Hopefully, this is in the right forum. If any of you are bombarded with junk mail as we are, and have found a solution, please let me know. Not a day goes by without having to sort through a stack of junk, from credit card offers to whatnot. So much so, I burned through a shredder within a few months. HELP.
I know what ya mean..... This is what I do. With everyone of them that has a self-addressed stamped envelope - and most do - I take my red marker and write on application or whatever "NOT INTERESTED!" or STOP SENDING ME YOUR JUNK MAIL!" (if they keep sending it), stuff it in their envelope that they have to pay the postage on and send it back to them......... they'll quit.
Our post office won't take letters unless I have postage on it, but I will pay attention to those who do...thanks. My 'return to sender' worked for a while, until the post office got grumpy about that too.
You can tell your local post office to hold all solicitation mail. That will get rid of everything which does not have your name on it. Credit cards know your name. Wanna know why?
Because the bank and credit card companies, etc you do business with sells a looooooong list of names to other businesses..... asses.....
How can your PO refuse a letter -SASE - that already has the postage on it? "Return to sender" is legit. You didn't ask for it, you don't want it, so you're giving it back to the company....... let them get grumpy.
Here, there are two Electoral Registers. You can opt out of the one which business can get its hands on to use to send you crap mail. You can also make sure you tick the right boxes to say - no ad mail and don't give my details to any other company -when purchasing online or with any company interact with.
I make sure to always do that online thing. Was hoping there's a site like National Do Not Call List, like we have for our phone numbers, that might take care of the problem.
Can't help you there, but I remember how irritating the piles of junk mail used to be. As well as the Electoral Register list opt-out in the UK, there is a list that allows you (free) to register that you don't want to recieve unsolicited advertising mail (and the members of the Direct Marketing Association have to use that list as part of their Code of Practice). I'm registered with that, and opt out of the Electoral List companies can use (and always tick the 'no information from third parties' and 'no marketing information' type boxes, or untick them, which ever version they are trying to catch me out with!), and thankfully get virtually no 'junk mail' at all - only stuff from companies I'm already (or have previously been) a customer of. There's a similar thing to stop unsolicited telephone marketing, too, and I get virtually no 'cold calls' on the phone either (just the odd one from companies outside the UK, who obviously aren't covered by it). The US seems to have any equivalent thing for telephone calls, but unfortunately not yet one for unsolicited junk mail.
A little known form. Form 1500 prevents ANY mail YOU find objectionable. It came to be out of unsolicited adult material... however I take no issue exploiting it, because lobbyists have gotten the full cooperation of the post office (why "resident" mailing exists frankly is because it means they don't have to sort it, yet pay postage). 1-888-5 OPT OUT will get you out of credit card mailings... and yes... when you go to Best Buy and they ask your personal information, just tell them NO. Home Depot does not have any obligation to your personal information because you want to buy something from them. "They don't use it for anything, they don't contact you." "Then why do they need it? Can I have YOUR home phone? I wont sell it or contact you. I just want it... for my records."
I do two things. 1. If it is a credit card offer or some sort of thing conducive to identity theft or to fraud, I have a small bag on my desk. I put it in the bag. I also have a yard with trees that insist on dropping dead branches on my lawn. When the bag gets full, I collect the branches & put them in the fire pit. The junk mail works just fine as a fire starter. 2. The rest goes in recycle. I have a trash basket near my desk just for recycle. That way, the junk mail gets reincarnated as toilet paper. My father had a theory that I've always been tempted to try. He called it cross-pollination of junk mail. If you get two letters, one trying to talk you into buying magazines & one offering, say, insurance, as long as your name isn't on either, order the magazines for the insurance company & insurance for the magazine company. This is probably illegal, but might be fun. I can picture a semi full of House and Garden & etc pulling up to the Acme Insurance company & the magazine company getting visits from platoons of insurance salesmen.
Yes, its easy to get snookered into unwanted mail, mostly when one is in a hurry and doesn't pay attention. Believe me, I will explore all options that I come across.
Americans obviously send out junk mail differently. Putting it an envelope? Don't you have people who walk around and stuff a ton of papers in your letterbox? I get a few letters, but not many. I usually get leaflets and catalogs in the mail, so many that I have to yank hard to pull them all out. If I collected all the junk I get in a month and weighed it, it'd weigh at least 10 kilos. Imagine that over a yearly period. We put signs on our letterboxes - NO JUNK MAIL - and they usually work. But as it seems the whole junk mail thing works differently in the US, I wouldn't know how to deal with that. You could collect it all over a year, and then send it all back to them in a massive box. Even if you had to pay for the postage, I'm pretty sure they'd never send you anything else.
Well, yeah .... they're called 'mailmen'........... And no, I'm not saving the junk mail for a yr, then throw it in a large box and mail it back to every company.... for one thing, to many companies involved... Another thing, I mail a package to my son and 5 yr old g'son occassionally and their package is the only one I'm willing to spend a lot of $ for postage on.....
True story. Had a small package delivered, came in one of those boxes they sell at the post office. Prepaid, all you can fit. So, recycler that I am, I reused the same box, wrapped it, and off to the post office I went. Lady at the counter recognized shape of box and asked if it was one of theirs. "Yes M'am, just reusing the cardboard" So she tells me that I had to pay again for the prepaid box ("even if you reuse it 20 times, you still pay for it"). I took my package, went back home, rewrapped it, went back to the post office, mailed my package, and ask if they would buy their prepaid box back, since it was worth so much. I didn't have any takers on that.
