… or at least reduce it significantly.
One day of junk
Most of us get flooded by junk mail. And it’s junk in more than one way. It harms the environment. It sucks up your time dealing with it. If you’re even slightly paranoid about personal information, you’ll probably shred everything that’s a credit card offer, or at least the cover letter. In short - you don’t want it.
To turn off the flood completely is a herculean task - so let’s focus on a couple of quick and easy steps to get rid of most of the junk mail. Offender #1 - yet another credit card offer. This can be easily dealt with at optoutprescreen.com. This site is run by Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion - the four major credit reporting agencies. You can choose to opt out for five years, permanently, or even to opt back in - in case you don’t have enough credit cards yet… And if you don’t trust websites, go call 1-888-5 OPT OUT (or 1-888-567-8688)
Next, the majority of the other stuff - blame the Direct Marketing Association for about 75% of it.
Done blaming? Good - now send mail to Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, PO Box 643, Carmel, NY 15012-0643. There’s a lot of info to mail them, and it’s easiest to just fill out their online form and mail them a print-out.
Why not send it online? Since sending junk to you generates money for them, opting out should be as inconvenient as possible - so opting out online costs $5. You’ve got to admire the chuzpah.
And that’s it for starters - two letters, and your junk mail should decrease significantly. It takes a while (up to 6 months! for the DMA) to take hold, but it’s well worth it.
If you want to get even more aggressive about purging your in-box, there are plenty of web sites to help you on that quest: From more complex how-to’s to dedicated sites like http://www.junkbusters.com/.
To junk-free living!
I always loved how it takes weeks or months to remove you from a database, but you can be added instantly and easily.
Somewhere there’s a hack of the DMA site that lets you submit your address for free. They might have addressed the issue, but I know it’s a favorite target of the more extreme fringe of consumer rights activists.
There needs to be some sort of online movement to stop junk mail. Having companies deliver garbage to your mailbox is complete madness.
Another idea is to simply send the pre-paid envelopes back through the mail. You may also stuff the return envelopes with your own junk. This results in a postal charge to the junk mail sender. If enough of us did this, I think the junk mail would really thin out.
I agree w/df. One company simply refuses to quit sending me junk mail no matter how many direct requests I’ve made to its HQ, complaint to BBB and more. So every time they send me something (every 2-4 weeks) I’m going to open it, stuff everything into the prepaid business reply envelope–after marking the outer envelope “stop sending mailers”–and mail it back to them. This way they’re paying for it both ways and I’m thinking probably after the first or second time someone there will make sure I’m removed from their lists.
Here is an improved way of messing with the the postage-paid people: http://www.dearbulkmailer.com