Tips for Dealing with Telemarketers:
Three Little Words that Work!!
by Andy Rooney
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.
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. Since doing this, my phone calls have
decreased dramatically.
Another Good Idea:
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 37cents 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!
Eventually, the banks and credit card companies will begin getting their own
junk back in the mail. 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.
[Shawn is now a telemarketer, so I guess we're adding to the problem here. But he tells us that there is a sure-fire way to stop a telemarketing conversation immediately. When a telemarketer calls, say "Please remove this number from your call list and put it on your 'do not call' list." The telemarketer will immediately stop the conversation, and you will not be called again by that company. If you just hang up, or if you chat with the telemarketer (politely or otherwise) then the telemarketer must schedule you for a callback within 3 months or lose his or her job. But if you instruct them to remove your phone number from their call list, by law they must comply. It seems to work!
I haven't
started sending one company's junk solicitations to another company yet, but it
really does have a certain appeal! Now if only there were a way to
duplicate the same effect for spam email...]