Try these little tricks if you're not already doing it!
Now Steve Rubenstein, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle,
has proposed Three Little Words, based on his brief experience
in a telemarketing 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 telemarketing call so
time-consuming that 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.
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 dialed call and it kicks your number out of their
system. After doing this a few times, phone calls may decrease dramatically.
When you get ads in your phone or utility bill, include them with the payment
let the companies throw them away.
When you get those pre-approved letters in the mail for everything from credit
cards to 2nd mortgages and junk like that, most of them 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 envelopes. Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express.
Send the pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day then
just send them their application back! If you want to remain anonymous, just
make sure your name isn't on anything you send them. You can send it back
empty if you want to just to keep them guessing!
Eventually, the banks and credit card companies will begin getting their junk
back in the mail. Let's let them know what it's like to get junk mail, and the best
of it is that they're paying for it. Twice.
Let's help keep our postal service busy since they say e-mail is cutting into their
business, and that's why they need to increase postage again.
Send this to a friend or two or three...or fifty
I suppose some degree of commerce would grind to a halt if
telephone solicitors weren't able to call people at home during
dinner hour, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant.