In the past week I have been repeatedly called by canvassers offering to assess the suitability of my house for the installation of solar panels and the granting of financial support for this purpose.
My interlocutor is always a man with a North African accent. But not the same one every time, it seems, because he introduces himself with different first names (Mohamed, Rachid, etc.). At least that’s what he tells me.
The first time I was surprised that he had my landline number (normally only my relatives know my landline number because I switch off my mobile phone at night, but in an emergency they can call me that way), but I accepted to answer his questions in a friendly way, as my interlocutor introduced himself as a representative of the state electricity company EDF: Area of the house, number of sides of the roof and even details of the amount of my income.
However, I eventually got bored because I got the same call every day, sometimes several times a day. Each time I pointed out that I had already been contacted and answered the questions, and that I wasn’t interested because my house didn’t get enough sun to make it worthwhile.
As I look into the issue, I also discover that EDF warns that they do not do canvassing of this kind and that people with a trained way of addressing them pose as EDF representatives by faking their identity.
Yesterday, in a state of frustration, I started asking my interlocutor who he really was and what he wanted from me. Aren’t these calls an excuse to find out if I am home after all?
And to tell him firmly that I don’t want him to call me anymore, that I will call the police….
Especially as the same people (or the same person?) also call me on my mobile, so they have all my numbers.
“Come, come, sir, please be polite,” demanded the telemarketer, who admittedly had been quite polite so far.
I stopped breathing and in order to get rid of him for good, I had to let myself go and tell him straight out: “I’m fed up with the cold-calling, I don’t want you to call me anymore, do you understand, asshole?
It’s true that saying “asshole” was too much, but knowing that he wasn’t really an EDF agent, it started to piss me off….
Then his mask dropped and a recitation in Arabic followed, of which I understood nothing, but I understood that he insulted me several times with the now common formulas “fuck your mother” and “fuck you, you faggot”, marked by the contempt that Islamic culture has for homosexuality and the oriental idea that the western man is an effeminate man who lacks masculinity because he is too respectful towards women.
Above all, this individual’s visceral hatred for me, a Frenchman, was revealed when he added: “Allah will take care of you”.
Despite the vehemence of these words, I was not in the least surprised. I suspected that behind this friendly tone lay the well-hidden hatred of the “kouffar”, whom one flatters as long as one needs him and threatens with death as soon as he rebels.
Finally, I ask myself. My telephone and internet provider, which is very widespread in France, assigns the telephone customer service to “hotlines” whose interlocutors, both in the online “chat” and on the telephone platform, always have Arabic or African first names. Do the employees deal with telephone lists for acquisition purposes?
How could one and the same person, whom, by the way, I neither knew in the past, have both my landline telephone number, which I never give out, and my mobile number, if it was not my operator, or more precisely one of his employees, who had given it to him?
What was the point of this telephone charade in which my various interlocutors did not want to know that I had already been called several times?
I finally unplugged my phone to have peace once and for all. They will have found another way to make my life miserable.