Oh my God, don't fill out these entry forms. Don't try to win this car. 

These bait cars are in malls and ballparks across the US, tempting people to fill out small contest entry forms. 

The forms are used by telemarketers. 

My friend Jerry had a short career in San Diego, California as a telemarketer. At his telemarketing job, a plain manila envelope stuffed with hundreds of these forms would be delivered to his desk at the beginning of each shift. He worked with dozens of other telemarketers. Their cubicles were so small that they were called a "cubby".

His job was to call the people on each form and ask them to buy timeshare property in San Diego. He would read the phone number directly from the person's own handwriting, as if they had personally handed this information to him.

If the people he called specifically demanded to be placed on their "do not call" list, he would put their entry form into a basket labeled "dead leads". If he didn't reach a person, he would put their entry form into the "call back" basket, and if he reached them, he would move their entry form into the "call completed" basket. 

The "call completed" forms would go back to the managers, so that they could be mailed away and used by another telemarketing company.

I believe the marketing company rents space and sets up the display at the mall. I think the bait cars on display are loaned by local car dealerships, but I don't know if, or how much they get paid for loaning the cars.

The companies which set these up operate nationwide, and they can pool the entries into their contest, so that they only have to give one car away per year for the entire United States.

March 23, 2007
Update! Mail!

I just read your page on the telemarketing car. I got a kick out of it because I know of 3 people who work for this type of company. They way they get their names is the same, through money or car give-aways. The company they work for is a little more evil though. 

The company scans in the entry cards into batches of several hundred. The scanned batches are then sent to data entry personnel (remotely, no need for an office) who enter them into a large database. The personal info is then sold to, well, anyone who wants it I guess. The data entry people get paid by the form, usually around .05 per card. Lots of college students and moms do this because they can work from home. 

Anyway, thanks for the great site.
Dukdodgers

Wow, two of my favorite subjects, working from home and telemarketing!
Was the work from home job tough to get? People are always asking me for help finding actual work from home jobs since I wrote the herbalife story.

Do the home workers also type directly from the contest entry forms?
Can I post your story on my site? 
Thank you.
-Rob

Rob,

The work isn't tough to get, I know several people doing it now, and a few that have quit once they got better jobs.

The contest cards are scanned into a computer. The worker runs a client on their computer that allows them to connect and receive the scanned cards. The scans are what the workers enter the data from. The scans are what allow the workers to work from home, they literally can do the work from anywhere there is an internet connection. It's quite a neat and efficient program. It uses technology that can even auto fill some of the fields (such as the phone number) in the database entry based on the scan. 

Feel free to use this on your site. Glad I can help/contribute.

Dukdodgers