Skirting the Law?

[Boxman]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( "I have also sent back the postage paid envelopes with nothing in them just so they have to pay postage!! "

That's exactly what we do. Sometimes I even put other companies' junk mail in the postage paid envelope. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
)</font>

I shred all of the marketing materials from credit card companys and send it back to them in their own envelope. I get a great deal of satisfaction from this.....

boxman

 

[Junkman]

What most people don't realize is that the company that sends out the bills isn't the one that opens the payment envelopes. This is usually done by a bank that deposits the money and sends a daily summery of the payments received. The envelopes are opened by a mechanical device and then are put into boxes that then have the contents removed by clerks. They don't care what you put in and they never read the notes. Many times they are paid piece work and don't even pay attention to the payments that they are processing. I make one payment for 3 different electrical accounts with one check. More times than not, they apply the entire payment to only one account and the other two go delinquent until the next month when the bill come in. I then call and they remove the late charges and properly disburse the money from the over paid account to the other two. This is how I learned how all this works.... they explained it to me after I complained to many times about the sloppy work of their employees only to find out that it was the banks employees. Starting January, I will no longer have the problem because they will be accepting INTERNET payments..
If it makes you happy to send back empty envelopes, think of it as helping to keep the postal rates down, because every Post Paid Business Reply Envelope cost 39 cents plus a few more pennies for the privilage...... If you are stuffing extra paper into the envelope, you might go over the weight allowance for 39 cents and have your envelope returned to you for additional postage. There is no such thing as "postage due" any longer. It is the sender that is responsible for the postang.....

 

[slowrev]

The sending back the empty envelope thing might open the "existing business relationship" loophole in the telemarketing law and enable them to call you??

 

[Junkman]

Only if you put your return address on the envelope. I don't think that they are going to do DNA sampling to determine who licked the flap!!!!!! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[gadgetman]

My "unwanted calls" have reduced to almost ZERO since the law. We use the caller ID combined with our answering machine to screen our calls. We did notice that about six months ago, the "unknown caller" started to show a name or at least a phone number (not 800). But when the answering machine picked up it either dropped off half way through the message or it was a "computer" sound on the recorder.

As for sending back the Business Reply Mail, look at the next one you receive. I remember seeing the "SEND BACK AN EMPTY ENVELOPE" recommendation several years ago. I recently noticed that the envelope now has a code of some sort (one I just pulled out of the trash says "CUSTOMER LOCATOR CODE" with a bar code below it). I don't know if this information would identify WHO sent the envelope back or not. I don't think there are any laws against sending an empty envelope and making them pay postage, but who knows.

 

[Boxman]

You are right Junkman, but I figure that the entire bank processing costs more money if they have to open empty envelopes or envelopes filled with shreded ad materieals and that this will eventually impact the credit card companys when the banks are charging more for having to deal with all of the junk they're getting.

 

[Junkman]

I hate to say this, but it is the consumer that eventually pays. MC & Visa raise their discount rate that business pay every 6 months without fail. This cost of doing business is passed onto the consumer in higher prices in the end. I am negotiating rates every 6 months to try to keep the discount rate as low as possible, but they still get a little more out of me every 6 months even if it isn't the full amount. The discount rate is a complex formula of how many tickets you submit and the average dollar amount. Once they even tried to figure in the total number of declined sales that we processed. If you have an American Express merchant account, the rate is even higher and if there is ever a dispute, the merchant doesn't have a snowflakes chance in hell of winning. Their customer is always right even when they are wrong. From a merchants point of view, American Express is the worse one to deal with and Discover is the best. After 30+ years in retail, I can tell you horror stories that are incomprehensible in the logic that the card processors use against the merchants to recover money when they get burned by the card holder. The only positive thing that I can say is that dealing with them today is better than it was 30 years ago. With every ticket getting an approval number, it is harder for them to do charge backs. Many people will still dispute tickets because they forgot the purchase or they know that a many of the larger merchants aren't going to do the paper work required for a disputed amount if that amount is small.