Some tips on junk mail, telemarketing calls etc

[maggieddd]

Well, here are some tips for you.
This might be old, but I just got it

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 enve lope.

Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right?
It costs them more than the regular 37 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.

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 37 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 !

Telemarketers
(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 t imes, 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!!!

Three Little Words That Work !!

(3)The three little words are: "Hold On, Please..." when telemarketers call
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.

[Mystery Squid]

Unfortunately, this requires effort on your part. It's simply easier to throw away the mail, and hang up. Even though it costs them nothing, it merely shifts the cost to your time, and I think my time is more valuable and better spent....

I wonder if there's any empirical evidence this tactic actually REDUCES the total amount of junk mail?

[maggieddd]

Originally posted by Mystery Squid@Feb 16 2006, 10:52 AM
Unfortunately, this requires effort on your part.  It's simply easier to throw away the mail, and hang up.  Even though it costs them nothing, it merely shifts the cost to your time, and I think my time is more valuable and better spent....

I wonder if there's any empirical evidence this tactic actually REDUCES the total amount of junk mail?

[snapback]210446[/snapback]

I have no idea.

[Rancid13]

Oooh, I like the junk mail idea! I never even thought about that....I get a ton of those stupid credit card solicitions every week and toss the ads/envelopes while keeping the application (or anything with my name/address on it) to shred later. I usually open my mail while watching a movie or television, so an additional couple of seconds to stuff the ads into the postage paid envelopes takes up minimal time for me. And I drop off mail every day so it's not like I'm putting in any extra effort to make an extra trip to the mailbox just for the purpose of mailing just those envelopes either. I love it!!

For the telemarketing thing, as soon as I hear 'quiet' on the other end of the phone I hang up. Or if a person is quick enough to come on the line before I have the chance to hang up, I do put the phone down without hanging up or put them on hold for awhile, before actually hanging up on them. Doesn't happen too often, as my work #'s, home #, and cell # are all listed on the 'do not call' registry.

[tunabreath]

You can cut the number of telemarketing calls you receive drastically by registering at the National Do Not Call Registry. You can cut down on them even further by asking the telemarketers who do call you to add you to their own "do not call" lists.

[galaxee]

there are lots of ways to play with telemarketers. fortunately, we only have cell phones so we don't get those calls.

[hawkjm73]

Originally posted by Mystery Squid@Feb 16 2006, 11:52 AM
Unfortunately, this requires effort on your part.  It's simply easier to throw away the mail, and hang up.  Even though it costs them nothing, it merely shifts the cost to your time, and I think my time is more valuable and better spent....

I wonder if there's any empirical evidence this tactic actually REDUCES the total amount of junk mail?

[snapback]210446[/snapback]

Who knows? But, it'll be FUN!

My dad takes great pleasure in messing with telemarketers. I once listened to him keep one selling satallite dishes on the line for a half an hour. He was very adament about being able to mount it on his (nonexistant) motorhome. (This was before they really did mount on motorhomes.) The marketer never did get the joke, just kept trying to sell. He'll also set the phone on speaker-phone and set it on the couch. They will keep asking "Are you there?" for sseverl minutes.

[jfschultz]

Originally posted by maggieddd@Feb 16 2006, 09:37 AM
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.

This would make it tempting to attach the return envelope to a brick!

[JackDodge]

I shred just about any junk mail that has my name on it. In order to make it even more difficult for dumpster divers, I also shred some useless junk mail. Most dumpster divers are too lazy to have real jobs so they won't bother trying to deal with a trashbag full of shredded paper. I even mix it up to make sure that the pieces are so jumbled that they'll never put them together and I also toss wet garbage in with it to make it really gooey. I like the idea of sending the credit card companies other junk mail though I'm going to use that one for sure. You can also take all of those subscription cards that magazines scatter throughout the magazine and mail them.

As for telemarketers, I look at the caller ID and if it's one of those 800 numbers, I ignore it. Sometimes when I'm irritated with them, I'll answer the phone but don't say anything. Then, when the telemarketer's machine forwards the call to a live salesperson, I just hold the phone and listen to their fruitless "hello? Hello? HellO? HELLO?" Then I hang up when I get bored. You can also answer with a phony name or some business name to confuse them. When they say something like "Isn't this Jack Dodge?" I just say "no, I just got this number" or "naw, he died last year" When my father used to answer the phone and the telemarketer asked for my mother, he'd say "She left me". That stopped the calls somehow, and that was before the do-not-call list was even an idea.

[Rancid13]

Originally posted by JackDodge@Feb 16 2006, 11:46 AM
I shred just about any junk mail that has my name on it.  In order to make it even more difficult for dumpster divers, I also shred some useless junk mail.  Most dumpster divers are too lazy to have real jobs so they won't bother trying to deal with a trashbag full of shredded paper.  I even mix it up to make sure that the pieces are so jumbled that they'll never put them together and I also toss wet garbage in with it to make it really gooey.  I like the idea of sending the credit card companies other junk mail though  I'm going to use that one for sure.  You can also take all of those subscription cards that magazines scatter throughout the magazine and mail them. 

[snapback]210556[/snapback]

Do you have a cross-cut shredder? That's what we use, and it shreds the pages into mere crumbles of paper on which words and numbers are completely undiscernable (sp?). It's somewhat messy in that 'paper dust' can scatter when removing the plastic holding container. But I love it and use it for old bank statements, credit card bills/solitications, and anything with my name/address/personal information on it that I no longer need/want. Works much better than the shredders that just slice the pages into many long thin strips.