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For business enquiries, phone my business
number, please
First state you want to pay me Money
for Computer Consultancy
English: For business I can speak English, German or very
slow French
Deutsch: Ja, für Geschäft, können wir
Deutsch reden.
Francais: Oui, pour le travail, je comprend Francais,
mais tres lentment, si vous plait !
Unless you quickly state your intention to pay me Money for computer consultancy ...
Rules below apply to phoning me ! - Else I hang
up.
DO NOT SUPPRESS YOUR CALLER IDENTITY !
- I Will Not Talk To You If You Suppress Caller ID.
- My computer screen shows name (from number) of caller
before answering, & can have a different ring tone for
anonymous, to know it's not worth returning to look at the
screen), so it's in Your interest not to suppress your caller
identity !
- I sometimes do not answer anonymous callers. I don't need
strangers on analogue phones rabbiting away in fast German
dialect eg Bavarian, trying to get free help. Nor do I want
calls from weird acquaintances (`Bekannter') who suppress
their caller ID via digital supression or not announcing
their human name till Ive answered with mine.
- Serious business calls come with Caller ID On. Only time
wasters (EG questionnaires & sales people) & weirdos
suppress caller ID: If they get answered at all, they get
challenged & dumped in a few seconds.
- If you have Caller ID (as do German Business ISDN &
Mobile & callers from UK, & USA international
callers), leave it ON or turn it ON before
calling me.
FIRST VERBALY IDENTIFY WHAT YOU WANT
Depending which phone number you ring from your end, & to
my end, & time & day in week, I take a guess if you'r
another waster, or someone I want to talk to. Maybe I'll say
eg "Hallo" & nothing more. It's your job to identify
yourself. You know who you hoped to call, & what you
want. I know nothing if callers number is suppressed
(Unterdrucken) . Occasionaly callers are too obtuse or
arrogant & they try to force me to identify my name
before they identify their number, name, what they want,
& sometimes even their lanugage. (I've knows Germans
British & others all that daft, No loss to me when I drop
their calls, they learn to behave more reasonably. Identify
yourself First !
Do NOT give your name as the first word of the call
!
Germans [used to, maybe still do] think it's impolite not
to give name first, certainly it was often the first word
one heard. (Daft idea, like they used to believe CVs
should be written starting with where one first went to
school). Break the convention!
I will have no reason to remember the very first word you
say, I won't even be trying until I have a reason to
remember a name. Give motivation to pay attention first,
(like telling me first you want to be a paying customer for
Computer Consultancy. Until then I'm
doubtless more interested in remembering more important
things, such as where I was up to in a complex computer development & debug session, when
you rang & I lost concentration.
Try eg:
- Hallo, Our firm needs a Unix
& C consultant, We're based in ___, the company
name is ___, our web is ___ & my name is ___
OR
- Guten tag, Ich bin mit Big Blue Computer Company,
wir entwickeln einem XYZ Gerät, wir brauchen einem
Unix Consultant, ich heisse ___.
- Hi, I'm intersted in you skiing trip, my name's
___. OR
-
NOT Bauer, ***** GmbH
(My thoughts: Oh! This caller is German, fine,
OK, switch brain from English computing to German, - I
wonder how I should spell his name, & co. name
& where if any, the umlauts go, Do I care ? Is this
a sponger or do they want to pay money ?)
Wir wollen fuer unser Modelle
[A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9] ...
- Aargh ! German pronunciation, maybe Umlaut
pronunciation I & many Brits have no recognition
for, maybe weird inverted couplets of digit
strings,
- why am I concentrating ? Is this a
customer or someone who just wants free advice, who
should be phoning me in English ?
- Who should be asking if it's a convenient
time to call ?
- Is this for money ?
- Do I want to listen ?
- Do I want to switch him to English
?
- Do I want to tell him to call back later
?
- Wir (who's we - ?)
wollen .... Well they may Want, but will
they Pay.
PHONE IN ENGLISH, NOT GERMAN,
UNLESS YOU WILL BUY COMPUTER
CONSULTANCY
Do not phone in German :
- Unless you start by saying you will Buy Computer Consultancy
- Expect me to hang up, fast ! (Most callers in German
whose voices I don't recognise, are selling junk or
harvesting info).
As your call rings:
-
My computer shows & logs:
- Name (not number) of any known caller, Or
- Number of unknown caller, Or
- "From NotAvailable" if old analogue or
withheld
- Which of my numbers you called, eg: business/
private/ clubs/ spammed from phone book, etc.
- If caller's number is NotAvailable
-
-
If a repeat caller, I may just pick up & say "Uh
Huh !?" which forces caller to speak,
- they hate that, which pleases me,
- until then they know Both who they are &
who I am (at least my number), whereas I know
Nothing about them.
- I get their language (often enough not German
or English, but some freigner) If I dont recognise
their voice, & they demsand to know who I am
& theyr're not offering to purchase computer
consultancy, theyre wasters & get Dumped.
- If caller starts in German :
- If a stranger fails to start by asking to buy Computer Consultancy ....
-
If I hear Fast German from an unrecognised voice,
- If I suspect a robotised sales queuer: Caller
gets classified as: "Another Waster (aka Phone
Spammer) to dump": The response varies,
sometimes
-
(Sometimes I don't just hang up, I do
better: I deliberately give initial answers to
robot to engage the queuue for human 2nd level
response, then leave the phone on desk,
occasionaly using keys or speach to lock up their
sales robot or human, so they can't waste so many
other people's time as well).
- Or I interrrupt in English ""Err... Do you
want to buy Computer
Consultancy ?" (Which last brought a
friendly laugh & response in English from German
sales girl), & a freindly & quick agreement we
had no need to talk to each other.
Both techniques worth using  as I find having my concentration
interrrupted by phone, to be sold at in a foreign
language. by someone who hides his number, as most
offensive, & worth inconveniencing them in return, to
the extent, they might note my number as too troublesome
to call again.
- If clueless people phone in German, re. club events
& mail lists I help run / organise, who ignore that the
club's / events, my web pages, & mail list
announcements I make are All in English: Well that's not
exactly bright, & we aim to recruit bright people
willing to use English.
If you want my time, Start in English, even if we later
oscillate between English & German.
He Who Helps, Determines Which
Language we start in.
- I am English - Ich spreche auch Deutsch - Aber Nur
Hoch- Deutsch ! * Nur Für Bezahlender Kunden ! Ich
will Kein Bayerisch Hören oder Lernen!
- Give all you numbers in single digit strings - not
German swapped digit pair format. - Bei Nummern, sagen
sie einzelne Ziffern, links nach rechts, nicht Paarweise
rum-gefummelt !
- I have the usual English difficulty recognising German
pronunciation of individual alphabet letters. I don't
recognise umlaut pronunciation at all.
- Use the International
Alphabet (For both German & English).
TIME ZONE
- Central Europe, Germany
All Berklix servers can report
current time &
date.
Physically
In Munich,
Bavaria, Germany. Central European Time zone. TZ =
"GMT+01:00" or "Germany/Berlin". 1 hour ahead of London,
England. Same Summer time switch over dates as London. In
(northern hemisphere) summer, London is 1 hour ahead of
Greenwich Mean Time = UTC, & Munich is 2 hours ahead.
Office Hours
- NOT available at 08:00 in Munich
Germany, Do NOT phone till long after !
- Not before 09:30 Munich time
(Except where it cannot be avoided, eg perhaps from
Asia).
-
I generally work London commercial (not civil service)
office hours eg 09:30 - 18:30 UK (GMT or BST) time.
That's 10:30 - 19:30+ in
Munich.
- Early evening calls OK.
Europe is Way ahead from any of your time zones !
Phone me in your morning, not toward end of your business
day. I can handle calls arriving late my end, but I really
don't appreciate daft/ aggressive plays, eg a pushy
Canadian lawyer who still persisted trying to negotiate
contract terms after being told it was about 2 AM at home my
end. Only extremely urgent & important technical
service problems might interest me then. Your call is Not
important, not interesting & Not urgent outside European office
hours, unless your first payment has already been
received & verified by my company's bank.
- Make sure your browser & gateway are not caching
old pages with old times! (To check, click reload a few
times & see seconds increase).
- A "CEST" acronym means Central European Summer
Time.
NO CALL WAITING (`Anklopfen')
Do Not Put Me On Hold !
Put me on `hold' for more than 5 or 10 seconds , & I'll
hang up on you. I will not call or mail you back, nor think
further what we were talking about; Clearly you thought it
was un-important, so your problem.
I Will Not Put You On Hold
If I hear a call ringing signal my end while talking to
you: I will glance at the display to see name of person
calling, I will Not put you on hold to talk to them, though
I may arrange to speak to you later, if eg the other caller
might be mobile, & you might be re-callable after.
CONSIDER FACE TO FACE Instead. It May
Be More Efficient ?
PHONE NUMBERS
Number below obscured (*) to disrupt spammers.
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Higher priority phone numbers are available once your company
has made first payment to my
company.
Business enquiries welcome. The number is a normal ones,
Not an expensive support tarif, Phone company does not pay
owner a rebate when people phone.
Alphabet For when German
& English speakers confuse each other with pronunciation
;-)
(*) Maybe latter I'll obscure my number with a better
technique, using eg a: Captcha
I am on a normal (non premium, non {mobile=cell=handy}
line.
If business just call me. If you'r a friend Not calling from
a premium rate or {mobile=cell=handy}, I can call you back if
you remind me (per flat rate of
Deutsche Telekom "CountryFlat(1.4)" (Tarif price 3.31 +
mwst = 3.94 Euro/month at March 2011, for "Die Flatrate
fürs benachbarte Ausland, USA, Kanada, Australien und
Westeuropa"), to any normal terestial (non premium, non
mobile) in
America = USA, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium,
Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain inc Isle of
Man & Channel islands), Greece, Ireland, Italy,
Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway,
Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Czech Republik
(Tschechien), Vatican City.
DTkom link to "Übersicht" = over view
DTkom link to "Tarriftabelle" = Tarif table Shows:
- USA & Canada mobiles as 0, yet Britain &
Austria as 28 cents/min. !
- Doesn't list Deutschland, which would have been
useful to see mobile rates to Tkom's & competitive
nets, (info removed to some other page as not foreign I
suppose).
- Not sure about calls to premium rate numbers in other
countries eg UK 08 "You have just been serviced ;-)"
numbers.
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