Customer Database Fail

Today, I got a call from a Verizon High Speed Internet salesperson. Apparently, the representative was calling to "get me back as customer". Now, this is interesting on several fronts:

• The guy was calling to sell me DSL as a High-speed Internet solution. I've had DSL in the past (in fact, I was Bell Atlantic's first DSL customer, back in 1996/1997), but most of the time I had DSL, it was through carriers other than Verizon (first, it was CAIS, then it was SpeakEasy). So, there wasn't really a basis for "getting me back"
• I am currently a Verizon FiOS customer and have been for nearly a year now. So, I'm already a Verizon customer, so, no need to "get me back" as one.
• Before I had FiOS, I was a Cox HSI customer for several years. Why this is relevant is that the Verizon rep had called me on my GV number. I've really only been using the GV number since fall of 2009. So, the number they had for me to try to "get me back" isn't the number I had when last I had DSL (and, as previously mentioned, when I had DSL, I was never a VZ customer - the closest I came to it was when I was a Bell Atlantic employee and was helping beta test their offering [Bell Atlantic later became Verizon])

So, it was a complete "out there" call. Nothing about my history nor the number they contacted at was relevant to a prior business relationship. Clearly, they'd gotten my updated contact info from somewhere. Thus, you'd assume that with such updated info, they could have figured out that I was also already a customer of their internet services.

Bizarre Phone Calls

I'm normally used to being cold-called or cold-emailed by recruiters. My resume's publicly available and a lot of places want the skills listed in it (now, whether they also want to pay is a completely different story). Toay's call, however, was a bit on the bizarre side.

My phone rings and I pick it up to hear the background noise I normally associate with a telemarketing call center. I wait for the guy to speak so that I can point out that all of my phone numbers are on the Do Not Call list. A guy comes on the line and identifies himself as a recruiter and asks "are you still looking for a job?"

I inform him, as I inform most "recruiters", that "I'm currently employed but always willing to listen to interesting propositions". So, he starts his spiel. Apparently, Verizon is looking for FiOS sales reps. I go to cut him off saying that I'm not really looking for that kind of gig (as I'm pretty sure that the numbers they'd be looking to offer would have been less than half of what I'm making now). So, he changes tacks, and starts asking me questions, but also wants to let me know that the call's being recorded for training purposes. I cut in, again, to let him know that I've no interest and hang up.

Calls like this always make me wonder what the rationale behind them is. For starters, if, as the caller had stated, they had my resume, they'd probably already know that I would have little interest in the type of position they were recruiting for. Second, "recruiting" while using the kind of tactics normally used by telemarketers and used car salesmen isn't likely to get a good response from anyone that you'd actually want to hire (for something more than high-churn, low candidate quality positions).

So, again, WTF?