Sunday, February 14, 2016

Are you a sucker?

Have you ever spelled your name wrong intentionally to see where your address goes on the net? I have, then forgot what business I was dealing with at the time when I tried it. I have spelled my name Darn-well, dArnell, Jcak, etc.  And later get a ‘personal message’ i.e.:
Dear Mr. Darn-well,  WE have been thinking of you and wanted to personally make this offer….etc..

(My friends shop was a little bigger than this)

I have been tempted to list as Crappy Jack and get ready to smile at the responses.  There is no telling who sells, gives or trades your info to whom.

In another life as a builder I met a man with a window business in N Belmont.  He also ran what was called a ‘sweat shop’. He had ten phone lines ran into a small building where he had individuals making phone calls all day, you just might know them, they are ‘Telemarketers’. (You have probably heard of them, LOL) He sold time to businesses for his ‘people’ to call certain lists. 

He told me there were many lists, the tele-marketers called them ‘sucker lists’. The lists were people who bought certain items, i.e. ‘ladies clothes’, who bought tools, they have lists for Democrats or for Republicans, Donations, etc, Hundreds of lists. So when you  get a call or an e-mail, it’s because someone has shared your information, that you are interested in a certain field. The tele-marketer is not sitting with a phone book and going down the list, like I used to think. 

There is a reason you are getting that ‘irritating’ call during an early dinner. It is called 'The Sucker List', what bothered me most is the donations list. Once, out of the blue, I decided to send a check to the Salvation Army at Christmas time.  It wasn’t long until I was receiving mail from several ‘charities’.  When I learned of the ‘sucker lists’ I did get upset.  I am still a fan of the Salvation Army, they do a good work. But I learned something, they didn’t just smile when they got the check, but someone in administration knew to add me to the ‘list’ of donors. They then had one more ‘lead’. 
This is a BIG telemarketing group.

Now if I donate, it is in cash into the kettle.

My thoughts for today.

Nite Shipslog

PS: Tele-marketeers are on their way out. Cookies are taking their place. My computer is full of them. Today I ordered some tennis shoes. I now get e-mails and popups on my monitor about tennis shoes.
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6 comments:

I'm mostly known as 'MA' said...

Telemarketers are aggravating. Interesting how they get those lists. I'm leaning more and more to buying with cash and rarely order over the internet any more. What once felt like such a wonderful convenience seems like an inconvenience more and more.

betty said...

It is funny how cookies work these days, almost immediately it seems after you do something online you get them in advertising. Very clever who thought of that. Yesterday we got a piece of mail that only would have been generated by a particular company we had done business with, do we know they had to sell our info. Kind of shocked me, thought they were a bit more honorable than that.

Betty

Mevely317 said...

Ya, I realize everyone has to make a living ... but telemarketing calls intruding on people's lives like that is really scraping the bottom of the barrel (IMHO).
When Chloe (my younger grand) was a toddler, her speech impediment made it difficult to understand what she was saying. So, when telemarketers would call, son usually said, "Hang on a minute?" -- then handed the phone to Chloe who was more than happy to 'talk'!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sheila Y said...

Just this weekend I negotiated my home phone bill down. I'd rather ignore telemarketers there than on my cell phone. :-) That do not call list is a joke. I'll try to melt the snow before y'all head home. Sheila

Unknown said...

I don't answer calls if I don't recognise. I list the number and keep
for records. I reported several to Attorney General. I received a letter
from one of the callers and apologized for calling didn't know I was on the no-call-list I was surprised ...I received forms to list numbers.

Lisa said...

I was put on a "Sucker" list when I donated once to the Diabetes association. However, I was not called, but was bombarded with paper mail. My home phone is unlisted so we are pretty safe from most telemarketers but my cell phone gets a lot. Lucky for that, I can block those calls and now I have my own "sucker" list.

One time I was getting a loan for a car from the bank, they spelled my name wrong. I didn't notice until the next day and immediately had them fix it. I still get
'junk" mail sent to "Lesa". So I know exactly who sold my name on that one!

Im also on the Betty Crocker sucker list.
Lisa