{"id":405292,"date":"2010-03-08T17:18:53","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T22:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10002992"},"modified":"2010-03-08T17:19:12","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T22:19:12","slug":"crazy-cruise-line-telemarketer-pulls-out-every-trick-in-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/405292","title":{"rendered":"Crazy Cruise Line Telemarketer Pulls Out Every Trick In The Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/03\/030810-005-phone-call-thumb-300x223-37888.jpg\">         <\/p>\n<p>John Tedesco of the San Antonio Express-News was badgered last week by a telemarketer who wouldn&#8217;t take no for an answer. He decided to <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.mysanantonio.com\/weblogs\/clockingin\/2010\/03\/offer-for-free-cruise-getaway.html\">keep her talking for a while<\/a> to see how many ways she&#8217;d try to get him to hand over his credit card number for a &#8220;free&#8221; cruise. Here were all the tricks she used during her sales pitch.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He was lucky to get this offer &#8220;because the computer doesn&#8217;t pull everybody up.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>There were a limited number of cabins available for this offer.<\/li>\n<li>Paying a $118 &#8220;port taxes&#8221; fee now would enable him to take 75% off of an &#8220;extended stay package&#8221; should he decide to trade up later.<\/li>\n<li>She couldn&#8217;t call back at a later time. &#8220;You have to understand this is a promotion. It&#8217;s not going to last long.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s right to be concerned about giving credit card info out over the phone: &#8220;We should all be concerned.&#8221; But the cruise line couldn&#8217;t stay in business if it defrauded people.<\/li>\n<li>Paying the $118 gauranteed a saved room on the ship.<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;re with the Better Business Bureau.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I&#8217;m a grandmom. I wouldn&#8217;t do anything that wasn&#8217;t proper.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The cruise line is a certified company with the credit card companies.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Trust me.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>You have 16 months to take the cruise, so you have all the time in the world to mull it over and plan it <em>after<\/em> you pay the $118 today).<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;There&#8217;s nothing that&#8217;s going to hurt you.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;It&#8217;s only $118. It&#8217;s not a whole bunch of money.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Let&#8217;s just get you signed up.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>FINALLY after all of that, she hung up. She was defeated but will certainly go on to fight another day, and probably manage to bully that $118 out of some bewildered person.<\/p>\n<p>Tedesco looked into her company and the claims she made and discovered that in fact she misrepresented a considerable amount of information, including the owner of the cruise ship, her company&#8217;s association with the BBB, and the real reason for the offer: a time-share presentation is involved.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.mysanantonio.com\/weblogs\/clockingin\/2010\/03\/offer-for-free-cruise-getaway.html\">&#8220;Offer for free cruise not so free&#8221;<\/a> [My San Antonio]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Tedesco of the San Antonio Express-News was badgered last week by a telemarketer who wouldn&#8217;t take no for an answer. He decided to keep her talking for a while to see how many ways she&#8217;d try to get him to hand over his credit card number for a &#8220;free&#8221; cruise. Here were all the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4310,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4310"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}