I feel good :) Today, I just did another huge cross-spam operation. I don’t remember exactly when or why I started doing this but this is probably my 5th in 3 or 4 years. I hate to see direct marketing in my mailbox, despite my no-ads sign. So, instead of recycling, I started keeping it in a cabinet and once it is full (takes less than a year usually), I just shuffle all the spam letters and stuff it in the included paid-reply envelopes.

Then just take this huge amount of envelopes to the nearest mailbox. Not that I don’t have enough reasons for my neighbors to have doubts about my sanity, but I feel so good imagining the WTF faces of the guys at the cable TV company getting the latest marketig letter from some bathtub and shower company, the several insurance companies getting Tarot or Massage ads, or whomever getting whatever else. Best of all, they all pay for having that pleasure :)

I encourage everyone to do this. I always did it for “fun”, never thought of the result that these companies would stop spamming me because my ID in the reply envelopes always comes back with something weird, but the truth, related or not I get way less crap in my mailbox. Seems to work towards my address getting unlisted from a few databases at least.

Now, parallel to this I started something new. Since I am working from home during the last 3 months I get bombarded with telemarketing calls, that I missed before since I was only back home later. I started even being “not very polite” with them after the 10th call of the day, but I get repeated calls from the same company. I even get those that you pick the phone, and they put you on hold with crap music as if you will wait for the privilege of wasting your time talking about some brand new moisturizer cream or whatever. Now I started asking them what company is this (probably they think I am very interested). End of last month I sent invoices to all these companies with the time spent on the phone (hey, I charge for my time). As a side note, I always charge my highest rate and always round the minutes up to the next hour. Didn’t receive yet any call asking what the invoice is for (well, I explain in the invoice). The invoices will be due in 3 weeks so fun will begin when I start issuing recall invoices, aggravated :) Again, I don’t expect any invoice to be paid, and that would be way too funny, but I kind of guess that my phone number will vanish from a few junk telemarketing databases.

Feel free to re-use my counter-spam techniques for yourself. Please post a comment when you do it. Believe me, you will feel good and will be giggling for a while.