Junk the mail

Junk mail is one of those things I don't understand.

Every day I get so many catalogs that I can scarcely pull them out of the mailbox. Most of them  are for things I would never buy, and the few that I have actually used in the past send three or four catalogs a month. Such a waste of trees. I wonder if the U.S. has different, more favorable regulations for junk mail. In France I rarely got any, and then it was usually for charities or at least something I'd already used.

The worst are all the credit card invitations. I've been warned that the West Side of Los Angeles is one of the top places for identity theft in the nation. Each credit card invitation is potentially a thief's credit card in your name. So I shred all the Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Diners Club invitations that arrive. There are usually several a day.

Here's one way to fight back:

Send them back!

Comments

[mikey]

Hi Sedulia,

Here are some suggestions:

If you visit Experian's website (they're one of the big credit-reporting agencies), they explain on the following page how your information gets to companies offering credit cards.

http://www.experian.com/preapproved_credit/index.html

If you click through on the links in the "Opting Out" section, you'll learn how not only to stop the credit card and insurance offers, but also to work through the Direct Marketing Association to reduce your "junk" mail.

I've been pretty aggressive with this myself, permanently opting out of credit card/insurance offers (I get NONE now) and the other mail has decreased a bit. You'll still get catalogs and such from companies you've purchased from (and sometimes their partner companies), but you can really get a lot of stuff stopped from your mailbox by just following these couple of steps.

I know, it's miserably frustrating to see all the waste... Unfortunately, from my understanding, it's proliferated so much because the US Postal Service offers bulk rates for huge mailers -- which helps their revenues and (probably) subsidizes the cost of the less-standardized, traditional, hand-addressed mail that is more error-prone and work-intensive for them.

Good luck!

(P.S. As an Angeleno who read you via the Paris Blog to recapture the magic of my long-ago study-abroad year in France, thanks for keeping up the blogging now that you're stateside. It's always very enjoyable to see your opinions and perspectives as the ex-pat in her own homeland. And nice to see the type of posts that, sadly, no longer seem to regularly populate the Paris Blog these days.)

[Sedulia]

Thanks mikey, I've been feeling very boring lately

[chrissoup]

You're not boring in the slightest. Mikey has summarized nicely my pleasure in reading a blog about an ex-pat who has come home. I enjoy your opinions, writing style, and selection of topics.

One of my weird "hobbies" is to fax the order forms in those catalogs to the catalog company, with "Please delete from your lists" written in marker across the form. I pretty much only get the catalogs I want now.

[M]

Mikey is right: if you Opt-Out, it will dramatically reduce the amount of junk mail you get. We have done it, and it works wonders. Two useful links:
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs4-junk.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt-out

The same goes with getting rid of marketing calls: you can contact the Do Not Call Registry, www.donotcall.gov.