Good idea

[Sub-Vibe-R]

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 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. This might be one of those articles you'll want to e-mail to your friends. Three little words that eliminate telephone soliciting. 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. Since doing this, our phone calls have decreased dramatically. Another Good Idea 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 at 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 Now, if you could only get rid of these pesky email people!!!!

[Zamboni Guy]

I will try a few of these ideas, especially the telemarketer tips.

[Chris]

These tips do work. Typically my wife and I will, instead of saying wait, do one of the following:1) tell them you're busy but are really interested in their product... then ask for their home phone number so you can call them back. Get annoyed when they won't give it to you.2) pretend you're interested in this product and start asking all the realistic questions you can think of. These folks are paid either by the call or by a successful sale... either way, wasting their time cuts their income. My wife is particularly good at this one. She takes the cordless and asks about warrenties, payment plans, etc. while doing household chores and whatnot. Once she managed to keep the marketer on the phone for over 20 minutes!

[VibeSalsa]

Thank you for all the tips given here. I've never heard of that!I receive one or two junk letters per week and I have no idea about what I could do to annoy them like they do...So, I will send them back some ads... And I will laugh a lot... Thanks

[Stang2Vibe]

I have heard of the telemarketer techniques before but the junkmail one is new to me. What a great idea! Sending useless things back in the postage paid envelopes is a great idea. It generates revenue for our post offices and pays the employees. Plus there's always the added bonus of the fun it is sending stupid stuff back to them to make them wonder. Now if I get continuous junkmail from some organization that I particularly dislike, maybe I'll go on the internet and download some granny gang-bang pics or something to print out and stuff in those postage paid return envelopes! This could be entertaining!

[philndz]

quote: granny gang-bang pics hehehe!!! i would hate to be the chump that has to open that....ewww!

[Stang2Vibe]

That is the idea!