Tips for handling telemarketers and senders of junk mail and spam

Tips for Handling Telemarketers 

Three Little Words That Work!!

(1)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 telemarketing call so much more time-consuming  that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then 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.

These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.. 

(2) 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, is to 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.. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!

(3) Junk Mail Help:

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? It costs them more than  the regular 44 cents postage, ‘IF’ and when they receive them back.

It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before the last  increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of  some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid  return envelopes.

One of Andy Rooney ‘s (60 minutes) ideas.

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! It still costs  them 44 cents.

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own  junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let’s let them know  what it’s like to get lots of junk mail, and 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.  You get the idea!

If enough people follow these tips, it will work I have been doing this for  years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.

Photos of folks attending the 8/23/2011 Chamber PWC morning mixer at Deborah Eveson’s office.

 

Additions to the affirmations and aphorisms in my website.

An affirmation is something that you declare to yourself to be true to motivate you in the right direction. An aphorism is a brief statement of a truism. Repeat to yourself over and over the affirmations and aphorisms listed below and in my website. They will filter into your sub-conscious mind. Remember that your actual physical and mental limitations are not nearly as great as you imagine them to be. If you think you can do something then it becomes more likely that you can. If you think you can’t do something, then it, too, will become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

• An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity. ~ Sir Winston Churchill

• Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ~ Thomas Edison

• Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. – Benjamin Franklin and Dale Carnegie

• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. – Albert Einstein

• You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.

• “The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.” – Albert Einstein

• Common sense isn’t very common.

• “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” – Dr. Robert Schuller

• I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.

• The key to surviving a stock market crash is liquidity. So I’m off to the bar.

Photo from South Council Chamber meeting of 8-9-2011

Pictured are Darryl Bassham (Mai Oui Gourmet), Pete Gentry (Florida Commercial Real Estate Services LLC), Jim Frank (Safe Harbor Solutions), Roger Kuder (author, webmaster, retired).