Here's a few suggestions for dealing with a few things that annoy you.

(1)Three Little Words That Work !! Those three little words are:"Hold On,
Please..." and will help eliminate telephone soliciting. 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.

(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 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.

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 money!

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.

a college friend of mine, as soon as he spotted a "Return Postage Guaranteed" envelope in his junk mail, would glue and tape it to a brick, and drop it in a mailbox.

calls freaked me out.

Also, call your credit card companies and tell them to put you on their "do not solicit" list.