I got this as an email, thought it was very interesting...some good ideas, actually.

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Andy Rooney's tips for telemarketers


(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.


(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.

(3) 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 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 toust 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.

Just thought I'd pass this on to my fellow .orgers!

We need more ideas like this. I am gonna do this.
One good way to fight back at corporations who abuse the power they have. they know nobody wants junkmail.

I waste very little time with telemarketers usually. I just tell 'em, "I'm not interested. Thank you. Bye." There are times I let them speak for a bit, but it's rare.

I had a friend once who would always interrupt telemarketers in mid-pitch by saying "can we talk about balloons? I like balloons. Do you like balloons?"

He said it was great fun.

Thanx for the tips!The junk mail doesn't really annoy me too much but I've really had it with the telebastards.I get about 4 junk calls per day.It should be illegal!

My mom sent me this Andy Rooney email recently. These are some good tips, since the majority of us hate telemarketers anyway.

I myself cut them off midsentence before they can go into their spiel. I just say, "I'm not interested" and hang up.

There is now a law or something where if you request to be taken off someone's call list and they call you again, you can sue the offending company. I'm not really sure how much money you can get, since I have never had to do this YET. This is a good thing to keep in mind though, to prevent companies from repeatedly calling you.

psychodelicide said:

I'm not sooo civil...

I go for the FUCK OFF AND DON'T CALL BACK clause...



...thought ya knew!!!...

I used to be very civil. These poor people have to make a living somehow. Nobody likes talking to them. I feel bad for them it's their only employment option.
Till this one time when I got so exapserated saying no, no, no and hung up on the person. AND THEY CALLED ME BACK! "But Carrie, this deal is so amazing..." I screamed at the man, including a few obscenities, and hung up again.

Well, I don't much care about his tips... I have my own ways of dealing with Telemarketers. Hmm, and in Kentucky, you can have your name taken off the lists and stuff and you'll never get called again.

As a matter of fact, it's been quite awhile since I've had a telemarketer call. Dish Network calls a lot though to ask if we're satisfied with the service. Finally they called a week ago and woke me during my afternoon nap, and I suggested that if I were unsatisfied with their service, I could just call them instead and they could fuck off and leave me alone.

Oh, and Student Loan used to call looking for my brother 1,000 times a day. I had fun with them.

As for Andy Rooney, I don't think I've ever laughed so hard as the time he was reading some of the mail he got on 60 minutes or something like that, and he was cussing everyone out, telling them if they didn't agree they could just go to hell...