Feb 282010

Tips for Handling Telemarketers

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 41 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 41 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.

Posted by trkstr67 Tagged with:
Feb 242010

A friend sent this to me.  I can’t think of a reason to disagree can you?  It is short and to the point!

It would contain eight provisions, all of which would probably be strongly endorsed by those who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I know many of you will say, “this is impossible”.   Let me remind you, Congress has the lowest approval of any entity in Government, now is the time when Americans can join together to reform Congress – the entity that “represents” US the citizens of the USA.

Congressional Reform Act of 2010

1. Term Limits: 12 years only, one of the possible options below.

A. Two Six year Senate terms
B. Six Two year House terms
C. One Six year Senate term and three Two Year House terms

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

2.  No Tenure / No Pension:

A congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

3.  Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security:

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund moves to the Social Security system immediately.

All future funds flow into the Social Security system, Congress participates with the American people.
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, server your term(s), then go home and back to work.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan just as all Americans.
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.  Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned  citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

8. All contracts with past and present congressmen are void effective 1/1/2011.
The American people did not make this contract with congressmen, congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

For the last time, serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned  citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

Posted by trkstr67 Tagged with:
Feb 212010
Elin

The real victim

Two points on two things in the news because it has to be said and I have nothing else to say.

Screw all those ‘victims’ in Tiger’s path(oh yeah, that’s right…they already have been) who want an apology for Tiger’s behavior. If anybody should be getting an apology, it’s Elin from THEM.  She is the victim. They knew who he was.  If they thought that he was going to be any more loyal to them, then they deserved what they got.  Did Tiger use a condom? Maybe. If he did, then at least I know that they were not just trying to have Tiger’s next kid and live off the child support. Enough said.

Except that if Brett needs any help consoling Ms Elin, he can call me…

Although Joe Stack went to extraordinary measures to get away from his IRS problems, I can see where his frustration came from.

“I have had all I can stand,” he wrote in the note, dated Thursday, adding: “I choose not to keep looking over my shoulder at `big brother’ while he strips my carcass.”

But now what? He left a wife and kid behind.  He just left them with his IRS probs, did he not? Kinda selfish, I think. And who is going to end up paying for that building?

Jesus was gay? Really? So, Elton, I must ask you: A straight guy can’t be a compassionate and super-intelligent  who understood human problems?

Posted by trkstr67 Tagged with:
Feb 042010

Me?  I use IE7, Firefox, Chrome, and sometimes Safari. 

I use any three at one time while I internetally(hey, I just invented a word!!)  market my  Magiccoffeenow site for Magic Power Coffee.  I use IE at work(because I have to) and at home for some of my email (so I can leave the gmail and earthlink account that is associated with the browser so I don’t have to enter credentials every time)  and for my banking.  Firefox because I am used to the extensions that I use with it now, and Chrome because it is pretty darn cool and for the email credentials issue I just mentioned. And since its extensions list is growing, I may use more predominantly. Safari is pretty cool, since it is graphically definitley an Apple product.  Just really haven’t got into it that much. I haven’t even changed the toolbar except for adding the gmail to it.

Going by browser statistics on the W3school site in January 2010, Firefox is the master, but Chrome is gaining fast.   But according to PCMag, Chrome will be you next browser. Google is obviously a mammoth internet monster to be reckoned with. Watch out Firefox.

So, the main reason I use more than one browser is because of the email issues I have.  I have a lot of email addresses with what I do with Magic Power coffee  and this site and personal use. If I use different browsers, I can associate a specific browser with a specific gmail address so I do not have to put that email/password in everytime. The browser already knows.

Major time saver.

Just a small look into my browsing world and maybe a hint at what you can do to make a computer work better for you. Dueling browsers.

Posted by trkstr67 Tagged with: