I got a call from a telemarketer about making us their exclusive agent for Miami and Miami Beach for a 19% referral on their top notch site with massive traffic…….blah blah blah blah
The conversation went as follows:
Me: “What’s the name of your company?”
Telemarketer: “E-Perks”
Me: “You mean E-Jerks”
Telemarketer: “No ….. hummmm …. E-Perks”
Me: “Inside Joke. You should have started with the company name and I wouldn’t have let you waste my time. You mess with one real estate blogger, you mess with all of us. Thank you and good bye!”
ENOUGH SAID
If you are lost, read Russell’s post:
An Open Letter to Ben Behrouzi
(and thanks for the image Russell)
Jay Thompson
October 7, 2008 at 8:58 am
Nicely done Ines! I had an interesting email exchange with eJerks not long ago. I asked to be removed from their mailing list. They claimed they didn’t have a mailing list. They said they “hand chose selected agents” or some such crap.
Seriously, if someone says “Don’t contact me again, ever” do ya really think they’ll be swayed by some spammy email and/or phone call? They need to extract their heads from that dark place and get with the program.
Ines Hegedus-Garcia
October 7, 2008 at 11:47 am
“hand choose selected agents” – yeah right! LOL
They have to understand that even in this competitive market, we are a pretty tight group – how dare they mess with that? 😉
Missy Caulk
October 7, 2008 at 11:52 am
Laughing my head off, most of us in the blog world would know, I wonder if the person did ?
Ines Hegedus-Garcia
October 7, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Missy – she was absolutely clueless!
Scott Cowan
October 7, 2008 at 1:57 pm
YES!!!! this is excellent news. I am so happy you called them e Jerks and they were clueless…. We do need to stick together!
Vicki Moore
October 7, 2008 at 2:15 pm
In the past several days I’ve received an email and a phone call from two separate lead services. The first thing I did was search the names online. What I found wasn’t pretty. I hope that everyone does that before they sign up for any service.
Elaine Reese
October 7, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Didn’t you feel good after that call! That would be a good stress reliever. You go girl!
Ines Hegedus-Garcia
October 7, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Scott, unfortunately, that one telemarketer was so clueless that it will not make a difference – but it still felt good
Vicki – it’s never pretty – the stuff I’ve been finding out about how some of these companies actually get their leads is UGLY – people should really check and never fall in their traps.
Elaine – it was awesome and I hung up with a big smile…..that’s for sure!
Mana Tulberg
October 7, 2008 at 4:10 pm
You mean i am not the only one that gets those calls. LOL.
Ines Hegedus-Garcia
October 7, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Mana – according to them you are! LOL 🙂
Irina Netchaev
October 7, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Hi Ines, I’m so glad that you wrote this post. It’s unfortunate that Vlad is still being aggressively pursued by E-Jerks. There are so many hand chosen agents on their list that they need to hire these oblivious marketers.
Ines Hegedus-Garcia
October 7, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Irina – you would guess that they would at least educate their marketers about what’s going on – or at least check out who’s blogging and not hit them……maybe that’s too much to ask
Bob
October 7, 2008 at 6:51 pm
They called me a few weeks ago. I asked the company name and he said, “Eperks. Have you heard of us?”
“Yep . Sure do. You’re boss is suing an agent for telling the truth. Gotta be one of the most asinine business strategies I have ever seen. Sue your target market. Guess you folks havent caught on to the fact that isnt going over so well with agents.”
“BTW, please remove me from your call list”.
Click.
Ines Hegedus-Garcia
October 7, 2008 at 6:53 pm
LOL Bob …..priceless!
The Harriman Team
October 12, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Ines – I’ve found that it doesn’t matter what you ask them to do, they will continue to contact you. I still get occasional calls and emails from them, even though I asked, then demanded to be removed from their list. Others have as well, and have even filed FCC complaints against them, although I have no info on what the outcome of those complaints are. I think they’ll still be trying to scam us for a long time to come.
Irina & Bob – ePerks and Vlad have actually settled the lawsuit, so perhaps they’ll at least leave him alone now. Or, maybe he’ll start getting solicitations from them now…who knows? You can read Vlad’s announcement of the settlement at his site, https://www.go-beyond-mls.com.
ines
October 12, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Pat and Wayne – thanks for the info – you may be right about them contacting people, that’s why I wrote this, to make agents aware that they are doing so.