[00:00] Speaker 1: (gentle music) Welcome to the Junk Refund Show, hosted by Alan J. Cook, founder of 1-800-JUNK REFUND. Have you ever paid those expensive junk removal companies to take away some of your stuff, only to say to yourself, as a truck drives off down the street, "Some of that stuff wasn't junk." Did they try to sell it for you and give you some money back? No. Well, now there is a company that can do just that. Listen to our weekly Junk Refund Show on BBS Radio TV to learn how one lady spent $375 on junk removal and got $3,200 back. 1-800-JUNK REFUND represents the next generation of junk removal. Learn how to not only save your money on junk removal, but how to get some money coming back. Plus, purchase one of our radio vouchers during the show to save even more on your junk removal. Let's get the junk out of your home and out of your life. Now, with your host, Alan J. Cook.

[01:33] Speaker 1: (uplifting music)

[01:38] Speaker 2: Hello, everybody. Welcome to my favorite time of the week, Thursday at 3:00 Eastern, when we do the Junk Refund Radio Show, which is the world's longest running junk removal radio show. Now probably in our fourth year altogether. We did one year on CBS. We've done about three years now on the BBS Radio TV, and we just are having a blast, and I'm thrilled to be here. Fresh off a couple of junk removal jobs that I just finished doing. I'm back home, and, uh, I'm excited just to be able to sit down, slow down a little bit, and talk to the world about junk removal. So this is kind of cool. I've always got good stories to tell you. I mean, I think they're, I think they're great stories actually, but they're just stories that happen while you go out and do your thing in the junk removal business, because it's like being on a paid treasure hunt every day. And that's a cool job to have. So let me tell you a little bit about who we are.

[02:41] Speaker 2: Sometimes I probably overlook the basics because I'm having so much fun talking about some other stuff. We are a junk removal business headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. We've been doing this for about 20 years. We do jobs all over the country. We have gone from, uh, Maine to Florida, from Chicago to San Antonio, from Seattle to San Diego doing jobs. And we have 62 affiliates around the country that do the smaller jobs for us. The company is 1-800-JUNK REFUND. That's also our phone number, uh, for, you know, out-of-state folks or whatever. Um, and we really do some s- some fun stuff. As the name implies, there's a refund part of our business, and most people probably don't understand off the bat what the word refund means. Re means... The, the prefix re means again. So you're gonna fund something again. That suggests you've already paid for something and you're gonna get some money back. That's what a refund is. Some people think we buy their junk. We don't do that.

[03:51] Speaker 2: Um, some people think we pick it up for free, and then if we sell some of it, they get some money back. The second half of that is right. The first half is wrong. We don't pick up the junk for free. We don't buy junk from people. We don't pick up the junk for free. You pay us to haul stuff away, but we're smart enough to realize that not all junk is junk. That's a phrase that I coined many years ago. And because that's the case, if you get some good stuff that you're just not gonna take with you to your new place or whatever, and we're, uh, and, and we're... And you're gonna have us, you know, haul it away, we're not just gonna throw it in the truck, send the truck to the dump, dump it, and then go do the next job. That might have a lot of positives from a business standpoint on keeping the trucks busy and getting the revenue up and stuff, but it's, it's, it's the exact opposite of whatever the color green's opposite is.

[04:42] Speaker 2: (laughs) If, if green means you're recycling and, and caring for the environment, then whatever the opposite color of green is, um, is what you're doing if you're just filling up your trucks and sending them to the dump and then dumping all the stuff there. So we do four things with the stuff. We junk the junk. We recycle stuff like metal and wire. We donate items and get you donation receipts. But the thing that sets us apart is we put the good stuff up for sale. If we think it'll sell for more than 20 bucks, like, you know, item-by-item kind of thing, if it'll sell for more than 20 bucks, we like to put it up for sale, and we give our customers 35% of the sales price. We keep 65% because we do all the work and handle all the calls and all that kind of stuff. And you, you would be surprised what can happen.

[05:30] Speaker 2: Um, so that's who we are, junk removal business that does kind of a fourth step that nobody else really does, and that is we can turn your junk into cash, and you do none of the work. That's a pretty slick deal. And we've given away... I mean, we've given out tens of thousands of dollars in refunds over the years, uh, to customers who otherwise would not have made a dime by any of these other companies getting involved. Um, what we do, we, we, you know, haul away your junk from inside your house, from outside the house, from the garage, from the attic. We...We don't charge you extra most of the time. We don't charge extra to go up into an attic and get stuff out of an attic. You just have to point to it or tell us what you want done, and we will go do the work, and we'll haul the stuff out, take it out to the truck. You don't have to get it all together in one place for us. You just have to point to us or tell us where it is. We'll come in and pick it up and grab it.

[06:29] Speaker 2: Um, if we donate some stuff, we'll get you a donation receipt and send it to you. If we sell some stuff, we keep track of what we're putting up for sale and how much we'll get back, and we track all that for you. Um, if we're gonna recycle stuff like metal and wire, they will pay us for that when we're at the scrap metal yards, but we don't give any of that back to the customers because you don't make a lot of money going to a scrap metal yard. But we are trying to recycle metal and wire and batteries and all that kind of stuff, um, so that they don't get, you know, sent into a landfill. And the junk, we junk, and we just take it to a dump and dump it off and pay the dump fees, and off we go. So that's a little bit about what we do. Our website, 1800junkrefund.com. We put specials up there all the time. One of those we're doing right now for the, the country's 250th birthday coming up in July, is that we're making a half truckload, and that's one-half of a 12-foot box truck.

[07:30] Speaker 2: That means it's about one-half of a Home Depot truck that you would rent, the box truck that you would rent, the enclosed truck that you would rent from Home Depot. Half of that filled up is normally $395, but on the website there's a tab there that says 250, and, and that d- this allows you, you could actually go in and purchase off of the website the same half truckload of stuff for $250 in honor of our birthday between now and July 4th of this year. Yeah. Um, I was gonna say next year, but that's 2027. So for the next, what? April, May, June, July, thr- three to four months, you can get a half truckload of stuff done, and this is in the Washington, DC area. You can talk to us if you're outside that area. Uh, we'll see what we can work out for you. But, um, it's a half truckload of stuff for 250 bucks, normally $395. That's a good deal in celebration of our nation's birthday, um, 250th birthday. So we're excited about that. So anyway, that's a little bit about what we do.

[08:37] Speaker 2: Here's a good example. We have a gentleman, really, really cool guy that lives out in, I think it is an Ocean Beach in San Diego, former FBI employee. Um, has a good sense of who's legit and who's not, and he's put us in the legit category. I've never met him. Um, really nice guy, and his parents, in their 80s, just recently moved from Potomac, Maryland out to San Diego. So we went in. It was our job to clean out a house that his parents have owned, I think, for over 40 years. Now, you can imagine the stuff that gets accumulated and collected over 40 years. There's just lots of stuff, and it's a tough thing for people in their 80s, two very well-educated people in their 80s, to just part with their stuff because that's been their life for the last 40 years. But they did it, and we went in a number of times, loaded stuff up, hauled it away.

[09:40] Speaker 2: One of the things that recently happened is that in the kitchen, after they left, they flew out this last Monday, we went in there on Tuesday, um, to pick... Or maybe it was last week, actually, that this happened. Uh, yeah, it was last week, I think. Anyway, we went in there on Tuesday to, to finish off some stuff, and in the kitchen, which was one of the last rooms that we cleaned out, they had a little desk. That desk had a shelf, little sh- a little small shelving unit on the left side of it, and there was still some stuff, just junk stuff on those shelves. Well, as I reached in to clear those shelves off, I pulled out a small glass bowl that had some jewelry in it. I went, "Oh, okay. They must have forgotten that this was there." So I took it to the jeweler, and lo and behold, um, about, what, three days later, I get a text message from the jeweler and it says, uh, "The offer is $910." Beautiful.

[10:45] Speaker 2: And so, uh, whereas most people, most companies would have taken that and just tossed it or had taken it and, you know, kept it for themselves, or whatever they may have done, we turned it into cash and sent, you know, 35% of it to San Diego. Now, how would you like a junk removal company to be doing that for you? Actually looking out for your good stuff and turning it into cash for you in addition to all the other stuff that we do. And, uh, uh, and also the stuff you would expect from a junk removal company. You know, hauling away the stuff. We sweep up the floors, by the way, when we're done. We wanna make it look nice. We work with a lot of realtors because they know who's about to move and who's gonna need their house cleaned out. We have an Oriental rug from this same home that these people originally paid $3250 for, handwoven Oriental rug. On one end of the rug, it's missing some of the tassels. They've just worn off.

[11:46] Speaker 2: It's an about, I'm gonna guess it's about 11 by 18 rug, something like that. We've got that in our possession. We're gonna put that up for sale. Um, the jewelry has been a good thing, and it's just been a neat thing to see some of this stuff turn into cash. So anyway, that's our story in a nutshell. That's what we do, and we go all over the country doing it, and we have a blast doing it. Um-I'm reading off just a little, uh, outline that I put here for the show today, and I'm gonna put my, my next item says San Salvador. I'm gonna come back to that one. After that, it's Groupon ratings. If you go to groupon.com and look up 1-800-JUNK-REFUND, in the Washington, DC area ... I think you can look this up anywhere in the country, but in the Washington, DC area, there's an offer for a, what, what amounts to a pickup truck full of stuff for $99 that is usually $229. And that's good in the DC metropolitan area within 30 miles of where we are in Rockville, Maryland.

[12:50] Speaker 2: Um, we have sold, uh, uh, I think that it's true to say thousands of those actually. We've do- been doing this with them for years. Our rating on Groupon is 4.83 out of 5.00. Now if you convert that to a percentage, 4.83 is 96.6% customer satisfaction rating, with I think 510 or so reviews. Those are little jobs, like you take a pickup truck out, you fill it up, you say, "Thanks, ma'am," and you're gone. Right? Some of them are big jobs. Some of them start little and turn into big jobs. But over 500 reviews with a 4.83 rating, on average, for that many people, they tell me at Groupon that is the highest rating in the country for a junk removal business. And then in any business, if you get into the 90th percent range, you're one of the tops in your business for the comp- for, you know, ratings. We're at 97%. It's 96.6, which means if you round it up, it's 97%, which is as good as GEICO, right? So, there you go.

[14:12] Speaker 2: Um, and reviews are so big these days with everybody going to, you know, everybody wants to go and see the reviews and see what other people have said. Well, there are some reviews for you on Groupon that you can take a look at. Plus, you can read the statements that, you know, people leave and tell you about what we do. But we'll stand behind 500+ ratings with a 97% customer satisfaction rating. You can't please everybody. There's 3% out there that, you know, for whatever reason, didn't like what we did. But 97% of the people loved it, and we'll stand by that number, you know, any day. We think that's pretty darn good. Um, I'm gonna take a break here for just a minute, um, and, uh, put some other stuff together. I got some exciting things happening, including some mail that just showed up I'm gonna tell you about in a second. But you're listening to The Junk Refund Show on the BBS Radio Network.

[15:04] Speaker 2: We're grateful for these guys, the good work they do down in Texas, and we'll take a break for a minute. I'll be back with The Junk Refund Show. I'm your host, Alan Cook. We'll be back in about 60 seconds.

[15:15] Speaker 1: (instrumental music) Have you ever hired one of those expensive junk removal companies then wondered what they did with the stuff, especially the good stuff? At 1-800-JUNK-REFUND, we junk the junk. Recycle stuff like metal and wire, donate items, and get you receipts, and put up for sale the good stuff. And if it sells, you get some money back. Cynthia paid $375 for junk removal and got $3200 back. Would you like to know how she did it? Tune in to The Junk Refund Show with your host, Alan J. Cook, every Thursday at 3:00 PM Eastern Time to get the junk not only out of your home but also out of your life.

[16:18] Speaker 2: Hey, welcome back to The Junk Refund Show. I'm coming to you live from Rockville, Maryland, where I am about to pop down a little, you know, one of those Halloween-sized Hershey's chocolate snacks, you know. This house that we cleaned out, I was just telling you about, that we sold the jewelry from, had this little glass jar or plastic jar full of these little Hershey's snacks in the fridge. And one of the things that we had to do is clean out their fridge. I thought, "Hey, I'm gonna hang on to those babies." I like to, uh ... And here's an innovative tip for you, by the way. Um, you know those, uh, I'm- they're little melting, um, they're not pans. They're little containers. They're melting containers, kind of oval-shaped. They sit in a base you plug into the wall, and they melt wax to give your home a certain fragrance, right?

[17:12] Speaker 2: Well, those babies also work great for melting little chocolate bars, right, and then dipping strawberries into it and putting them on wax paper, throw them in the fridge, and wham-oh, you got your own chocolate-covered strawberries. So there's your tip for the day. So I held onto these little Hershey's candies because they're just the right size. I can melt them in this little scented, you know, candle thing or pop them in a microwave like most people would do. But I have fun kind of doing, you know, a, a little bit innovative ways, and it's, it's just kind of cool. Um, and I love having chocolate strawberries around to munch on. So, my apologies for the next couple of minutes if I sound like I'm chewing on some Hershey's chocolate. It's because I'm chewing on some Hershey's chocolate, and I don't care. Uh, it's my show, I'm gonna chew on some chocolate.

[18:06] Speaker 2: So anyway, um, let's go to item number four here, San Salvador.One of the great things to do in life, in my opinion, is to make sure you're always on an adventure to the extent that you can be. That adventure is really up to you with whatever you would like to do and whatever turns you on, whatever you're passionate about. People would ask Warren Buffett, who is, by the way, a friend of mine, in Omaha, Nebraska, people would ask him, as he would go around and speak at college campuses, um, "What's your advice for, for my career?" And he summed it up in four words. He says, "Do what you love." Well, I love junk removal, and we're good at it, and every day's an adventure, and we have a blast. And it's just a fun thing to go to h- first of all, to help people who need to get a house cleaned out, or a condo cleaned out, or whatever it is, a garage cleaned out, or a restaurant cleaned out, or some scrap metal picked up, or whatever it is.

[19:20] Speaker 2: We show up with a big truck and hydraulic liftgate on the back and, you know, couple of guys, and whamo, your stuff's gone in, let's say, 30 minutes. It's amazing to see how grateful people are for what you do, and it doesn't matter if it's something as simple as junk removal, they're grateful for it. So, I just think, in life... And, and the purpose of this show, by the way, is not only to teach you how to get the junk out of your homes and out of your offices and stuff like that, but it also teaches you how to get it out of your life. And one of the ways to get junk out of your life is to make your life an adventure, and have a passion about something that you really love to do. I am the chairman of the entertainment portion on Friday night, June 12th of this year for my high school's 50-year reunion, and I am the emcee for the event, and I have put the program all together, and it's all done and ready to go. I'm very excited about it.

[20:28] Speaker 2: Um, uh, uh, I bring that up because on a prior show, uh, I interviewed a buddy of mine who's a high school classmate of mine named Lindsay Parker. Lindsay is an orthodontist, um... No, he's an ophthalmologist, there you go, um, who has made a very good living for himself. He married a girl that he met in high school when she asked him to the Sadie Hawkins Dance. They dated all through high school, have been married now, I don't know, almost 50 years, I would guess, close to 50 years. Um, and, but Lindsay is an avid fisherman and he goes up to Alaska every summer and has, like, a camp up there where you can go up and go fly-fishing in Alaska, and he's your tour guide and they just have a blast up there. But he also goes all over the world. He goes down to Mexico a lot to fish down there. And he, he's basically on an adventure to catch certain types of fish, and he's very good at it, and he goes all over the world doing it.

[21:34] Speaker 2: And so I had him on my show because I'm always so impressed with his posts on Facebook about what he's doing with his life with this fishing hobby of his. It's a fascinating thing. Um, and I, and I tip my hat to him for making his life an adventure. That is something that just turns him on, he loves to do it, he's very good at it, and he even operates a business where you can kind of sign up and pay a monthly fee and have access to him for fly-fishing, you know, tips, etc. The Provo River out in Utah, Provo, Utah area, where he and I went to high school at Orem High School, that Provo River is one of the best fly-fishing rivers in the United States. Tiger Woods used to go and may still go out there and go fly-fishing on the Provo River. Provo River is by the Sundance Ski Resort, y- you know, owned by the late Robert Redford, um, and a guy named Stan Collins who was an investment banker who was my first boss coming out of college. But anyway, I...

[22:46] Speaker 2: Make your life an adventure with something that just turns you on, whatever it is. So, back in 2017, for kind of a spiritual adventure, I wanted to go visit some of the temples that our Church builds because we build some really nice, really expensive, really well-designed and well-equipped and well-furnished temples around the world, and they're all unique, and they're all customized to the area that you're in. And I just thought, you know, that's the most spiritual place in the world for a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That's what it is for us. We go to these temples. These are different than church meeting houses. We have a bu- boatload of those too, but we do special stuff in the temples. We don't really talk about it too much because of the sacred nature of it, but we do stuff there, and it's important to us, and it's the pl- it's the building you go to if you want to feel close to God. That's really what you do.

[23:54] Speaker 2: And so, you know how there are people that will go out and want to visit all of the stadiums where the Super Bowl's been played? Or maybe they want to visit all of the Major League ballparks in the National or American League, right? Well, that's cool and that's great. My thing is, I'm at- I'm just thinking here, going, "Let's see, if I'm gonna go visit a building..."Why not go visit God's buildings or His homes or His condos, however you want to say it, around the world? That, to me, just made a lot of sense. So I started doing that, and I started doing it in January of 2017. To get some of the spiritual junk out of my life and get some good spiritual stuff into my life, that's kind of what I did. So we have a boatload of these in the United States, and over the course of seven or eight years, I had gone to all of them. We have nine of these up in Canada. I've been to eight of those nine. The other one was closed for six months for some refurbishing.

[24:54] Speaker 2: Uh, we have about 13 of them in Europe and Scandinavia. I've been to three or four of those. Some that I haven't been to, we have a bunch in South America and Central America, and because I'm in Washington, DC, the closest ones for me, travel-wise, are in Central America. I went to one for my 60th birthday seven years ago in Merida, Mexico. I had no idea where Merida, Mexico was. It's down in the Yucatan Peninsula. Uh, that was one of the best birthdays of my life, and I was 60, right? Some people say, "Oh, crap, I'm going to be 60. I don't want anybody to know," and it's almost like they run away from their own birthday. I throw a party, right? Because my dad died when he was 47. So when I turned 60, I've had 13 years of life and experiences on this planet that my dad never got. Now, I count that as a blessing. So now I'm 67. So as I look, I, I actually have a map of all the, the temples that we have in the world, the ones that are operating, which is somewhere around 215.

[26:00] Speaker 2: The number that I've been to, which is somewhere north of 120. The total number that have been a- announced, or are groundbreaking, or are under construction is 375. And we're building these things like they're going out of style, and every one of them is a multimillion dollar beautiful building, you know? And so, and I don't think they're financed, to be honest with you. Um, this church has a few bucks. And so that brings me to San Salvador in El Salvador, where we happen to have one of our temples. Last Thursday, I got on a plane, Frontier Airlines in Washington, DC at- uh, actually in Dulles, Virginia at Washington Dulles Airport, and I flew nonstop for four and a half hours to San Salvador, which is why I didn't do a radio show last week, is I was in the air. But I flew there for 58 bucks. That's Frontier Airlines. It was one of the deals that they do to Central America. Non- can you believe that? Nonstop flight, sitting in the exit row, plenty of legroom, 58 bucks.

[27:08] Speaker 2: No carry-on, just a, just a backpack, my personal item. I was only gonna be there a couple of days. I'd never been to San Salvador. I checked the government ratings, you know, any travel warnings or restrictions. No, just normal, you know, be- don't be out at night, it's probably a good idea. Um, never been there before. I had a blast. Um, and I just, uh, I, I, it, it was one of those things where I, I literally went down Thursday afternoon and came back, I was back by 6:00 Saturday night. Now, here's a little bit of wisdom, uh, uh, from a business perspective, something that I discovered. What I was going to do was get on the subway or the Metro system, we call it here in Washington, DC, and for about 8 bucks, maybe 10 bucks, I would ride for about an hour and a half, maybe close to two hours to get from where I am in Maryland out to Dulles Airport. It would be about an hour and a- uh, probably an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes to get there.

[28:13] Speaker 2: It would only cost me 8 or 10 bucks. I wouldn't have to park a vehicle. That would be great. And, uh, when I got home on Saturday, I just catch the Metro again, I come back, and there you go. So that was my plan. But the house that we cleaned out in Potomac where we sold the jewelry from, they had four dressers, very nice dressers from the master bedroom that we also hauled away on Tuesday and were still in the truck on Thursday, just because of how busy we've been this week. We haven't taken them off the truck yet. But we put them up for sale on Facebook Marketplace, and a guy said, "Hey, I need to buy these." We were asking 300 bucks, and he said, "I'll give you 250 for it, but can you deliver it to me Thursday morning in Fairfax, Virginia?" And I thought, "Wait a minute, that's on the way to the airport." So in- instead of taking the Metro, I'll, I'll go deliver this furniture and I'll get paid to go to the airport, 250 bucks. Plus I'll get it off the truck.

[29:18] Speaker 2: And then I'll just park the truck at the airport, and for $15 a day, I'll pay for three days of parking. I'm still 200 bucks ahead, right? So that's what I did. The guy was thrilled. 7:20 AM Thursday morning, my flight leaves at e- uh, at noon, and I'm delivering this furniture to him in Virginia. I make $250 on my way to the airport. Then I get a text message while I'm in San Salvador that says, "Hey, this realtor referred us to you. We're putting our home on the market on Monday at noon, and you come before then to haul away a big truckload of stuff." And I said, I started thinking about it, "Wait a minute, I get back at 6:00 Saturday night, my truck's empty now. Why don't I just do that on the way home?" Well, they loved that, because now their job gets done Saturday night, and they're a step ahead of the game, they don't have to wait until Monday to get it done.

[30:18] Speaker 2: So I did that on the way, on the way home, $850 jobI've now made $1,100 going to and from the airport, which kind of taught me that, I think from now on, I'm gonna drive to the airport in my work truck, and try to make money on the way out and on the way back, because it certainly worked for me before. Here's the other thing, though. This jewelry that I had dropped off, that I told you about already that we sold, I got the text message while I'm in San Salvador on the offer for $910 for the jewelry, this was Saturday morning, and I said, "Can you put a check out on your mailbox and I'll come pick it up Saturday night?" Well, sure enough, she did, and on my way home, I did the job in Potomac for 850 bucks. Then I went to North Potomac, Maryland to the jeweler's house, picked up a check for $910, and when you add it all up, I made $2,000 this weekend and still visited San Salvador. There you go. That's my life in a nutshell.

[31:23] Speaker 2: So I come back, and on my little spreadsheet, I check off that I've been to the San Salvador temple, and then I make another chart of it, and lo and behold, now in the middle of San Salvador, there's a green mark that says I've been there, right? So I'm starting to work on some of these temples that are in South... in Central... well, Central America and Mexico. The reason these are interesting to us is because of our belief in the Book of Mormon, another b- book of scripture that was written by people who lived somewhere in the Central to North America region from 600 BC till about 400 AD. And, and it tells all about their, their cities, and their cultures, and the name of their kings, and what crops they grew, and what metals they had, and what, you know, what, what... the temples they built. And I mean, it tells you all about these, these folks.

[32:19] Speaker 2: It's an amazing story, and I- I was just fascinated by this because down in Central America, you have ruins like one in Honduras, Western Honduras called Copán. Copán, they say, is like the Paris of the Maya civilization. And there's another one north of Guatemala City called Tikal. Tikal is like the New York City of the Mayan civilization. Somewhere around 30,000 people used to live at Copán. And the other reason I was excited to go to this temple in San Salvador is that I would fly into the... I'd fly into the country, get there about 2:00 on Thursday, book an appointment on the church's website, which is fabulous, to go to a 5:00 temple session in that temple, which worked just fine, and it was in Spanish, by the way.

[33:13] Speaker 2: And they have headsets where they can translate this into a boatload of different languages for you, but I said, "No, I'll just do the Spanish," 'cause I- I've done this enough, I know what they're trying to tell me, and now I can hear what it sounds like in Spanish, I'll work on my Spanish, right? So that was cool. That worked, and it was great. So I'm getting free Spanish lessons while I'm, you know, doing spiritual stuff. Um, but I, uh, had a great experience there and came back, um, thinking... Oh, oh, and, and Friday morning, I had paid for a all-day trip, four-hour, one-way bus ride up to Copán. It would be my first visit to some Mayan ruins in Central America, and they tell me that Copán was founded somewhere around the year 450 AD, which is only 20 years or so after the, the story from the Book of Mormon ends. So, there's a little bit of a connection there, and I was just kind of fascinated by this.

[34:16] Speaker 2: There's only about a 30-year gap between the, the founding of this city in Honduras and the story of these people that, that you read about in the Book of Mormon. Well, it turns out that the tour, which was supposed to leave at 4:00 AM on Friday, got canceled, I guess 'cause they didn't have enough people, and they said... they sent me a message and said, "Hey, can you come on Saturday?" And I went, "No, because my flight back on Saturday is a non-stop flight on Frontier. It's only 150 bucks, and if I cancel that and get a Sunday flight, it's 450 bucks." As much as I wanted to go to Copán, I didn't wanna pay 300 bucks out the nose to make it happen, and I didn't wanna have to spend an extra day there when I already had my flights arranged and everything So I, I wasn't able to go to Copán, so I spent Friday lounging back at the pool, taking a nap, just having a great time at, at the hotel. Um, and it was a f- it was a fabulous, fabulous experience. So I'm gonna...

[35:19] Speaker 2: I got a few more things I wanna tell you here. Um, I, I probably... more than I'm gonna have time t- to tell you, but, um, I'm gonna take another break real quick. You're listening to the Junk Refund Show, and if you wanna find some good flight deals, go to flyfrontier.com. Look at their flight deals, find the ones that say s- you know, to the Americas, and you'll see the different cities they service in Central America. These guys have flights from like 19 bucks to 59 or 69 bucks that are unbelievable, and it worked. So I'm a big fan of Frontier Airlines and their pricing. So anyway, check that out. We'll be... flyfrontier.com. I'll be back here in a, in another minute or so for the last, uh, session of the show.

[36:05] Speaker 2: Having a great time here on the Junk Refund Show on the BBS Radio Network

[36:10] Speaker 1: (instrumental music) Have you ever hired one of those expensive junk removal companies, then wondered what they did with the stuff, especially the good stuff?At 1-800-JUNK-REFUND, we junk the junk, recycle stuff like metal and wire, donate items and get you receipts, and put up for sale the good stuff. And if it sells, you get some money back. Cynthia paid $375 for junk removal and got $3,200 back. Would you like to know how she did it? Tune in to the Junk Refund Show with your host, Allen J. Cook, every Thursday at 3:00 PM Eastern Time to get the junk not only out of your home, but also out of your life.

[37:12] Speaker 2: Hey, folks. Welcome back to the Junk Refund Show, uh, with your host, Allen Cook here from Rockville, Maryland. And I've, uh, got another segment of the show that I'm excited to do here. Um, I picked up some mail on the way up here to my place to do this show, and one of the things that I picked up, and this is a shout-out for a company called Puzzle You, Y-O-U. This is one of the companies that I found on Facebook that you upload a photo and they turn it into a jigsaw puzzle for you. So on prior shows, I talked about cleaning out some apartments over the last couple of years for, uh, two, two good friends of mine that are in their 70s and 80s, um, two brothers who both went to law school. One went to law school at Harvard. The other went to University of Michigan. One is 83. One is 78. Neither of them ever married. No descendants. Um, no kids, you know, et cetera.

[38:16] Speaker 2: And they, they lived in separate apartments in the same building down by the Kennedy Center and down by Watergate in DC, and then COVID hit and they got into an assisted living place, and yet they still had these other apartments going down in DC. So, um, they hired us to go down and clean out the apartments, and they wanted to do it, you know, maybe weekly or biweekly, and it literally took almost three years. One of the brothers is kind of like, "Yeah, just toss that." The other one is like, "No, I need to look at it." And so that's fine. So we dealt with that and helped them out. Um, and they had some really cool stuff down there. Well, they're just really nice guys. Just about every time we went down there, they would buy us a bag of cookies. Um, and they were always giving us stuff, always giving us cookies. They, they paid us well every time for what we did. They're just terrific guys.

[39:21] Speaker 2: And they gave, they have given me for Christmas a box of See's chocolates for the last couple years. Well, I wanted to get them something cool, and we did a surprise birthday party for one of them last September in our church where he turned 78. We were hoping to get 78 people. Everybody loves this guy, a guy named Simmons. We were hoping to get 78 people to either verbally or by photo wish him a happy birthday. I was in charge of this. We got 215. And I put together a video with all these people wishing him happy birthday, and also put together a slideshow with still photos, people wishing him a happy birthday. And that's this wonderful guy four months ago gives me, and asked me in, beforehand, you know, "What's your favorite box of See's chocolates?" And I said, "Milk chocolate assortment." "Well, that's exactly what I got." Well, his Christmas present, yes, it's three and a half months late, but hey, better late than never, just arrived 45 minutes ago.

[40:26] Speaker 2: I picked it up before I came inside here, and it is a puzzle. It's a jigsaw puzzle made from a photo that we took that night at his party where I'm wearing a Baltimore Orioles baseball shirt, I'm wearing a Krispy Kreme baseball hat, because I provide Krispy Kreme donuts at our weekly Bible study class, and Simmons comes to that class about half the time. So he got me a Krispy Kreme. For my birthday, he got me a Krispy Kreme baseball cap. So I'm wearing that. I'm wearing a, a baseball jersey because these guys love baseball, and I got one of them on the one side and my brother, the other brother on the other side, and we turned that photo into a puzzle. So these guys now have a 500-piece puzzle of themselves. This thing was only like 40 bucks including the shipping, and it's the easiest thing to do. And I think if you go to puzzleyou.com, you'll see what I'm talking about. It is such a great gift idea. I did this for my sister, one of my 10 siblings.

[41:34] Speaker 2: Uh, this year I had her, and I took two photos of times where I visited her and her family and turned those two photos into pu- into two different puzzles and sent these out to her, and she loved it. So she gave me a 10 out of 10 on my Christmas gift that she broadcast to all my siblings on our text chat. Um, but I am so thrilled that I now have my buddy Simmons' belated Christmas present, but it is a very cool present, a jigsaw puzzle featuring him, his brother, and myself, the big trio, um, at the birthday party for Simmons, which we held last September. I can't tell you how excited I am about this. Now, that's the thing that was on the bottom of the pile of mail I just picked up. But guess what was on the top... a letter. Uh, it's not a letter, it's bigger than that. It's a, it's a six-inch by s- it's a five-inch by seven-inch almost invitation-sized letter to an event from, yes, you guessed it, the White House, Washington, D.C., addressed to me.

[42:47] Speaker 2: Now, the only reason I would get something from the White House that I know of is that because I'm the chairman of our high school's 50th reunion in June, and because we graduated in 1976, we are a bicentennial class. So as a surprise to my classmates, I reached out to the two senators from Utah, to the Utah governor, and to President Trump to invite them to wish our class, "Congratulations on your 50-year high school reunion," all right? Um, Senator John Curtis of Utah, uh, US senator, sent me a video. His staff sent me a video with him over the course of about two minutes wishing our class a great, you know, graduation party. He graduated two years behind us from a school in Salt Lake City, and he started talking about what was going on in '76, and the great music that came out in the '70s, and the bell-bottom pants and the wide ties and all that stuff. He was terrific, and he responded very quickly with a video that I'm planning to show the class.

[44:05] Speaker 2: Now, live on BBS Radio, I'm opening up the letter from the White House. I have no idea, or I don't know what it is. It might not have anything to do with this reunion, but I don't know what else it could be, and it might be, I don't know, something that says, "Hey, um, you know, do whatever." So here's, here's what it is. And maybe everybody in the world's getting one of these, I don't know. It says, "The White House, Washington. 'We send our best wishes as the United States celebrates the grandest and most glorious milestone in the history of our country, 250 years of American independence. For two and a half centuries...' " Probably everybody in the United States got one of these. "'For two and a half centuries, the burning flame of liberty lit on July 4th of '76 has been passed down from one generation to the next, and it is patriots like you who are carrying it to heights that our Founding Fathers never dreamed.

[45:01] Speaker 2: During this historic year, we remain confident that the triumph of the American spirit will shine brighter than ever before. May Almighty God bless you and may He continue to bless the United States of America. Sincerely,' " I have no idea who this is. I don't know what Donald Trump's ... m- m- this is probably Donald Trump's signature. It looks like, it looks like, what do you, what do you call it when you go, you go in to get your heart monitored and you need to see, you know, it's bouncing up and down on the scope? You know what I mean? Electrocardiograph? I don't know. What do we call those? I, I ... That's what the signature looks like. And next to that, there's another signature that's even worse that's just straight up-and-down scribbles. I thought it was gonna be something having to do with my high school reunion, so I was excited to open this on radio live. I bet you everybody in the United States got one of these today. (laughs) I don't know.

[45:57] Speaker 2: But anyway, eh, it's not often you get something mailed to you from the White House, but there you go. So, got that. That's kinda cool. Um, let me just see here real quick. Okay. Uh, maybe G- Governor Spencer Cox had sent me something, but he didn't. Okay, so anyway, back to, uh, back to reality. I was so excited there, I thought that might be a cool thing. Well, it is a cool thing, but ... Anyway, that's the, uh, celebration that I talked about, um, where you get half a truckload of stuff for 250 bucks instead of 350 bucks, or 395 bucks. Which, hey, we're celebrating the 250-year thing. Um, by the way, another plug for, for something that our church is doing. I just heard this as well. Um, we are sending, or I think maybe have sent this already, to celebrate the 250-year anniversary, we sent 250 18-wheel tractor trailer loads full of food to 250 food banks in the United States.

[47:05] Speaker 2: And I believe it included Alaska and Hawaii, because I saw something on the news somewhere that, you know, somebody that had taken a boat to help us get it to some place in Alaska, and I thought that was a really cool thing. But anyway, there's good things happening, and, um, and it's a lot of fun. So, I'm excited about my high school reunion coming up on June 12th out in Utah, and celebrating it. Um, another thing you can do to get the junk outta your life, put on a family pool for March Madness in your family. I have 11 siblings, no, 10 siblings, 56 nieces and nephews. For years, I have done a pool named after my brother, um, and we get about 30 people in the pool every year. Um, it's a fun little thing. I have right now on my mantelplace all of the 30 individual transparent large cups, because what happens with this is in the first round, every, every choice you made that you got right, you get a regular p- a regular M&M. In the second round, you get a peanut M&M.

[48:13] Speaker 2: In the third round, you get a fun-sized, Halloween-sized regular snack packet for each victory that you got. In the fourth round, you get the same Halloween-sized thing with peanut M&Ms. In the fifth round, you get a regular bag, the regular-sized candy that you buy for, like, a couple of bucks, of regular M&Ms.And I don't remember how many rounds there are, in the sixth round, um, you get the same thing for peanut M&M'S, and whoever wins this sucker gets, like, the family share-sized M&M'S bag, you know, the big one. So, we do it every year. I also give out, the first place, a $100 gift card to the Cheesecake Factory. Second place gets 50 bucks, third place gets 25 bucks to the Cheesecake Factory. My wonderful brother-in-law, a guy named John, lives down in Cary, North Carolina area, has been blessed with a terrific wife and, recently, his fourth daughter.

[49:19] Speaker 2: When he got his $25 gift card to the Cheesecake Factory, this classic guy took his two oldest daughters, who are probably about, I'm gonna guess seven and five, something like that, he took them to the Cheesecake Factory, let them choose what they wanted to have, and did a video of his oldest daughter saying, "Thank you, Uncle Alan. This is so great. We love you," et cetera. That's the spirit of, of our March Madness thing that we do. And it is, it, I hear every year from nieces and nephews, from siblings, from in-laws how great this thing is and how much fun people have with it, as it's really the one thing that we do every year with an extended family where we're all partying from wherever we live with a common goal in mind, and that is to have fun during March Madness. So, it's an awesome thing. Throw a party, you know, for you, your friends, whatever, and make it fun. Um, I gotta talk about the last thing, and this is, uh, fresh on my mind from last night.

[50:36] Speaker 2: Another way to get the junk out of your life is to look for opportunities to serve people. I go to a church on 16th Street in Washington, DC. Right next door to us is a beautiful restored mansion built in 1919, owned by a guy named Tim. Many times on, on Wednesday nights, we have a Bible study class at the church, and I provide Krispy Kreme Doughnuts for that Bible study class. So I go down Wednesday nights, and about four times a year, on one of these Wednesday nights, Tim throws a party for, like, 200 people. And down in Washington, DC, it's not the easiest thing in the world to find out where to park. It can be a little tricky. And here you've got an extra, what, 100, 150 cars that descend on Tim's house for this. Tim is a former Marine who at one time carried what's called the football. Do you know what the football is? The football, in White House terms, is the briefcase that you carry that you can give to the president that can trigger nuclear war. It's that thing.

[51:54] Speaker 2: They call it the football, right? Tim carried it in his career for some presidents, and has a fascinating story. So he throws this party for, like, 200 top people in Washington that know a lot about security issues throughout the government. Well, that party happens next to our church. In our church, at the parking lot, we have a parking lot on the east side, we have a parking lot on the north side, and we have underground parking. Two of those three parking lots are not really full on a Wednesday night. And here, Tim's buddies are trying to figure out, "Where do I park?" So I bu- I run into Tim over the last few years every time I'm kind of walking past his house, either on a Sunday or on a Wednesday. Sometimes I'll see him. I'll say hi and stuff. I offered to let his people park in our church parking lot last night. And then I went down at six o'clock, the party's from six to nine, I went down at six o'clock, put on a yellow vest, and just directed people.

[52:55] Speaker 2: I probably, we probably parked, or had 40 to 50 of his guests parked in our church parking lot for the first time in years. I can't tell you how satisfied and grateful those people were that they were able to do that. It was miraculous. It was wonderful, and I just loved kind of being the guy who came up with the idea, "Hey, you guys should use our church parking lot. It's not a big deal. Nobody's charging you, you know, you don't have to go find a place and then walk two blocks to get back to the party." Boy, were they appreciative. And I made a good, I don't know, 40 or 50 new friends, and as they, as they parked, they walked back past me and said, "Hey, make sure you come over and get some chicken," you know, and I did, and I went over, and I met the guy last night who was in charge of Barack Obama's fundraising campaign over the internet. Remember where they went out and got little donations around the, around the United States and I guess around the world?

[53:55] Speaker 2: That was this guy's idea. And I'm sitting at a table with him last night, shooting the breeze, and those are some of the people that I'm hanging out with. Anyway, Tim loved it. His attendees loved it. I made 40 new friends last night just because we let them park right next to Tim's house in our church parking lot, and I'm sure we're gonna do this now four times a year. And Tim wants to make a contribution to our church, which I told him is not necessary, but he insisted, and we have a great relationship, and everybody wins. Why? Because there was a need that we were able to help meet, which made life easier for other people. That's the formula.Simple. Simple. So if you want to get the junk out of your life, look for an opportunity to serve and help somebody else in some way, and they will really appreciate it, and they will think the world of you. That's what happened to me last night. We'll end with that story. I'll see you next week on the Junk Refund Show, three o'clock Eastern.

[54:59] Speaker 2: Thanks to Don and Brother Doug, the Newsome brothers who founded the BBS Radio Network. Uh, we're proud to be on their network. They do a terrific job. And check us out, 1800junkrefund.com. Give us a call, go listen to the podcast, and on the bbsradio.com website, the- these brilliant guys have created three new song- three songs just for our radio program. I haven't even heard 'em yet. They're up on the, on the website. Check 'em out. Listen to any past editions on the Junk Refund Show podcast, and you'll get a really good idea about why I claim to be one of the happiest guys on the planet on my Facebook page. All right. Have a great week, everybody. We will see you next week, and, uh, thanks for listening.

[55:53] Speaker 3: (Instrumental music.)

[55:56] Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Junk Refund Show, the longest running junk removal radio show on the air. Join us next week as we discuss innovative ways to declutter your home, your business, and your life using 20 years of junk removal experience. Find out why we give out free ice cream gift cards to our clients too. In upcoming shows, we will explore how to get the junk out of your relationships, your spiritual life, your waistline, even your travel life. Plus, call in with questions and situations you would like some help with. At 1-800-JUNK REFUND, we are committed to bringing the next generation of junk removal, because not all junk is junk. See you next week on the Junk Refund Show, every Thursday afternoons at 3:00 PM Eastern Time right here on BBS Radio TV.

[57:03] Speaker 3: (Instrumental music.)