Wow, this feels like confession - and I'm not even catholic
Okay, so a few jobs ago, I was working for a company called Excell in Paisley. The job involved cold calling (i.e borderline harrassment) to sell life insurance. And, yes, it was exactly as fun as it sounds. Oh, and to anyone who hates cold callers, don't worry - we hate you twice as fucking much.

Lets see, dirty secrets...well, the business was 'regulated' by the insurance company - you would get a mystery shopper call every week, someone from the insurance company pretending to be a member of the public. Only the managers knew which call it would be, so for that call you would do everything by the book, and then you would return to promising the world if they took this insurance policy out.

Some cracking 'promises' included being entered into a prize draw to win a car/holiday/speedboat if you took the policy (there was no prize draw), being able to cancel the policy at any time with no charges (complete bullshit), and I even heard someone tell the customer that, under new government regulations, it was compulsory for them to take this policy out (if you can't tell whether this one is bullshit, then can I interest you in an invisible hamster? Only £500.49).

I wasn't quite as devious - I would generally try and get them talking about something completely unrelated, make out as if I'm only phoning up for a chat, and then mention the policy casually, as if it wasn't a big deal. Surprisingly, this actually worked (albeit not that often), and, seeing as the manager's expectations were pretty fucking low, after you'd got 1 or 2 sales you could generally ignore the rest of the calls and surf the web.

I also happen to know that the policies were pretty useless, and were full of loopholes to stop the company paying out. They would only come in useful if you ran out of toilet paper and didn't have the Daily Mail to hand.

I suppose I should feel kind of guilty, being at one time part of such a reviled industry, but I genuinely don't have that many morals. After all, I got paid, so fuck it.



P.s Oh, and there is a happy ending - not long after I left for a slightly higher paying job, the company closed down amid rumours of dodgy financial dealings. The bunch of crooked bastards

Apologies for length, but seeing as you've listened to me for so long, perhaps I can interest you in our new critical illness cover...
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 3:22, Reply)