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Robert Platt Bell writes at his blog "Living Stingy" about Lenny, a library of videos which play recordings to telemarketers trying to sell services (or scams). Lenny picks up calls and answers them with pre-recorded audio clips from a doddering Australian man, sometimes keeping telemarketers on the phone for over 20 minutes. "Lenny confounds and confuses, but sounds totally real," writes Bell. "Some telemarketers talk to him for nearly a half-hour, before they figure out that he's either a recording - or senile."
According to developer Mango, Lenny is a program that uses voice recognition techniques to detect when a telemarketer is through speaking. When Lenny doesn't hear anything, he says his next prompt. If the telemarketer doesn't speak, or speaks too quietly, Lenny will ask them to speak up. This makes him sound more "real". After the 16th prompt, Lenny starts over. The current "record" of sorts is a pair of telemarketers who were kept occupied by Lenny for over 38 minutes. Want to talk to Lenny, or transfer a telemarketer to him? Here's how.
But who is the real Lenny? According to Internet chatter he's an actor in Brisbane, Australia — though clearly of English origin — who made his recordings for a company that wanted to respond in kind to time-wasting callers. About 2013, however, the original Lenny stopped working, so Mango and other tech-types decided to recreate him based on the published recordings. "The dishonest telemarketers are the ones that Lenny is really intended for," explains Mango.
(Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday November 20 2015, @11:57AM
I've been doing this in a non-automated fashion for years now, when I have the time. It's childish but every second of theirs that I waste is money out of their pockets, and another victim whose phone doesn't ring needlessly today. Some of my personal favourites:
"Good afternoon, I'm calling to say that you may be entitled to compensation if you've taken out insurance on a loan or credit card."
(Fake old man voice) "Oh! Well I did take out a loan just a few years ago..."
"Could you tell me when you took out the loan, and who the provider was?"
"Oh yes, of course, let me just get the paperwork..."
[Rummage noisily with papers, then put phone down and get on with something else. Checked back fifteen minutes later, he was still waiting!]
"Sorry, someone came to the door. I'll just get that paperwork for you..."
[Checked back five minutes later, he's finally rung off.]
Another time, I got a similar call and did the fake old man voice again. Then after just a minute or two of waiting, came back on the line in my normal voice and gave the guy a tirade of verbal abuse for trying to scam a senile 83-year old.
They also like to lead with "Our records show you've been involved in an accident" and then talk about claiming for compensation. Lazy fucks can't even be bothered to chase ambulances any more.
There are various ways to have fun with this, usually by deliberately misunderstanding them ("Oh my god, is she alright? Which hospital is she in? What will I say to the kids?") but one of my favourites was where I kept her talking for a while, giving some fake but credible personal information, until we got to the details of the accident:
"Well, I slipped on some of our cherry-flavoured lube that had been carelessly left on the floor, and my clothes sort of flew off as I fell, and then I accidentally impaled myself on one of the new 12-speed Throbulon 9000s with the rotating glee-gidget and auto-penetration grip. Then as Brenda, the office first-aider, was trying to extract it..."
Finally, one of my all-time favourites:
"Hello sir, I'm calling about the accident that you were involved in recently"
"Accident?"
"Yes, our records show that you were involved in a personal accident recently, and you could be entitled to..."
"Are you threatening me?"
"Umm, no, I'm..."
"You tell Fingers that if he wants to frighten me he'll have to do a lot better than that. I don't owe him any money, and if he wants to send someone round here to disagree then they'd better be a whole lot tougher than that Romanian crew that turned up last month and mysteriously disappeared afterwards."
"Um... goodbye sir and thankyou for your time.
(Score: 1) by module0000 on Friday November 20 2015, @02:51PM
Laughed out loud reading these...pure comedy gold, keep up the good work!
(Score: 1) by driverless on Saturday November 21 2015, @12:13AM
Google "Telecrapper 2000", that sounds like a predecessor to Lenny and means you don't have to waste your own time on that.