Phone solicitation is a problem for everyone. You can find web pages and books dedicated to ways to turn a phone solicitation call into a joke for your own amusement, but people trying to cheat you out of your money is no joke.

We need some guidelines on how to tell a legitimate phone call from a reputable company that you want to buy from or one that is about to rip us off. If you can get your mind around the process of shopping via the phone or online, then you are not only a smart shopper, you can also learn how not to be a victim and that’s a good feeling. A few tips are added below.

. If you didn’t need it before they called, you don’t need it now. Slick salespeople love to “create a need” in you in their opening comments. You know the things you really do need and don’t need so if the salesman on the phone creates a need you never knew you had – you never had it.

. Any offer that you have to take right now is a bad offer. This ploy is a one two punch. First it’s an offer that sounds too wonderful to be true. The reason it sounds like that is that it’s not true. Then they try close the deal with a false sense of urgency by making you feel you have to take their offer. You don’t.

. Only do business with companies you already know. If you never heard of this company that is calling you, tell them that you have a firm policy of only working with companies you trust. There is no answer for that.

. A salesman is not your best friend. A slick salesman will get chummy and try to make friends to hook you. You don’t need this kind of friend because his real goal is to get your money.

. You be the boss of your charitable giving. Decide who you want to support completely on your own. Then give to those charities and that’s the end of it. If someone pushes you for a donation, tell them it’s a closed list and they can’t get on it.

. You probably did not win a special prize. You did not win a prize if you didn’t enter the contest in the first place. That’s a scam to get their foot in the door then sell you useless or nonexistent products to get your money.

. You can have a policy too. A good firm policy is, “I never buy anything from anyone on the phone unless I initiated the call.” It’s a policy. You can’t violate it and by sticking with it, the phone solicitor has no way of getting around that defense.

. The do not call list. Your state and federal governments have programs where you can register your name and phone number so solicitors are forbidden by law from calling you. Get on those lists. Then if an unwanted sales call comes in, they can get in a lot of trouble.

As a rule, the only way you should use the internet or the phone for shopping is if you initiated the purchase. Whether it’s an email or a phone call, if they called you and you didn’t ask them to, don’t buy from that solicitor. This takes a lot of the decision making out of the process.

There are plenty of legitimate business people, charities and retailers who will do business with you honestly. So feel free to have little or not patience for anyone who calls you to sell you something and start now getting taken off their lists. When you do that, before long the solicitors will realize you are not a victim and they will move on and leave you alone. Your phone might ring less often but when it does, it will be someone you really do want to talk to. And that’s worth waiting for.

Well, Bill went back to work today he was off for 12 days and it was nice having him around. I hope everyone survived all the festivities, we both managed to get a cold and we’re now working on feeling better. I certainly hope everyone will have a very prosperous and healthy 2008.

I thought things would get back to normal today and I could start working on my blogs since I gave myself a long break from the computer, but no such luck for some reason both Firefox and Explorer were both messed up and I worked on those all day. I really had a big problem with Quicktime not working in Firefox then it spread to the other one.

I was really at my wits end installing and uninstalling all day. I think I finally have my pc in a workable condition which is pure dumb luck because I am not very computer smart and I managed to finally figure out that I needed to reinstall Adobe Flash Player on both browsers and now they are working properly.

It is really hard to get back into the rhythm of working after the last 2 hectic weeks. I guess tomorrow I will take down the decorations and get that out of the way. I’m really glad I didn’t get carried away so now it wont take me forever to put them away. Well, I think I’ll put this tired old bones to bed.