Newsletter ArchiveSUBJECTs:E-Mail Filters - The Pay Phone Pirates The Internet 800 Directory - http://www.inter800.com The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter This issue is for Friday, April 05, 2002 Table of Contents 01. E-Mail Filters 02 The Pay Phone Pirates *01 E-Mail Filters Welcome to The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter. As you work to expand your online business, it is inevitable that the amount of unsolicited e-mail you receive each day will also increase. You can approach this growing problem in one of two ways. 1-Spend endless hours tracking every spammer and trying to stop this mail from being sent to you, in a noble but futile battle. 2-Focus on ways to reduce the amount of time you spend dealing with this annoying and growing problem. Basically accepting spam as a fact of life and learning how to decrease its impact on your valuable time. Having wasting a good deal of time in the pursuit of option one, I now strongly advise option two. One of the best tools available to help you take control of this problem is the use of e-mail filters. Most e-mail programs contain ways to filter and route your e-mail into folders. If your current program doesn’t have this ability, get one that does. Outlook Express and Netscape Communicator are both very good e-mail programs with filtering capabilities, and they are free. Think of the filtering program as your assistant assigned to sort and aid you in the processing of e-mail. Create folders for the different aspects and types of e-mail you receive; these could include folders for orders, support, people’s names, newsletters and spam. Now set the filters to send the e-mail into to these folders as they arrive. With Outlook you can also have the filter automatically forward the e-mail to someone else. If your orders or support e-mail need to be seen by several people, have the program send it out as it sorts. When setting your spam filter, DON’T send the e-mail directly to be deleted. You need to review the e-mail sent to this folder before deleting it, otherwise you might inadvertently delete something of value. Instead I recommend creating a spam folder and sending the e-mail there, this way you can review these messages before deleting them. Depending on the type of business you're in, some words or phrases I would filter, you might not. For me “Viagra” is a spam word and e-mail that contains this word is sent to my spam folder. However if you sell Viagra, this word is legitimate when received in the subject of what is probably an important e-mail. Let me give you some words you might consider for the your spam filter. -Debit - Bulk - Homeworkers – Homeowner - Free - Offshore - Viagra – Weight – Downline – Waistline – Smoking -Sex Setting up the filters and fine-tuning takes a small amount of time, compared to the time you will save. If you have any thought or ideas you would like to share with me, please send them to Chuck Arning at chuck@inter800.com We’re Talkin’ Serious” Bone Suckin’ Sauce ! Winner: “Battle Of The Sauces.” Created in true western North Carolina style. Tomato based all-natural, sweetened with honey and molasses. Order your Box of six today for $39.99 +s/h. Toll-Free 1-800-446-0947 or online http://www.BoneSuckin.com *02 The Pay Phone Pirates When Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it decreed that Payphone Service Providers (PSPs) should be compensated for all the toll free calls made from their phones. As most probably know, it costs the end user nothing to place a toll free call via a payphone. These calls are known as "dial-around calls" and the money pay phone owners receive is known as "dial-around compensation". Calling cards, which usually utilize toll free numbers for initial access, have all but replaced the handfuls of coins we used to dump into the pay phones. The FCC regulation requiring long-distance carriers to pay per-call compensation to payphone service providers was intended to end the “free ride” enjoyed by long-distance companies at the expense of payphone providers. After all, if you service and maintain pay phones, how would you feel if they were being used regularly but you received no money? Imagine operating a snack machine that gave out candy for free. Not a very profitable proposition, to be sure. The carriers were given the choice to pass along the fee to customers, mark it up or absorb it. Initially, the fees were offset by increases in the per-call charge levied for using a calling card (aptly named the "bong" charge), along with overall increases in the costs of toll free services. The current amount of compensation to the pay phone provider is 24˘ per call. Knowing that competition has virtually eliminated the bong charge on calling cards and long distance rates average less than 15˘ per minute, I began wondering how the LD companies were recouping this 24˘ per call fee. Of the 3 choices available to carriers, I somehow doubt absorbing it won out. Tuesday, I spoke with long time 800 Directory advertiser, Bob Burkhart of Tech Instrumentation (http://techinstrument.com). Bob received more than a few phone calls to his toll free number that went dead as soon as he answered the phone. Bob has caller ID so he recorded the phone number these calls came from. When his bill arrived, he discovered that these calls came from pay phones and that he had been charged an additional 26˘ fee per call! There are two problems here: 1) In this situation, it appears that someone has created a "call center" of pay phones dialing toll free numbers solely for the purpose of collecting the dial-around compensation. Further, I seriously doubt this is the only one. Using an automatic dialer hooked up to a bank of pay phones could make you a millionaire in less than a year. 2) There is the issue of how each long distance provider handles the dial-around compensation. In Bob's case, his provider has marked it up 2˘ before passing it through. When I contacted my own toll free service provider, I was appalled to hear that they charge me an additional 55˘ per call! Further, when I thought, "How could we nab one of these pay phone call centers?", it occurred to me that the party best able to spot such fraud would be the long distance carriers that pay the compensation. Surely the long distance carriers would be able to see if certain pay phones were making calls to toll free numbers 24/7? The question is, why should they do anything about it? If this situation is bringing them additional revenue, why would they spend time or money trying to stop it? Things you can do: Most providers will allow you to block access to your toll free numbers from pay phones. It can usually be taken care of with a simple phone call. You'll have to decide for yourself if this is a wise course of action for your company. For many traveling employees calling in to the office, the toll free number has replaced the calling card. Quite simply, rates for calls to the company's toll free number are significantly lower than those of calling cards. Unfortunately, if the employees are calling from pay phones, you're losing some of those savings in dial-around compensation fees that your carrier is passing along to you. Analyze your bill or call your provider and find out how much you are being charged for these types of calls. Feel free to raise hell if the fee is in excess of the 24˘ they pass on to the pay phone provider. Bob Burkhart has asked that anybody with information regarding suspected misuse of payphones calling toll free numbers send him an email including the suspected payphone number and any other relevant information (bob@techinstrument.com). He asks that you include the word “Payphone” in the subject line. George Paul (http://gotollfree.com) The Internet 800 Directory 800-299-1879, george@gotollfree.com Vegas Vacation has the best rates on Las Vegas Hotel Rooms. Don't make a reservation without calling us first! Call 800-637-6442 or visit our ad in the Internet 800 Directory: http://inter800.com/02281174.htm Banners? Pay-per-click? Why not target your market with links or information placed in relevant content? The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter offers direct access to business people who are interested buyers. Advertising: Information on how to sponsor this publication: Call 800-299-1879 Thanks for taking to time to review our newsletter for this week. 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