish. Hell, my Spanish sucks too, any High School first year Spanish class student is better than me; But that's besides the point here. I always answer the phone with a 'Hola' and say nothing more. Let them do the talking. All you need to know is two more words, 'No' and 'Si'. They figure it out real quick that you don't speak their language(those racist b@stards!) and quickly hang up.
Switch to decaf man. Don't know what your agenda is, but people who call you through some round about "got the number from the other thing that you signed up for" aren't calling you because you asked for them to do this. What do they do with the information that they collect? - they profile you for other marketing programs and then you end up getting calls, e-mails, snail mail, etc. from additional companies that will try to extract money from your wallet.
I am sure that this stems from an airline, hotel, car rental, etc. because they are calling my work cell phone, and these numbers are tied to this phone because I NEED these companies to contact me if there is a problem with my reservation. I am not asking them to market or conduct market research, I just want to know if I will have a bed to sleep in while traveling.
As for your "pick up the phone" mantra, I have customers that I meet with and with these numbers calling, I can't answer the phone and interrupt a customer need. I need to leave the phone on (vibrate) in order to make sure that I can respond to a legitimate customer emergency or to know who to call quickly after a meeting. A "legitimate business" who has a past relationship with you would not set up the phone as an anonymous number - they would have a caller ID name that would allow you to know that a company that you have a relationship with is trying to contact you. They don't give this informatio because they want to ambush you. A "legitimate business" would also leave you a voice mail and ask you to call back when it is convenient for you. They would not call again, and again, without a proper message. My message sounded like a Beavis and [***] episode "Uh...Hello?" <CLICK!>.
So if this is a legitimate business, LEARN TO ACT LIKE ONE!. If you want something, call once, leave a message stating your wnats/needs with a way to return your call, and if you don't recieve a call back - LEAVE ME ALONE!.
And please stop telling us how we should behave when recieving an unsolicited and unwanted call. It's our phone, we/our employers pay for the phone and it's absolutely within our right to expect that our time will be respected by a "legitimate business". If our time is not respected, then we can only assume that we are being hassled by a SPAM-Marketer.
I don't care what their job is, and I don't care how they make a living. I am putting them on the D.N.C. list because, quite frankly, I DON'T WANT THEM CALLING ME! Four. times. a. day. they call and call and call and call.....I should just change my number. I don't even answer my phone anymore as 90% of the calls are scammers.
Stone Research Services conducts marketing research, lots of times their phone numbers are given by their clients who want to gather information and make valuable changes in their companies.
These people are just trying to make a living. Seriously, if you people have time to get on the internet to complain about these calls, then you probably have time to take a five minute survey that will help market research.