Consumer Warfare
How to deal with unwelcome mail and telephone solitications
Time is money.
Telephone solicitations:
Sean: Hello?
Solicitor: Hi, this is the XYZ Company, and I'd like to tell you about a great new way we have to help save you money...
Sean: Excuse me. Is this a solicitation?
Solicitor: Well, yes; I'd like to tell you about...
Sean: Just a moment. I'll be happy to listen to your solicitation, but I do charge for my time. Advertising time on this line is $5 for the first minute and $2 for each additional minute. Let me get your billing address first, and then I'll be happy to listen.
Solicitor: (Pause, baffled) Let me get my supervisor.
Mail solicitations (using credit card offers as an example)
Dear Credit Card Vendor,
Thank you for the recent advertisement which you sent me offering me a credit card. Since I receive such a large number of these advertisements, I have decided to begin offering a paid service by critiquing the advertising content of these mailings.
If you wish to avail yourself of this service, simply send me copies of your future advertisements. Please understand that any future advertisements which you send me constitute a legally binding request for this paid consulting service. When I receive your advertisement, I will be happy to write a short critique of its advertising value, which I will send to you together with my bill for U.S. $100 per advertisement which I critique for you. I must receive payment in full within 30 days of the statement date; late payments are subject to a $25 fine per 30 days.
The advertisement which I recently received from you is the first one for which I have kept a record. As a courtesy, I will not consider this first mailing to be an actual request for my services.
Please keep this notice for your records.
With kindest regards,
Sean Crist
I keep a stack of these around to stuff in the postage-paid return envelopes that come with the ads I get. I do write down whom I've sent them to, and if this isn't an adequate discouragement to keep advertisers from filling my mailbox, I will make up an official-looking bill to send them.
Whether you can actually legally obligate someone in this way to pay you is something I don't know. It could be argued that I haven't gotten their signature, but there are ways that you can bring a contract into being without an actual signature (e.g. "Notice: by breaking the seal on this software, you agree to the terms printed in..."). Ordering in a restaurant might be in the same legal category; you haven't signed anything, but you're still legally obligated to pay.
Whatever the answer to the legal question is, it seems that there aren't very many credit card companies who want to send me their advertisements any more.