Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!fernwood!decwrl!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: gadbois@cs.utexas.edu (David Gadbois)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Mercury Marketing Again
Message-ID: <13793@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 18 Oct 90 23:06:00 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Organization: TELECOM Digest
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Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu


orgren@rtc.reston.unisys.com (Paul Orgren) writes:

>On a related topic: when I moved to Houston in 1980, within hours of
>my phone being connected, I received a call from the Houston Post
>inviting me to subscribe.  It seemed that Southwestern Bell must be
>giving them lists of newly connected numbers.

I actually worked in the Post subscription department in late 1980.
(I was only 15 at the time, and I only lasted a week on the job --
even then I realized how sleazy it was.)  We got $0.50 per
subscription we sold.

There was one guy there whose mother was a real estate agent.  She
would give him lists of new rentals and sales in town.  He was
probably the one who called you.  He made a killing since at the time
an ungodly number of people were moving to Houston every week.  I
recall that he went to great pains not to let the Post find out about
his inside source -- they thought he was just an unbelievably good
salesman.  The rest of us were stuck with going through entire
prefixes, one number at a time.


David Gadbois