Stop Annoying Junk Mail & Phone Calls
Editor's note: I have no idea whether any of this will actually work,
but hey, it's worth a try...
Now Steve Rubenstein, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, has proposed "Three Little Words", based on his brief experience in a Tele-marketing operation that would stop the nuisance for all time.
The three little words are: "Hold On, Please..."
Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each Tele-marketing call so much more time-consuming that sales boiler rooms would grind to a halt.
When you eventually hear the phone company's "beep-beep-beep" tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.
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Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end? This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone. This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a "real" sales person to call back and get someone at home.
What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it kicks your number out of their system.
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Another Good Idea:
When you get "ads" enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these "ads" with your payment; let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.
When you get those "pre-approved" letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope. Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? Well, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.
Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day then just send them their blank application back! If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you send them. You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing!
Eventually, the banks and credit card companies will begin getting their own junk back in the mail.
Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and the best of all they're paying for it... Twice! Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they need to increase postage costs again. They also love all this Junk Mail... it keeps their people "working" so that they claim they need to hike OUR simple postage stamps instead of the raising Bulk Mail costs!
