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How to get rid of telemarketers and junk mail-these are good

Faster horses

Well-known member
Tips for Handling Telemarketers (I just received this in an e-mail)

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 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.

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 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 !

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

theHiredMansWife

Well-known member
I worked as a telemarketer when I was in highschool and I don't think #2 is right.
Often when you get that dead air it's that it was machine dialed, and it just hasn't been transfered to the first telemarketer, yet. If you wait a bit, it will. Punching buttons won't really make any difference.

The best way to get rid of them? Say No Thanks. Several times because they're usually required to do a rebuttal. But No Thanks is the only thing that gets you off their call list.
A disconnected call? A hang up?

They haven't actually spoken to you so you're just stuck back in the que again. :p




However, all of that said, I like to give my four year old the phone. She's always dying to talk on the phone and rarely gets the chance. :lol:
 

lazy ace

Well-known member
I tried selling them a bull once. I just kept talking and pretty soon he said he had no cows, I quickly responded we are selling them too and went in to pedigrees and how they were bred. It didn't take long until they hung up on me.

One other call I had said they wouldn't hang up on me, so I read them the presidants report from the Red Angus Magazine. They still would not hang up so I asked her why she was a telemarketer and she said her parents made her get a job. I talked to her for about 20 minutes and then the supervisor got on the phone and got mad for wasting there time and hung up on me. Go figure

My latest call was a survey about computer programs. I responded in my best redneck impression "computer is that one of them new fangled contraptions that those city clickers use." The next thing I heard was the dial tone.

Have a good one

Lazy ace
 

passin thru

Well-known member
I heard a trick and was told it would work. If you get junk mail with a postage paid return envelope, just take the envelope and tape it to a brick and drop it in the mail. Then they get to pay the posatage on a
brick. :lol: :lol: :lol:
 

ranchwife

Well-known member
FH----another good trick is to let your 16 year old daughter answer in her best "foreign" voice......"elllllooooo....nooooo......dere no Meeeseeess Croooow heeeere....soooo sorryyyy...you go now...bye!" :wink: :wink: The other day she answered the phone for one of those lovely-dinnertime-phone calls and when they asked for me she yelled (while pretending to burst into tears) "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.....DON'T YOU EVER READ THE PAPERS!!" :shock:
 

jigs

Well-known member
ranchwife said:
FH----another good trick is to let your 16 year old daughter answer in her best "foreign" voice......"elllllooooo....nooooo......dere no Meeeseeess Croooow heeeere....soooo sorryyyy...you go now...bye!" :wink: :wink: The other day she answered the phone for one of those lovely-dinnertime-phone calls and when they asked for me she yelled (while pretending to burst into tears) "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.....DON'T YOU EVER READ THE PAPERS!!" :shock:


now that one I am going to use! :D
 

OldDog/NewTricks

Well-known member
Just had an idea:
The card board envelops from the PO
the kind you can put all you want in

Fill it with bulk mail news ads and white Baby Power so the don't stick together as you slide them in then tape their envelop to that.

The white power might get their...
 

Mrs.Greg

Well-known member
ranchwife said:
FH----another good trick is to let your 16 year old daughter answer in her best "foreign" voice......"elllllooooo....nooooo......dere no Meeeseeess Croooow heeeere....soooo sorryyyy...you go now...bye!" :wink: :wink: The other day she answered the phone for one of those lovely-dinnertime-phone calls and when they asked for me she yelled (while pretending to burst into tears) "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.....DON'T YOU EVER READ THE PAPERS!!" :shock:
RANCHWIFE,you gave me a good laugh,that 16 year old has a very warped sence of humor! :D :D :lol:
 

ranchwife

Well-known member
Mrs.Greg said:
ranchwife said:
FH----another good trick is to let your 16 year old daughter answer in her best "foreign" voice......"elllllooooo....nooooo......dere no Meeeseeess Croooow heeeere....soooo sorryyyy...you go now...bye!" :wink: :wink: The other day she answered the phone for one of those lovely-dinnertime-phone calls and when they asked for me she yelled (while pretending to burst into tears) "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.....DON'T YOU EVER READ THE PAPERS!!" :shock:
RANCHWIFE,you gave me a good laugh,that 16 year old has a very warped sence of humor! :D :D :lol:

not exactly sure where she got her sense of humor!! :shock: :wink: :wink: :wink:
 

nr

Well-known member
OldDog/NewTricks said:
Just had an idea:
The card board envelops from the PO
the kind you can put all you want in

Fill it with bulk mail news ads and white Baby Power so the don't stick together as you slide them in then tape their envelop to that.

The white power might get their...

No, no. Putting in powder of any type might
close down the post office that detects it first.
You don't want snail mail any snailier!
 

Buckerette

Well-known member
Here is a website sponsored by the three major credit bureaus. You can request to be taken off of the "list" for junk mail. It takes about 2-3 weeks for the mail to stop, but it does. I did it and almost everyone I work with.

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=t
 

DiamondSCattleCo

Well-known member
I'm not sure what its like in the US, but in Canada, use the following magic term:

"Please place me on your do not call list"

By Cdn law, they must stop the current call and then place your name in their computer system as name that they must NEVER call. All future lists they buy will be scrubbed against the do not call list, and sometimes this will trickle down to other telemarketers do not call lists as the scrub lists can get passed around.

Rod
 

theHiredMansWife

Well-known member
The US has a do-not-call registry also, but it only applies to cold calls. Ie, if you already have an account with someone (credit card, bank, insurance, etc.) they can still call you with some great deal as part of their "customer service".
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