I suppose some degree of commerce would grind to a halt if telephone solicitors weren't able to call people at home during dinner hour, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant.

Now Steve Rubenstein, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, has proposed Three Little Words, based on his brief experience in a telemarketing 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 telemarketing 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.