You would be hard pressed to find a single person on this planet who enjoys spam calls, so most of us take steps to prevent it from happening whenever possible. We hide our numbers, employ the block function liberally and tend to look at folks who cold call as a modern scourge. But there are a few out there who end up taking it too far.

A netizen shared their bit of petty revenge when they realized that some random man had listed their number on a property to avoid getting constant spam calls. We reached out to the person who posted the story via private message and will update the article when they get back to us.

At face value, finding a way to get spam callers to avoid you seems like a good thing

Image credits: benzoix (not the actual image)

But one netizen decided to get back at the man who used their number to avoid real estate agents

Image credits: Wavebreak Media (not the actual image)

Image credits: Pavel Danilyuk (not the actual image)

Image credits: Consistent-Ease-6656

Calling random people is a pretty dumb strategy, all in all

Rules about cold calls, whether “legitimate” or scams, differ from place to place, but at least in the US, you can actually put your number on a national “Do Not Call” list. In short, companies that make a habit of “cold calling” have to check this list every single month and are required, by law, to remove numbers from this list.

Sounds great right? Except, as it would appear in this story, it’s not exactly a cold call. While we don’t know exactly what “Roy” was up to, there is no doubt a clause somewhere on those real estate sites giving them “permission” to reach out by phone. So these aren’t “cold calls” technically, the unlucky netizen “consented” to being spammed day in and day out.

In general, most actually skilled salespeople see this as downright terrible practice. Jeffrey Gitomer, an American salesman and author has written that “the return on investment on cold calling is under zero,” as they generally are a complete and utter waste of time for any semi-skilled salesperson.

After all, if you have the slightest idea of how to sell whatever you are selling, dialing random numbers is going to put you in front of fewer potential customers than if you even took a few minutes per person to check if they might be the type to actually buy what you are selling. Interestingly, Gitomer also points out that this constant waste of time and rejection can affect the mood of the salesperson to such a degree that they are often not “equipped” to handle someone who might actually buy.

So it’s natural to want to avoid cold callers

This is all to say that, if you’ve been annoyed by folks calling you without warning, at least have the knowledge that they are generally wasting as much of their time as yours. Of course, if a group is scamming folks over the phone, they probably don’t really care about these rules in the first place. The EU and the US, among other places, have pretty strict laws, yet everyone has had to deal with callers like this anyway.

This is why no matter how many laws are put in place, you will still get a few calls here and there. You can report them, block them, yell at them, but they will still be back at some point. This is perhaps why this netizen had such a “particular” strategy, it wasn’t about preventing all cold calls, no, it was about revenge.

While we can perhaps forgive “Roy” for wanting to avoid these calls, the truth is that throwing someone else under the bus is just poor behavior. Fortunately, in this case, the “punishment” fits the crime, as this man is just going to get the same calls he inflicted on another person. That seems fair enough, at the end of the day.

Many readers found this approach to be hilarious

A few also shared similar stories

Poll Question

Thanks! Check out the results:

Newsletter

Subscribe to Access
Exclusive Polls

Subscribe

By entering your email and clicking Subscribe, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Privacy Policy.

Thank you! You've successfully subscribed to newsletters!

Anyone can write on Bored Panda. Start writing!

Follow Bored Panda on Google News!

Follow us on Flipboard.com/@boredpanda!