Monica

The FTC is going after telemarketers. These look like pretty much the same restrictions Pennsylvania enacted a few months ago, with higher fines and the addition of rules about abandoned calls, but they'll be on a national level if Congress approves.

That reminds me: The National Foundation for Cancer Research has joined the ranks of charities who spam (and who will therefore not get any more money from me so long as they persist in doing this). I bet they won't even acknowledge my complaint; the World Wildlife Fund and the International Fund for Animal Welfare never did either. The latter two are also sending me (via physical mail) a steady stream of stuff I wouldn't want them to spend my money on anyway, like calendars and plush toys and umbrellas and whatnot, even though it hasn't paid off for them. I've started to use their postage-paid reply envelopes to tell them to go away. (My "final notice" from WWF was three mailings ago...)

Making the rounds anonymously; I got it from madnessie:

I suppose some degree of commerce would grind to a halt if telephone solicitors weren't able to call people at home during the 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 those 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 email to your friends.

When you get ads in your phone or utility bill, include them with the payment. Let them throw the stuff away. Think globally; act locally. 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, or a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them their application back! Just make sure your name isn't on anything you send them. You can send it back empty if you want, just to keep 'em guessing!

Let's support our postal service. They say email is cutting into their business and that's why they need to keep increasing postage. We can help! Pass this along to all your friends and maybe we could get enough business for the post office that they will not have to raise rates in 2004.

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(Monica again.) I've actually done this with physical mail, though not lately. A couple senders have recently made it onto my sh*t list, though, so I will be reviving the practice. If IFAW and WWF won't stop spamming people (well, specifically, me), maybe I can at least use their paper mailings against them. I think each of them should receive the other's literature.

Usually I just tell junk callers to go away (and put us on their no-call lists). We've been getting a lot of calls offering to refinance our mortgage lately, though, and I've found that the fastest way to get rid of them is to ask "can you beat 6 percent?". The folklore says that the telemarketers aren't allowed to hang up on you, but I've got a pile of experience to the contrary. :-)

The not-for-profit outfits seem to be entering the world of spammers. I think this is unwise. So far, in the past week, I have told two that I regularly support (to a small degree), and who sent me multiple unsolicited electronic "newsletters", that they would no longer be receiving my dollars and they may as well take me off their paper mailing lists too. Now, as I have never given either of these outfits my email address, I must conclude that they are spamming in general rather than sending newsletters out to their actual supporters -- which would itself be unreasonable unless said supporters signed up for that.

I see this as very different from places where I'm already on the mailing list for content and occasionally they ask for money. I don't have a problem with them using their usual means of talking to me to ask for support.

This is a new one on me. I just got spam (that bypassed the pobox spam-rating system with narry a blip) from someone selling diapers and other baby-related stuff. That's just as far off the mark as the spam I get telling me I can enlarge my penis.

But it gets better. You see, she's not actually advertising a brand of diapers. She says that if I send her $3 she'll tell me the *name* of this amazing brand of diapers (and also the name of an amazing brand of formula, and some other junk). So it's spam advertising ads!

The mind boggles.

(Oh, and send cash or make checks out to "cash"; there's no actual name...)

I just got email from "Network Commerce" (clearly a spammer from general message properties) urging me to give blood. I don't know whether to be annoyed because it's spam or encouraged that even spammers might have hearts. Well, whatever.